I weighed in on the return of “Revolution” in this morning’s post, but I have a couple of spoiler-iffic thoughts on the premiere coming up just as soon as I drive here in a Cutlass Ciera…
Okay, first the good: Danny is deceased. Both Charlie and Danny have been problematic characters, played by underwhelming actors, and while I wouldn’t expect the show to eliminate them both (especially given how central Tracy Spiridakos is to all the marketing), at least Danny’s exit gives Kripke and company an opportunity to focus more on the characters they can write well.
Now the bad: First, as alluded to in this morning’s post, the resolution of the November cliffhanger was lame in the extreme. Last I checked, helicopters have the ability to land, right? To perhaps drop off a few soldiers who can get out and confirm the deaths of Monroe Republic Public Enemy #1 Miles? Instead, they just take off and send men back after a convenient interval that allows Miles and company to walk away. In general, the action scenes with the helicopters were less impressive than the more low-fi stuff the show did back in the fall, and not just because I wondered where all the ammo came from, given what we’d been told in earlier episodes. (Yes, bullets for the powered, mounted chopper guns might not have been in demand during the blackout, but you can bet that Monroe or someone else would have scavenged the other machine guns and used them long ago.)
I also thought the attempt to focus on the Matheson family’s long history of protecting Danny wasn’t all that successful in making me feel bad about his death, or about the grief the other characters are feeling for him. While the flashbacks should provide value for characters in the midst of an action environment, for the most part what’s happened is that the characters who were already strong like Miles and Neville are at the center of interesting flashbacks, while characters who are dull in the present are equally dull in the past.
And finally, I know Kripke has said he doesn’t intend to drag out the mystery of how the power went out, given that Rachel knows and is part of the group now. But for crying out loud, she and Miles travel by foot and then carriage from Philadelphia to John’s house and then to Annapolis, and there’s somehow not an opportunity during all that time to give him at least the bullet points on what happened, how the necklaces counteract it, etc.? Even if they’re only stalling for another week or two, it’s still something that calls attention to itself as stalling.
What did everybody else think? Do you feel the show returned strongly? Did absence make the heart grow more or less fond for it? Are you excited by the idea of Randall and Monroe forming an alliance? And if one of the Matheson kids had to take a bullet, would you have picked Danny or Charlie?