Derek Hartley: TV Viewer

The Revolution Should Not Be Televised

J.J. Abrams. Torches. Nonsensical Mystery. Elizabeth Mitchell. A wisecracking fat guy who has no reason to still be fat. Yup. Welcome to LOST 2.0.

I tuned into Revolution because the promos for Life After People looked interesting but not enough for me to actually turn on the History Channel. Ick! What if I actually learned something? Watching NBC on a Monday night I was virtually guaranteed not to learn anything (whew). Plus with so many connections to LOST, I also figured I was in for an hour of more questions than answers. I just thought they would be plot intrigues, not random practicalities about life without electricity.   

Revolution is set 15 years in the future after the electricity is gone and anything mechanical doesn’t work anymore. Well, anything except whatever is making the fabric of the snug-fitting henley shirts the men are sporting this year. Seriously, all of the clothes on this show are better than anything being turned out this season on Project Runway and near as I can tell, Tim Gunn has yet to do an electricity-free challenge (just an electricity-free cast thank you very ZZzzzz).

Also, we get flashbacks to life before the blackout and the most striking thing is how the adults haven’t aged. Trust me: nothing would age you faster than going from a fabulous Chicago apartment to an ad hoc agrarian life without indoor plumbing. Have you seen the Amish? A lovely people but they do not age gracefully.   

The characters live in a former suburban neighborhood for some unexplained reason and the five house cul-de-sac weirdly has a “welcome to bullshit estates” entrance and sign to it which is the kind of thing you don’t expect to see at the entrance to the world’s smallest neighborhood. Also how come the road is dirt now but there is a curb? And as you can see, not one person on this show has a natural hair color so I guess blond doctor lady over there whips up batches of hair dye for everyone because she’s worth it. 

This guy has another one of those well-made henley shirts but the real question is: why does he have a shirt at all? Why did the show lose 18-49 viewers in the second half hour? Ask his biceps when you see them. 

Elizabeth Mitchell looks concerned and has reason to be. Apparently, she is dead in the future. Probably because they couldn’t support that hair color but come on. It’s Elizabeth Mitchell. Obviously, she isn’t dead and they really don’t care about hair continuity on this show. Or any continuity. Because if they did, the plane they climbed into at one point wouldn’t have looked more pristine inside than a current Delta flight to Atlanta. 

This is how my brain felt when it was constantly assaulted in the episode by nonsense. You have to admit it: they may not have electricity but they sure do know how to tan leather and hand stitch it beautifully. That coat fits like a glove.

I am going to make an early prediction. The mystery of this show will be in that lunch box. No seriously. The mystery is why the world’s smallest suburban neighborhood is so close to an abandoned ferris wheel inside the world’s smallest amusement park. 

Second greatest mystery is why the fat guy is still fat when everyone would be starving if all they had to live on was the amount of corn they could grow in their front yard. And as someone who has owned clothes for the better part of a decade, they don’t look as good as that AC/DC t-shirt, even with proper care and maintenance. 

See the car is useless now so they turned the disgusting oily engine block into a place you would want to eat your food from. And her hair is naturally curly and the jeans… oh I can’t. I just can’t. 

So much about this show probably seemed like a good idea at the time. Like watching it. But if you are more concerned about the nonsense than you are about the characters, that doesn’t bode well for your show. Yes, it was the highest rated new drama debut in three years. But the last show with that distinction? “V” in 2009. Starring Elizabeth Mitchell. 

So if you want to watch Revolution on NBC, better hurry before the lights go out on it.