Review: In Revolution, Post-Apocalypse Looks Like a Swashbuckle in the Park

Tracy Spiridakos' Charlie Mathieson, front and center, wields a mean crossbow as star of Revolution, which debuts Monday on NBC.
Image courtesy NBC

J.J. Abrams' sporadically dazzling new TV series Revolution transports us to a near-future world without electricity, but this is no The Road-style hellscape. To judge from the well-fed, incredibly fit characters that stride through gorgeous, pollution-free North American landscapes in the debut episode, the post-apocalyptic question — "What if the planet's power suddenly gets switched off?" — can be answered: "We'll do just fine off the grid."

At least until the bad guys show up.

(Spoiler alert: Minor plot points follow.)

Set 15 years after a global blackout, Revolution, which debuts Monday at 10 p.m./9 Central on NBC, stars striking Canadian newcomer Tracy Spiridakos as tomboy Charlie Matheson. A wicked crossbow shooter, she leads a band of survivalists on a quest after her family is ravaged during a visit from creepy Capt. Tom Neville, played by the series' edgiest actor, Giancarlo Esposito (previously seen as psychotic meth dealer Gus on Breaking Bad).

Before the lights went out, Neville worked as an insurance adjuster. Now he's a pistol-packing dude on horseback leading a band of marauders. Branded with the initial M, they pledge allegiance to a warlord known as Monroe.

Monroe's mission: Rip Charlie's family asunder in search of … what exactly?

Just before the blackout years earlier, Charlie's father downloaded a secret program onto a flash-drive-embedded talisman that might enable its owner to reboot the grid. As Charlie's swashbuckling uncle Miles theorizes, he who gets the talisman gets the power.

The pilot episode, directed by Jon Favreau (Iron Man, Cowboys & Aliens), draws much of its power from the kind of eye-popping vistas rarely seen on prime time: Wrigley Field overgrown with weeds, or a carless downtown Chicago bustling with brawlers and peddlers who'd fit right in with a 16th-century London street scene. Overturned buses and crashed jetliners squat randomly in the middle of verdant fields. A useless Ferris wheel rusts inside an abandoned theme park.

Against these backdrops, Spiridakos' earnest, finely chiseled Charlie leads a stolid crew. Dark and handsome Nate (played by JD Pardo) keeps popping up just in the nick of time to save Charlie from getting raped and eviscerated, even though he's technically supposed to be one of the bad guys.

Charlie's brother Danny (Graham Rogers) comes across as a good-looking dope; his plight powers the plot. Swashbuckling bartender Miles (Billy Burke), Charlie's uncle, plays the reluctant-hero card with sardonic Han Solo-esque swagger. "We're all going to end up with our heads up on a stick," he says by way of explaining why the band of wanderers needs to get the hell out of town.

Then there's wisecracking everygeek Aaron (Zak Orth). A former Google millionaire turned settlement school teacher, Aaron seems to be the only character who misses modern conveniences (as when he explains that in days of yore, people used toilet paper instead of shrubbery). Aaron tries to interest his students in the historic meltdown that happened "when physics went insane," but the bored kids just stare at him like he's the one who's gone crazy.

Given network television's usual nose-to-the-formulaic-grindstone confines, Revolution swings for the fences as it taps into the current fascination with old-time carnage (fueled at least in part by that other arrow-launching, retro-futuristic heroine who'll do anything to save her family, The Hunger Games' Katniss Everdeen).

The new show won't give gory cable hit Game of Thrones anything to worry about in the graphic violence department, but it's a kick to watch fight choreography so old it seems new again. When's the last time you saw nimble men on prime time TV leaping bannisters, doing somersaults just because they can and crossing swords to the sounds of a stirring orchestral score? It happens in Revolution, when Will goes into Errol Flynn mode to fend off attacking hordes of militiamen.

Though influences are myriad and obvious, Abrams and Revolution creator Eric Kripke (Supernatural) are at least trying to do something original. Will that be enough to draw a crowd? Earlier this year, the Abrams-produced time-traveling convict mystery Alcatraz fizzled quickly (as did his 2010 effort Undercovers), so it's hardly a given that Revolution will galvanize audiences. But for sci-fi fans who still haven't found what they're looking for since Lost went off the air, Revolution shows enough high-concept ambition to fill network television's near-vacuum of cliffhanger-driven mythology dramas.

Breadcrumbs laid out in the series premiere lead to loads of unanswered questions, starting with, "Who turned off the lights, and why?" (Not to mention, "Where does Charlie get that killer shampoo that makes her hair look so shiny?")

Glossy and grit-free, this is a post-apocalyptic world scrubbed clean and gussied up for prime time's mainstream eyeballs. Still, an epic quest awaits in Revolution's upcoming episodes. Here's hoping they don't turn the power back on anytime soon.

WIRED Big mystery, tough heroine and gorgeous ruins conjure a pollution-free, post-blackout America.

TIRED Generic characters lack grit.

Rating:

Read Underwire's ratings guide.

Geeta Dayal 18 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/hbuhNnz0JLQ/
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