Any resemblance to Jennifer Garner in “Hunger Games” is purely intentional.
Unfortunately, the premise and the fleeting CGI stuff are about all there is. The show has a thoughtless, half-baked feel to it, focusing on impossibly good-looking characters and their cliched personal conflicts and mostly ignoring the opportunity to explore the role of technology in modern America.
Revolution is set in the United States exactly 15 years after some unexplained event knocks out anything that uses electricity. That would include your iPads, your Honda Accords, your Xboxes and any number of personal grooming devices. Probably water heaters too, which would make regular showers problematic. Nevertheless, everyone on the show looks great. Great hair, nice clothes, and straight teeth that are whiter than white. Apparently, cosmetic dentistry is one of the few industries unaffected by the blackout. And Target is still open.
This is the first problem I have with the show: the capricious nature of things people have to do without. For example, the ragtag militias that rule America have to make do with swords and the odd muzzle-loading rifle, yet one of the militia leaders (Giancarlo Esposito) carries a modern Desert Eagle pistol. Think about that: In America, where there are more guns and ammo per capita than any place in the world, soldiers use swords. After just 15 years? I don’t think so.
One of the few clever scenes in the premiere showed a woman tending her garden in the shell of a Prius. It was apt: the symbol of fake greenness being used for the real thing. But it raised another point totally ignored by the writers: the food supply. Without wells and tractors and trucks, a nation of 300 million is going to get hungry pretty quickly. But nobody on Revolution has missed any meals, or seems to care much about where the next one is coming from. I guess those Priuses make mighty good gardens.
Speaking of 300 million people, where are they? This is a blackout, not a plague. Did they all become so despondent without their iPads that they committed suicide? Maybe that’s explained in later episodes. If so, let me know. Because I don’t think I’ll be returning.
Anybody else tune in for this? Thoughts?
The sound of the snarkmeisters
True crime confidential
A latter-day look at “Twin Peaks”
Somethin’ from the oven
‘Downton’: Time for another dead Turk?
I didn’t see this but it doesn’t sound like I missed anything based on reviews. “Dull” and “of little substance” came up a number of times….pretty much like the majority of shows available now. A book has been calling a lot louder than any program for awhile now, although I do love some Mad Men!
I had planned on catching this, but my plans were derailed by a good book. Thanks, Dave. It looks as if I made the right choice after all.
It’s the “no electricity” thing that made me write off this show without watching it. Is it some kind of massive power failure? We have ways of fixing that. Did electricity itself stop working? If so, we’re all dead, because our nerves use electricity.
BTW, a world without electricity is an idea David Bowie was playing around with at the time of Ziggy Stardust. All the young dudes had to carry the news because there was no more electricity for radio, etc.