The Revolution pilot is online now...

[Jimi_James]

I agree Jarod about that unnecessary complication aspect of many shows recently. Many shows since Lost, perhaps longer, have tried to craft a similar feeling and tone of mystery, but do so by simply withholding information that isn't even all that mysterious in the first place. They create mystery just for the sake of mystery itself, whether the story needs it or not and that's the worst kind, because it suffers from a transparency of story telling. It allows a crafty viewer to see right through what they're doing because the story is being put together so poorly.

 

[DigificWriter]

I checked out the pilot last night, and really enjoyed it. We do need to get more information about the major characters, but I thought they were all interesting enough on the surface to make me want to see how their journey unfolds. The premise really reminds me of a cross between the Fallout RPG series and Terry Brooks' Genesis of Shannara Trilogy.

I think it's kind of sad that general TV audiences seem to have become so jaded that the ability to just buy into the conceit of a series and enjoy it for what it is has been lost.

 

[Star Wolf]

I think we are jaded because instead of just hitting us with the blackout as magic and showing life in the aftermath they hedged their bets with the grand conspiracy and its the attempt to explain the grand conspiracy which fails and causes the ultimate failure of the show

 

[Roshi]

"Ze director's cut is ze film you saw in ze theater."

I know where that quote comes from!

 

[DigificWriter]

I think we are jaded because instead of just hitting us with the blackout as magic and showing life in the aftermath they hedged their bets with the grand conspiracy and its the attempt to explain the grand conspiracy which fails and causes the ultimate failure of the show

I watched both the pilot and a bunch of behind-the-scenes featurettes, and never once did I get the feeling that the series' success or failure will end up hinging on the 'grand conspiracy', as you put it. Yes, there are certainly elements of mystery that seem to be trademarks of J.J. Abrams-produced television, but I got the sense that they were only PART of the story, not the story itself.

 

[Scout101]

Big fan of S.M. Stirling's Emberverse series, and there's some similarities so far, i suppose. NOT liking that there's some grand conspiracy, though. Liked that part of Stirling's series better, where it was just written off as Alien Space Bats and they moved on.

Anyway, it's interesting enough that I'll see where it goes. Will say that so far, it's disappointing that they skipped over one of the best parts - the actual distruction of the old world. You'd have to focus on a smaller group to avoid getting overwhelmed, but seems we've already missed that part in favor of cute little family-style villages...

Guess plagues, starvation, and canibalism don't make great family tv, but they've yada yada'ed over a pretty big step between modern civilization and '15 years later, we've got little villages'...

 

[Gotham Central]

Big fan of S.M. Stirling's Emberverse series, and there's some similarities so far, i suppose. NOT liking that there's some grand conspiracy, though. Liked that part of Stirling's series better, where it was just written off as Alien Space Bats and they moved on.

Anyway, it's interesting enough that I'll see where it goes. Will say that so far, it's disappointing that they skipped over one of the best parts - the actual distruction of the old world. You'd have to focus on a smaller group to avoid getting overwhelmed, but seems we've already missed that part in favor of cute little family-style villages...

Guess plagues, starvation, and canibalism don't make great family tv, but they've yada yada'ed over a pretty big step between modern civilization and '15 years later, we've got little villages'...

I think that they did that, as I said in my earlier post, I don't think that the fall of the earlier civilization will be that important. I think that the question of WHY the power is off going to be the key.

Mark my words...AI...people.

 

[davejames]

I think it's kind of sad that general TV audiences seem to have become so jaded that the ability to just buy into the conceit of a series and enjoy it for what it is has been lost.

I would have been able to buy into the conceit a lot better if the writing hadn't been so generic and dumbed down.

 

[JD]

I think we are jaded because instead of just hitting us with the blackout as magic and showing life in the aftermath they hedged their bets with the grand conspiracy and its the attempt to explain the grand conspiracy which fails and causes the ultimate failure of the show

I watched both the pilot and a bunch of behind-the-scenes featurettes, and never once did I get the feeling that the series' success or failure will end up hinging on the 'grand conspiracy', as you put it. Yes, there are certainly elements of mystery that seem to be trademarks of J.J. Abrams-produced television, but I got the sense that they were only PART of the story, not the story itself.

Yeah, that's pretty much what they've said in some of the interviews I've read. It sounds like the mystery will be secondary to what's going on with Charlie, her uncle, Aaron (the Google guy), and Maggie (the doctor).

 

[Guy Gardener]

Um. And mum.

Elizabeth Mitchel is not to be wasted on Flashbacks.

They'll figure out mum is alive half way through season one, a couple episodes later the daughter understands that uncle and daddy both dated mum and they all had a big fight about her final choice... Then they find mum in the last episode and she gives them their quest to turn the world back on, but daughter says "screw that, this world is better". And... Curtain.

It's a standard formulae.

hey, this tech darkage is almost like what Snake Plisken did in End of Escape from LA.

 

[Mister Fandango]

Yeah, that's pretty much what they've said in some of the interviews I've read. It sounds like the mystery will be secondary to what's going on with Charlie, her uncle, Aaron (the Google guy), and Maggie (the doctor).

