Pilot: Revolution

I'm going to try something new. There are a lot of TV shows on Netflix. Winter Break is coming up and I am looking for a new show to get into. To incorporate some blogging into this, I will watch a pilot of a show, review it and by the end, I'll look back at all of them and decide which one is the show I'm going to continue watching.

We begin with NBC's Revolution.

When it comes to TV shows, I think I've become a little bit of a snob. I find myself staying away from primetime TV and movie towards more edgy and gritty TV shows or British TV shows. I love me my Breaking Bad, my Walking Dead, Doctor Who, my House of Cards and as much HBO as I can. All of these shows are either AMC, BBC or something on something obscure like HBO or Netflix. The last TV show I watched on a large network like FOX, NBC or CBS that was a drama was 24. 

So then I see Revolution. I'll be totally honest, I got this show mixed up with Terra Nova and I wanted

to watch that show because it had Stephen Lang in it.

As much shit as I give James Cameron for not letting go of Stephen Lang for future Avatar movies, I like Lang as an actor. So I was looking forward to it.

However, I got the shows mixed up. Luckily it wasn't a horrible mix up. (Maybe Terra Nova will be one of the pilots I watch)

One thing you can take from Revolution is... Billy Burke is a badass.

Revolution is the story of a world where one day the electricity just shuts off. No lights, no cars, no electricity whatsoever. 15 years pass and the world has gone back to what I can only describe as a very odd dark ages. There's remnants of the United States of the past but it has a bad case of the History channel's "Life after people" theme going on.

You know, grass growing over everything. Now I didn't pay too much attention to that documentary but would 15 years really make things THAT shitty? Maybe I don't know. Anyway, to the story.

The story follows a teenage girl Charlie Mathison (played by Tracy Spiridakos). She starts out as the typical Disney teenage girl, wanting more out of her dull primitive life. But her father says its too dangerous out there. With no electricity, governments fell and militias rose to power. There's no US government anymore just war faring republics and warlords. This is an interesting concept to me. I love a good post apocalyptic environment, I've read The Road and I've played Fallout 3. I love the dangers of raiders and independent factions roaming the new territory. But this is an NBC show so so far in the first episode, theres militias aren't that scary.

But they are scary enough to have Gustavo Fring in them. This was one of the pleasant surprises of the

show. I love Giancarlo Esposito and he still manages to scare the fuck out of me just by his demeanor. He runs a gang of militia working for a warlord named General Monroe. Monroe himself only shows up for a minute but Esposito's character (don't know his name) is definitely the enforcer. Which is different, doesn't really seem right but he does it well enough.

But again, these militia and raiders aren't that scary. Sure they wear black, sure they're lead by Gus Fring but they just seem like regular dudes.

So the militia comes to Charlie's village, kill her dad, and take her brother captive. Before he dies, her father tells her to go find her uncle Miles. Enter the best character of the show.

Billy Burke plays Miles Mathison. He's a former marine and an all around bad ass who "knows how to kill". That's all you know about him. When Charlie finds him, he's just chilling in Chicago. He just wants to be left alone. I think he just wants to stay away from teenage girls because he spent his mustached years playing the father of a whiny vampire one.

But Billy Burke kicks ass in the pilot. He makes you forget the bland characters the show starts out with, Charlie, her step mother, and some random friend of her father's, and just gets you excited to see him do stuff.

Basically after an incident where he is no longer able to hide, Billy agrees to help Charlie find her brother and that's the end of the episode. A few other things that happened in the episode is a hint that Billy knows the General Monroe of the big bad militia, a little bit about the brother, and a hint at a woman who may know something about why the electricity is out.

That's really what I see as the behind the scenes quest. To find out why the electricity went out. Which is interesting enough I guess.

The big thing that stands out about this world is kind how confused I was by it. When I said it was a dark ages place, I wasn't joking. The world is very much reduced to a Postman-like world.

For those who don't get that reference, The Postman was a 1997 film starring Kevin Costner. The movie itself isn't known for being that great but its a very similar world. A post apocalyptic world run by warlords and raider and people just trying to survive.

But the confusing thing about Revolution was that it actually set these people back to a dark age.

In The Postman, they still had assault rifles and actual guns. But in Revolution, people are back to swords and Civil war era rifles that you have to put the black powder in and everything of that nature. It was very confusing really. It makes sense that a warlord like Monroe in this show would outlaw firearms in order to maintain control but even his own men have the flint rifles and crossbows. You'd think with all the guns in America they could hand out a decent gun to their militias. And putting that aside, where did they get those kinds of rifles?

I may be wrong but these kinds of rifles are hard to come by. Why use them? If they were made, why make them?

Its not a huge detriment to the story, it was just distracting.

All that aside, Revolution was an interesting pilot. All the characters are kind of background noise to Billy Burke and Giancarlo Esposito but it could perhaps get interesting. Hopefully the next pilot will be up soon. Otherwise I hope this gives you a good idea of what you're getting into if you decide to watch Revolution.

Have you seen Revolution? Without spoilers, what do you think? What are some other pilots that would be good to watch? Comment below. I think this will be a fun series of posts.