Last week’s episode of Revolution really showed us some interesting stuff!  Although I wasn’t particularly happy about the continued set up to have Monroe completely alone, or how Rachel has become Sydney Bristow in a bad way…but I digress….there was a lot about the episode that I found interesting.  Initially after viewing, I really wanted to write a sonnet about Mark Pellegrino’s character, Captain Jeremy Baker…because I usually write a poem of some sort about Mark’s characters, but then I went for a run and I was listening to Marilyn Manson, and this came out.  I was going to actually video me reading the letter, for a change of pace.  I even picked the background song, “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You” (yes, you should read between the lines there).  But after a couple attempts, I realized watching me read from a piece of paper lacked pizazz, and I wasn’t going to be memorizing almost six minutes of dialogue, so here you go…Another installment in the continuing “Letters to Kripke” saga…

 
Dear Eric,
 
I feel that I need to make myself completely clear.  I understand I have developed a bias for keeping a certain actor employed.  Over the course of the first ten episodes of the season, I went from being mildly perturbed that Bass was so likeable, to  flat out in love with him.  Much of it I blame on David Lyons.  Not only does everything I have read about him make him seem like a great guy, but clearly he is as talented as he is beautiful.  I am not a shy gal, I can admit that Dave could put on a burlap bag, sport a ZZ Top beard and film himself reading from the phone book, either with his native Australian accent or his close to perfect Middle American accent, and I would purchase it in blu ray.  He could even wait a bit, put out a special edition with commentary and gag reel, and I would then purchase that as well.

 
My point is, I myself question if I would be as in love with Sebastian Monroe if it weren’t for Dave.  Truthfully, I saw Bass pawning off killing Jeremy on subordinates as cowardly.  I felt that way when he did it earlier in this second half of the season, too.  But here is the thing…Miles has been just as cowardly.  He had a “firing squad” take out that militia officer.  Miles didn’t shoot him.  He is also the man who shot two unarmed highwaymen, essentially starting this whole militia thing in the first place.  I don’t think that the fact that they had killed those campers and were trying to kill Jeremy meant that Miles had the right to decide if they lived or died.  They didn’t have a fighting chance.  They brought knives to a gun fight.  And they had already put down the knives.  Yes, I agree the tent owners didn’t have a fighting chance against these thugs, either, but I have always believed that it has to stop somewhere. How does killing people show people that killing people is wrong?  How else can we lead but by example?  By making the bigger decision.  By being the person not to fall back on “well he/she isn’t backing down”, “well he/she won’t show mercy”, etc.  It has to start with someone.  Neither man has shown that he is the “bigger” man.

 
In other words, I don’t feel that Miles is any better than Monroe.  The only thing that gives Miles an edge is that he has family left that won’t give up on him.  Monroe had no one.  You tried to throw in that little “somethin’ somethin’” with Jeremy telling Monroe he drove Neville and Miles away, but Neville chose his actual family over Bass, plain and simple.  Miles left him high and dry when he started it all.  The fact that Bass’s family is dead isn’t his fault.  I can’t shake this feeling that you are saying that because orphans don’t have anyone that unconditionally loves them, they aren’t worthy of redemption.  That can’t possibly be your message, but that is how this is playing out.  As for Jeremy’s death, I still hold a glimmer of hope that it will help Bass see just how paranoid he has become.  I will admit that in his shoes, I too would have been incredibly suspicious.

 
If I could point to something–say that Miles is the better man, than maybe I could be with you on this…But I just can’t.  In “The Love Boat” Miles proved that he is pretty much instantaneously corrupted by power.  He isn’t worthy of this chance that you as the “god of this show” have bestowed upon him.
 
Eric, I’m going to be completely open with you.  I am not a Loki fan, or a Crowley fan…I don’t like Theon Greyjoy.  Morally ambiguous people are just not my bag.  I love the cowboys with heart, but I can’t say you’ve gotten that part right yet.  Take Joss’s Malcolm Reynolds for instance–Mal was a smuggler.  Mal was a murderer.  But I fell in love with him after one line.  It was when Mal agrees to let Simon and River stay onboard Serenity.  Simon asks how did he know that Mal didn’t plan on killing him in his sleep and collecting the reward money.  Mal replies: “You don’t know me, son, so let me explain this to you once:  If I ever kill you, you’ll be awake.  You’ll be facing me, and you’ll be armed.”