That may be what they intend, but it's not what they set up or what they lead the audience to expect. The story is about the shutdown of all large mechanics and electronics. The insipid teen angsty love and kung fu uncle stories are all just filler.

 

[Scout101]

I think that they did that, as I said in my earlier post, I don't think that the fall of the earlier civilization will be that important. I think that the question of WHY the power is off going to be the key.

Mark my words...AI...people.

Disagree, I guess. I'd rather watch the immediate aftermath, as things fall apart and new forms rise up, follow a group trying to survive as things change. Like Walking Dead, but with less zombies.

Instead, we're gonna get some moustache-twirling conspiracy show, and it's gonna get cancelled before we find out the ending anyway. Which is fine, because there's a pretty big missing step between knocking civilization back to the stone age and profit, so whatever the evil plot ends up being will be underwhelming anyway. That kind of group already HAD power, so they'd want to make fairly minor changes to grow that power. Not blow it all up and fundamentally change the planet and try to see if they can get powerful again.

Feel free to theorize all you like, but finding the answer (if we even ever get one) will likely piss you off more than anything.

I prefer the characters take front stage, and be put against environment and circumstance, and just other opportunistic people, rather than some plotting cabal that makes zero logical sense. again...

 

[Guy Gardener]

Or there's fear of the alternative.

If the world had to end, and you have a couple choices?

Imagine North Korea and Pakistan get into a barney, and it's 40 seconds till they let all their shit fly.

40 seconds till the end of the world.

40 seconds till there's radiation everywhere.

40 seconds till 4 decades of nuclear winter.

Radiation and nuclear winter suck.

This, a global black out, which deactivates missiles in their silos and missiles in the air simultaneously saving the planet from the crust being cracked a sunder and the atmosphere igniting.

It's the ultimate countermeasure to MAD.

Well the ultimate countermeasure is civility, but this is all they could swing.

 

[DigificWriter]

Yeah, that's pretty much what they've said in some of the interviews I've read. It sounds like the mystery will be secondary to what's going on with Charlie, her uncle, Aaron (the Google guy), and Maggie (the doctor).

That may be what they intend, but it's not what they set up or what they lead the audience to expect. The story is about the shutdown of all large mechanics and electronics. The insipid teen angsty love and kung fu uncle stories are all just filler.

Did you even watch the pilot? The conspiracy stuff makes up a very small fraction of the episode's content.

 

[Scout101]

But they pretty much HAVE to come back to it, don't they?

Not every LOST episode had Smoke Monster, but he was always in the background, not making any sense

Since they're billing it as the group trying to figure out what happened, and how to turn the power back on, seems like they're kinda stuck having to address the evil conspiracy...

 

[DigificWriter]

^ I'm not denying that the conspiracy stuff isn't or won't be part of the show; I'm denying that it is the entirety of the story.

 

[Mister Fandango]

Did you even watch the pilot?

Yes, I did. Did you?

The conspiracy stuff makes up a very small fraction of the episode's content.

You mean like it being the whole focus of the initial scenes? Or the driving force of the entire show? Or the driving force behind every single character's motivation on the show, good guy and bad guy alike? The entire world has been turned upside down because of the conspiracy. Charlie is out to rescue her brother who was taken because of the conspiracy and avenge her father who died because of the conspiracy. The ex-Google guy was given a magical amulet to protect because of the conspiracy. The uncle is being hunted because of the conspiracy. Charlie's little boyfriend is/was hunting them because of the conspiracy. The math teacher has a secret lab and magical talisman because of the conspiracy. Espisito and the warlord are hunting the uncle because of the conspiracy. etc.

But, no, you say it's a only a small fraction of the show. So none of that can possibly be accurate.

 

[SG-17]

I don't really know what to say about this show. I can't really put it into words well.

I mean I am interested in it, yet at the same time it puts me off. I don't want to watch it, but I end up doing so anyway...

 

[DigificWriter]

Mister Fandango: There's a difference between something being part of a series' basic conceit/concept and said thing being the entire story; the blackout is part of Revolution's basic concept and conceit, but, as presented in both the pilot and tonight's episode, it isn't the entire story.

Speaking of tonight's episode, I really enjoyed it, even moreso than I enjoyed the pilot. Its plot reminded me very much of the Firefly episodes War Stories and Safe, and even conjured up memories of the short-lived FOX series Vanished and Reunion.

A bunch of people on another board were talking about how they found Charlie annoying or unlikeable, but I have to disagree. She reminds me a lot of Buffy Summers and River, albeit without the superpowers, and I got a major kick out of her admonishment of Miles and Nora.

The pilot didn't really give us much of an indication as to the genesis of the series' title, but that was very much remedied in this ep, and I'm really interested in seeing where things go with the eponomous revolution going forward, especially since, judging by the preview for next week, our characters are very much going to be wading into the thick of things.

 

[sojourner]

I got strong vibes of The Postman from tonight's episode.