Revolution

JRRNeiklot · Sep 11, 2012

Anyone seen the pilot yet? If so, what are your thoughts?

Dannyalcatraz · Sep 11, 2012

According to my DVR, it doesn't air until the 17th.

RangerWickett · Sep 11, 2012

It's available as a preview via Hulu.

There's clunky exposition ("do you want to die out there in the dangerous wilderness, like your mother did?!"), mediocre acting (maybe the look-at-me-I'm-a-nerd guy will grow on me), some logical inconsistencies -- they raise their own food, but the nerd guy is 40 pounds overweight -- and a lot of stuff hasn't decayed like it probably ought to have. Who makes all these synthetic blend shirts and pleather jackets?

Eh, it's not crap. I mean, most sci-fi pilots suck anyway, so I'll give it a shot to see if it gets its feet.

Umbran · Sep 11, 2012

RangerWickett said:
and a lot of stuff hasn't decayed like it probably ought to have. Who makes all these synthetic blend shirts and pleather jackets?

Pleather is plastic. Plastic lives forever. Synthetics will last longer than synthetic blends, but the blends will last longer than natural fibers. And any of them can last for decades with care, or if just kept dry.

Mark CMG · Sep 12, 2012

RangerWickett said:
It's available as a preview via Hulu.

Thanks. Good fight scenes.

LightPhoenix · Sep 12, 2012

I saw it a few days ago, and was decidedly ambivalent about it.

The Bad:

I'm not sure if it's the script, the actress, or both, but the main girl (Charlie IIRC) was by far the weakest link.
I called the entire ending of the episode in the first ten minutes - not a good thing.
The writing overall was mediocre, and definitely needs to step up a notch.
It suffers from the same issue Lost did - telling us background, instead of showing us background (see: the dorky guy, who reminds me way too much of Hurley).
There was one glaring character issue:

the Uncle, deliberately hiding out, readily gives up his identity to some random group of people? Really?
I absolutely do not care about teenage romance angst.

The Good:

Despite the script, I thought the actors did a relatively decent job with their characters (except the main actress).
Characterization was pretty consistent except for the glaring fault above. For example,

Charlie trusts the guy because she's still relatively innocent, established earlier

. Some of it seems dumb, but that's only because it's viewed through the viewer's lens.
[*]The action scenes were generally well done, at least for television.

As an aside, I don't consider the central premise to be a bad thing. It's a bit dumb, granted, but it's the buy-in for the show. If you can't suspend your disbelief, there's no point to even watching.

Anyway, based on the pilot I'll give it my usual amount of time (six episodes) to win me over. I can't in all honestly see that really happening based on the lead and the writing, but I'm not willing to write off the good parts for the bad.

Deset Gled · Sep 14, 2012

[RANT]

I absolutely cannot stand the preview for Revolution that shows a commercial airliner falling straight into the ground in a tight spiral. I would be more forgiving of it in the actual show itself, but the fact that they have used it so prominently in the previews for the show adds a huge amount of insult to the injury. It is such a patently ridiculous failure that I may not be able to move past it.

[/RANT]

El Mahdi · Sep 14, 2012

Deset Gled said:
[RANT]

I absolutely cannot stand the preview for Revolution that shows a commercial airliner falling straight into the ground in a tight spiral. I would be more forgiving of it in the actual show itself, but the fact that they have used it so prominently in the previews for the show adds a huge amount of insult to the injury. It is such a patently ridiculous failure that I may not be able to move past it.

[/RANT]

I'm with you, Man. Did you also notice that their navigation lights were still flashing all the way down... :erm:

Dannyalcatraz · Sep 14, 2012

That is PHENOMENALLY sloppy...

pathfinderq1 · Sep 14, 2012

If the premise is interesting to you, you would probably be better off reading S.M. Stirling's Emberverse series (Dies the Fire, etc.). In fact, from the sound of things, he ought to be getting some royalties from this show...