Revolution: The Fall’s Biggest Disappointment
Revolution isn’t a failure, just a disappointment. Being a failure means that you don’t have any potential, which is just the opposite for Revolution. The show has all the potential in the world, but constantly squanders any chance of being creative, bold or daring. Rather the show spins its wheels in mediocrity on a weekly basis.
First and foremost I am a show of Revolution. The pilot had a glimmer of hope that NBC could have found a scifi show that would work. A show that tried to do something more. Rather Revolution constantly falls on its own sword. Case in point: Charlie. Charlie is the anchor weighing any semblance of the show moving forward. She does the opposite of everything that anyone ever tells her, which always leads to bad things. Why can’t she learn from her actions? Why can’t she see that she is a burden on the group? Why she is nothing but trouble for anyone ever? For all of the above: because her character is one demential, only defined by her quest to find her brother and her constant need to step in it every chance she gets.
For the rest of the group, Miles is the only interesting character. He has a shadowy past, kills people with ease and feels guilty for what he has done regarding the Militia. He has depth. He has reasons to keep moving forward in life. His own reasons, not someone’s else's. Miles is everything that Charlie isn’t. Awesome.
This leads to the show’s confusion of who is the star of the show? Charlie is being showed in the audiences’ face as the sympathetic lead who is lost in this blackout world. But she doesn’t make the grade as being a lead character. Miles is the obvious choice of lead, but the show doesn’t want him to fill that role. Star confusion is a hard symptom to overcome this early in a show.
Revolution does have shinning hope, buried deep beneath a layer of muck. The world that Revolution occupies is interesting since it gives a wide berth of 15 years of time for the world to go to hell and back again. Steam power still works, but it was destroyed in the wars since the blackout. But who were the wars with? And what about the other nations that the Militia is at war with? These are the real bits of interest that Revolution has, not so much why the blackout happened, but rather the consequences of technology being used as a weapon.
So what does this mean? When Revolution comes back on the air after its winter break (March 25, 2013), hopefully these problems will be fixed. Most the current show was written before the viewing audience had a chance to see the show. These problems were in the pipeline and couldn’t be stopped. Revolution has to move forward and fix the obvious glaring problems facing the future of the show to ensure that it will make it past the first season. People are watching the show, but for how long if the formula isn’t tweaked is the question.