 
In that line I knew everything I needed to know about that man.  No matter what he was, he had a sense of honor.  Another great character like that was Ned Stark…provided, his honor was his downfall because he just had too much of it, but I loved when he takes Bran aside and makes sure he understands why Ned had to be the one to take the head of the deserter.  If you can pass judgment on a man, you should be able to carry out that judgment.  Some might see that as a check positive for how Miles handled those highwaymen, but I don’t.  There was no law at the time saying that death was the punishment for what they did (unlike deserting the Wall and the Rangers), and no one had put Miles in charge.

 
My other problem, Eric, and this is a problem I have had since the fifth season of Supernatural, is that for someone who talks a lot about free will, you don’t seem to believe in it.  You have mentioned through characters in the Supernatural verse, and your successors have kept this view, that writers are the gods of the worlds they create.  You have mentioned that you always knew where you wanted Sam and Dean to end up and “Swan Song” was that culmination.  If that is the case, Sam and Dean did NOT choose free will.  They did exactly what you intended them to do.  They made the revelations that you wanted them to make, experienced the growth of character that you wanted them to experience.  To believe in free will means allowing your characters to become more than what you envisioned. It means not seeing yourself as a god, but as a parent.  You may want certain things for your children, but they may take a totally different turn.  They could be more, or less than you initially intended them to be…
 
I bring this up because I feel you have an excellent opportunity to show true free will with the character of Monroe, and I fear you will not take it, or more accurately that you didn’t take it and that I am just waiting for the boom to be lowered.  By your, and other producers’, own admission you were moved by how Dave played Monroe and loved the depth he gave to the character.  Even though the character became more than what you initially saw, you have continued to write him the way you intended him to be.  You don’t seem to be allowing the character to expand beyond your initial vision of him, therefore showing once again that you do not believe in free will.

 
I hope that the “bad feeling” I have regarding where this is going is unwarranted.  Even Joss, whose work you indicated you have used as inspiration, admitted that he killed off Darla too soon on Buffy and brought her back on Angel…
 
Your devoted fan,
Nicole
 

 
Following up the next morning after “The Love Boat” left off, Nora decides that starting up a romantic relationship with Miles again, considering the circumstances, is ill advised.  Neville has decided to stick around, much to Jason’s dismay.  Recovering in a Rebel/Georgia Federation camp doesn’t go as hoped, however, when Monroe sends helicopters that drop the number of soldiers from 300 to 30.  There must be a mole among the soldiers, but Miles doesn’t have the time to worry about who it could be at the moment because Charlie is missing and the Militia is coming in force to take out everyone else they can find…

 
I guess one of the things that hasn’t made much sense to me is a little bit of an extension of something Jason said to Neville in “The Love Boat”.  Why his father was now working with Georgia.  I wholeheartedly agreed with that, but it makes me wonder–why are the rebels working with Georgia in the first place?  And, let’s be honest now, are they really rebels working with Georgia anymore?  
 
My understanding of all the rebel propaganda given to us, whether it be via Nora or other rebels or the NBCRevolution twitter and the NBCRevolution site, is that the rebels want to bring back “The United States”.  This seems like an ill conceived idea to me, considering the good old US of A allowed this crap to happen in the first place. Also, the very idea that Rachel and Co. were funded by the Department of Defense means that this was a monster of our own devising.  Why would we really want that back?  Clearly something wasn’t working.  But regardless of all that, if the rebels truly want to bring back the USA, why are they working with a republic that is flying what looks like half a Confederate flag?  The very fact that Foster’s Republic flies something resembling the flag flown by the states in open revolt against the United States of America and her Constitution leads me to believe that bringing back the United States is NOT part of Foster’s agenda.  In other words, Miles is using Foster to take out Monroe, but has no plan for anything after.  Apparently he plans to screw up everything even worse and then find another hole to drink himself to death in….But maybe I’m just being overly harsh.  I’m just not seein’ a big honkin’ plan here…to quote Dean Winchester…

