Season 2 begins Wednesday on NBC
Revolution, a show produced by J.J. Abrams about a post-apocalyptic America fifteen years after all the power has gone out, created high hopes of what another TV show, Jericho, could have been, and maybe a little bit of The Walking Dead. Asking for that and a similar addictive experience to the mystery and adventure of Lost felt like too much to ask for. Enough shows claimed to be the next Lost, so I reserved that expectation.
The pilot had a twist that surprisingly didn’t evoke the kind of empathy one would expect from such an act (no spoilers, yet). Watching the first few episodes was a pretty bland experience. The deal breaker that made me stop watching was a laughable action sequence where Miles had a sword fight on a set of stairs. The scene accentuated a feeling like the show was trying to be too clean, and the effect was that it didn’t feel real.
I originally watched Revolution on Hulu, and a lack of interest in keeping up meant episodes were taken down before I watched them. Then I heard Season 2 was picked up (starts this Wednesday, 9/25 at 8pm EST on NBC) and that the whole first season was on Netflix. So, I gave it another chance, and ended up really liking it.
It’s hard for me to pinpoint where the show turned around for me… around the ninth episode? I need to use spoilers from here, so if you haven’t seen the whole first season, I recommend checking it out. NBC has the last five episodes up online for free. Buying Season 1 on DVD or BluRay is currently more than I’d want to pay, but worth a month of Netflix.
**Okay, to the spoilers**.
The place where the show really turned around for me was when the bad guys got the power back. Those stakes only increased when Miles went face to face with his best friend, Bass, and said their friendship died when Bass became what he is now. Great character interest there about how best friends could turn against each other and how Bass did it all for Miles, becoming a kind of monster we gradually see he regrets becoming. Soon after, the son they had been looking for searly season died in an awesome helicopter fight. This and the coil gun fights inside the bunker had me hooked. Did anyone else notice a shift towards more blood in the action scenes? As though before, the actual cutting and wounds happened off screen, and then we would see them with bloodied clothes, whereas mid season we started seeing peole being stabbed and feeling the gunshots. Clearly the son did, and the victims in the bunker.
Heading into Season 2, Revolution has the same if not better character interest that Jericho had, but a much better exploration of the country-wide situation. I’m really interested in seeing the President come into play, find out how Bass and Miles will interact, and I guess the love story between girl-who-has-way-too-many-cleavage-shots and her bad-boy boyfriend, who looks like he just left the set of Twilight. Later in Season 1, we got to see another leader, Georgia’ Federation’s president, and with the reveal that the original President of the U.S.A. is still alive, I expect more high stakes battles, as well as travel through different factions of the country.
Are you excited for Revolution Season 2?
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Timothy C. Ward
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