Revolution- Pilot

By Genevieve719 (Flickr) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The new nerd fare this season is Revolution. We love us some nerd fare, so we were rooting for this show, but our hopes for stuff like this are down. We like the premise of this show. Isnt this what was supposed to happen with Y2K? One of our dads was SUPER prepared for that. We’re talking warehouse full of freeze-dried food, boat, and guns. Hilarious. We figured people would be able to make some kind of generator or water wheel to get power going again, but the show will explain that away by saying, “the laws of physics have changed.” Suspend belief, people.

So, the show. Elizabeth Mitchell is a good sign. Apparently, she’s dead, but we wouldn’t mind if it turned out she wasn’t. We like that it’s not a dark show. We wouldn’t call it “gritty,” and it doesn’t carry the hopelessness of other post-apocalyptic shows, like The Walking Dead. We also like that it’s not as cheesy as Terra Nova. Hopefully it doesn’t turn into a similar “family show.” Sci-fi should not be for the whole family. It should be for adults if it wants to survive. Once Upon a Time took the family spot and is doing well with it.

In the first scene, we see a man named Ben and his wife living in Chicago. They have a young son named Danny and an older daughter, Charlie. Ben realizes “it’s about to happen” and calls his brother, Miles, just before the power goes out for good. If that happened, we would immediately run to the grocery store with a pick-up truck and start loading in food cans. Weapons would be next. Fifteen years later, Ben’s wife is dead and his new girlfriend, Maggie, is the town doctor. Oh yeah, the town. Ben is seemingly the leader of a little settlement where they grow lots of corn, and catalogue model Katniss-esque tomboy Charlie is supposed to watch over her asthmatic little brother, who does something stupid within the first 15 minutes.

A militia containing Gustavo Fring rides into town to take Ben away and find out where his brother Miles is. Danny interferes and Ben is killed. Danny is kidnapped. Charlie was chilling in the woods by herself the whole time. Gus Fring works for the militia’s leader, General Monroe, a power-hungry guy looking for a way to get technology back so that he can monopolize it. Charlie sets out to find her uncle with Maggie and a pudgy, nerdy guy named Aaron. Aaron has the necklace thing that Ben gave him, and it’s probably the key to turning the power back on.

On the way, they are attacked by rapists, but Maggie poisons them (we love her already), and a mysterious, hot archer shoots one off of Charlie. Charlie trusts him and lets him join their band. They make it to a hotel in Chicago where they find Miles, who refuses to go with them to get Danny. Mysterious Archer Guy betrays them and leads the militia to Miles. Miles kills almost all of the baddies, and Charlie comes back at the last second to help. Mysterious Archer Guy intentionally fails to kill Charlie. He has a crush. Miles goes with Charlie and the others. At the end, we find out that Monroe used to be Miles’s Marine buddy. Also, Ben isn’t the only one with a necklace giving the ability to turn on the power.

We’re not impressed with Charlie’s acting, especially when she was crying to her uncle. She’s lucky to have those eyes though. Her pupils always seem dilated. It’s weird that her eyes were kind of green when she was a kid and blue as an adult. We like that Charlie open-minded and trusting, and that the paranoia she was raised with didn’t completely brainwash her. Yeah, it’s going to get her in trouble, but it gives her a soft side. We like that her father saw her as the more capable child. Even though he wasn’t on the show long, Ben treated Charlie convincingly, like a father would really treat his oldest. At least they aren’t trying to pass Charlie off as 16. If her brother is 19, she’s got to be around 24 or 25.

Miles is a dick, but he's bad ass. We liked the big action scene near the end. We were surprised and grateful that Danny escaped for a while. It led to interesting things (the woman with power), and it kind of redeemed him a little. He’s not completely useless. When we saw Gus Fring, we wondered who on Earth could be even scarier than him, since he’s not the boss. Monroe is. We wouldn’t say Monroe is scarier yet. We haven’t seen much of him. He hardly utters a word. He’s really damn hot though. We’re going to keep watching this show, for now. We aren’t blown away, but we were entertained and we would call this a solid beginning. We don’t know where the show intends to go from here, but the first chapter was more than promising. It has to stay quality for about five episodes in order for us to really trust it though. We’ve been burned by sci-fi...and JJ Abrams...before.

Episode grade: B+