 
Again we are given backstory to show just how horrible a person Miles can be.  He is clearly not someone we would want to give any kind of power to.  We know from “The Love Boat” that he sees this behavior as essentially a flaw in his wiring–that eventually he will fall into it again and the only way for him not to is for him to stay away from those situations.  That really doesn’t bode well for the fact that everyone is dying around him and there isn’t anyone around strong enough to take over.  I am getting the feeling more and more that my idea from last episode when I wondered if this is exactly why Bass was put in control and not Miles is correct.  I’m guessing it took Bass longer to become power hungry.  He definitely wasn’t willing to kill those highwaymen and was shocked Miles did.
 
The backstory we got really has me feeling that the writers should just pull the trigger on it and stop beating around the bush regarding Miles and Charlie…Many of us have been thinking this for quite sometime and now it feels it has been insinuated in almost every possible way short of actually coming out and saying it–that Miles is Charlie’s father.  We now know for certain Miles had a thing with his brother’s wife.  It seems that Rachel and Ben were more than likely together at the time, possibly already married, because Rachel calls what she and Miles had a “fling”.  How about how Miles asked his brother to “join him”?  Sounding a little like Darth there, Miles…Rachel also commented on a nickname being “Butcher of Baltimore”.  Interesting.

 
I did have a little continuity problem with the backstory. Rachel went to Miles seven years after the black out.  That would be two years post Trenton Campaign and four years before Miles tried to kill Bass.  Yet Miles got people to follow him against Monroe pushing that Monroe was crazy because he believed he could get the power back on.  But Miles knew for four years not only that the power could be put back on, but that his own brother and his brother’s wife knew all about it.  Even when Mile sees the “chain gang” (“Chained Heat”) pulling the helicopters for Monroe, Miles says “The crazy son of a bitch must actually think he can get the power going”.  Why does Miles act like it’s such a crazy notion to get the power back on when he already knows it was a man made thing?  At that time he knew his brother was dead and he thought Rachel was dead, too, but he must have known the likelihood that there were other people involved…

 
I am not going to lie–I was very disappointed in Rachel this episode.  She just seemed too harsh, too set on the revenge thing.  She isn’t seeing her own culpability in all of this.  As project leader, this whole thing is in large part her fault.  She is so blinded by her need for revenge on Bass over Danny’s death that she doesn’t seem to care who is hurt in the process.  I can see that as severely backfiring on her.  I saw on tumblr where someone wrote that Revolution should be renamed Fifty shades of Morally Grey Characters because nobody’s hands are clean here.  Rachel doesn’t care about helping people. She only wants to get the power going so that Monroe will be destroyed by his enemies.  It isn’t just about turning the power on, Rachel.  Understand that for years Bass has been planning to turn the power on–he collected things, cleaned them, kept them up.  Even if the power is turned on, everywhere else we are talking about 15 years of non use.  Fifteen years to fall into disrepair.  I would hope that the writers wouldn’t be that short sighted to make EVERYTHING all of a sudden work again.  I mean the weird little trick thing–like the iPhone working, mp3s on another iPhone still working, but I would hope that all of a sudden everything wouldn’t work…Because that just wouldn’t make any kind of sense whatsoever. Just try to start a car that hasn’t been running or had anything done on it in fifteen years.  Chances are that mice have burrowed in the engine and the battery acid has leaked all over everything…
 
Anyway…the idea may not even work–she’s just willing to risk making everything even worse for the possibility that someone may get the chance to kill Bass.  I also disliked the way she treated Aaron in the episode.  Yes, he is going to be obsessed with finding out why he is in the journal.  Wouldn’t anyone in that situation be?  Hey, it doesn’t even have to be a journal.  If someone says hey, you were mentioned in the newspaper, aren’t you going to ask why, in what context, etc.? I understand Rachel was in pain so probably didn’t want to talk about it, but she really acts like she has a chip on her shoulder where Aaron is concerned. He also to be the only one who has been able to keep his soul in this brave new world. Since the business with his wife is over, it makes me fear for the longevity of his character…


