New Fall Show Review: Revolution

Revolution doesn't technically premiere until 9/17, but it was available OnDemand (and I think it is on Hulu too), so I figured I'd get ahead of the game and check it out.

Did you / do you like any of the following shows:
The Event
FlashForward
LOST
Alcatraz
Fringe
Terra Nova

If you answered 'yes' to any of those, you might as well give Revolution a shot.  It'll probably get cancelled (like 4/6 of those did), so hey, it isn't a big commitment anyway.

In case you missed the bazillion promos - basically we lose all power/energy. Like... no lights, no cars, and apparently, they don't even have pens (watch for the guy from Breaking Bad/Once Upon A Time writing with a giant pencil at one point).

And hey! We get this awesome shot of East St. Louis 15 yrs from now with busted up playgrounds!

Good try, Revolution, but East St. Louis already sort of looks like that. 

I know, I know. How does that make sense? If we know how electricity was invented - why don't we just reinvent it? If we know how wind energy works - why not just use that? It makes absolutely zero sense. According to my boyfriend, this is a show 'for people who don't understand science.'

I'm not too caught up on details. It's a TV show! Who cares! But my issue is this - it needs to be believable, if only for a little while. The first 40 minutes of LOST were completely possible. Plane crash on an island. Sure, a lot of people survived, but whatever. It's a show. It wasn't until the very last few minutes of the pilot that we heard the monster in the jungle. We were intrigued. We realized that wait - this wasn't just a modern day Gilligan's Island. This is something more.

Revolution just isn't smart enough. The comment 'this is a show for people who don't understand science' is a real problem. LOST pushed viewers. When it came out, TV was getting dumber and dumber. Reality was king. But LOST dared to be the thinking-man's show. It had literary references you had to Google to understand. It had Easter eggs hidden in nearly every episode. We saw all of its predecessors dumb themselves down to help the audience understand - Flashforward always replayed scenes that were referenced, instead of just hoping their viewers would remember what happened two weeks ago. Terra Nova blew its budget with 'cool' dinosaurs instead of focusing on plot and character. Revolution is heading towards the same fate.

We do get a lot of LOST-y feelings from the show. 'Juliet' plays mom to 'Charlie' and wife to 'Ben.' Hearing her say their names in the very first scene of the show made me feel like I was watching LOST all over again. The music sounds similar, there's a plane (and believe me, I searched for 'Oceanic' on the side) and it ends with someone sending mysterious messages on a computer that could have flew out of the Hatch when it exploded and landed in this lady's attic. I wanted so badly for her to respond to the final "So.... Now what?" message with "4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42."

BUT WAIT - mysterious messages? I thought they didn't have power? 

Oh yes, now you're hooked, eh?