 
Clearly I also worry about Monroe and what chance he has being all alone at the top of the hill.  I really loved the scenes with Monroe in the episodes.  Of course I usually do, but we got some great Mark Pellegrino moments too.  What I found interesting was Jeremy’s acceptance of the end.  He told Bass what he thought, but he didn’t fight it.  He didn’t try to pull a gun or a knife on Bass.  I think one of the things I’ve had real difficulty with is that we have certain things thrown at us to make us feel that Monroe is a “monster” and I have even seen that word used on the Revolution facebook page.  But he is only one man, and if he really was a “monster”, why would people follow him?  Why wouldn’t people within his own ranks rise up against him instead of just a couple top people, one of which we know is pretty much a coward, running away?  And why didn’t Miles pull the trigger?  I got the feeling with Jeremy that Bass usually inspired other things in people.  Jeremy said it would mean a lot to the guys if he had a drink with them.  It seems that Monroe really inspired awe in the soldiers.  Jeremy talked about how he stayed because he thought they were trying to build a better world. Even Neville in the webisodes talked a bit about what Monroe said he would accomplish and did.  Regarding his own demise, Jeremy said “wow, Miles really did a number on you, didn’t he?”.  
 
When Bass left, we see that he was shaken by the conversation with Jeremy.  I think he did hear what Jeremy was saying, but with the order already given, he couldn’t back down on it and not look weak.  But we see the reaction to the gun go off, and Bass is practically alone in the dark when the soldier comes in to tell him they interrogated the Georgia spy.  Where he looked unhappy and torn before, he is tearing after hearing about how the interrogation went. I’m hoping this makes Bass really take a look at himself and think about what is really important.  

 
And speaking of which, when are we going to find out more about Bass’s son? I already ship him with Charlie and we haven’t even met him yet!
 
Ah, Charlie.  I actually didn’t mind her in this episode.  I was pretty obvious that Miles was going to save Charlie and Nora is going to get captured, but Charlie wasn’t posturing or giving sneers in this eppie.  I have felt on several occasions that Charlie seemed too much like a She-Miles.  Charlie even strutted around like Miles.  I thought this eppie she was toned down a bit which was great.  I also will admit she had one real tough-girl/badass moment when she used her hand to hold back the sword, blade right in hand.  That was awesome.  Usually, I feel that people are way too liberal with their usage of the word “badass” and don’t generally agree with them.  I find myself quoting Indigo Montoya with “I do not think it means what you think it means”. Here, it fit.  I still wish they’d tie her hair back though.
 
The chip was very Iron Man 3 in how it worked…

 
I felt like Jeremy spoke for us all when he mentioned the Bass being reclusive thing.  We really have been seeing a lot of “Office!Bass” and every once in a while those things need to be pointed out.
 
We know there has to be a spy among the rebels for Monroe to know about these bases!  But who is it?  Did Jim die?  I don’t remember seeing him since “Home”, but if he is still alive, my money is on him.  I never understood why he agreed to work with Miles.  Not being a “fan” of Monroe’s isn’t the same as wanting him dead…
 
I didn’t mention anything about the Neville and son exchanges in this episode. Obviously Neville draws the line at leaving his son to die, but that even seemed a touch manipulative.  He mentioned to Miles that Julia would never forgive him if he left his son to die, but of course doesn’t say that to Jason.  Neville would have to be heartless not to care about his son, but I still do question his motivations.  And in other news, I still don’t see him worthy of redemption…
 
Now President Foster is talking about surrender. Will Miles pull out the big guns and tell her about the Tower? Clearly for the premise of this show to stay in tact the power cannot come on for season two.  Clearly something goes horribly wrong…
 
Let me know what you thought about the episode and where you think this is all going! 
 
Screencaps from grande-caps tumblr.

 

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