Revolution Season One: The TVFTROU Roundtable Analysis

Nicole:

There were writing inconsistencies, but I think those were to adjust the story…let me explain.

I love watching old episodes of the daytime soap Dark Shadows.  I love watching how they settled into the story over the first few months…they DRASTICALLY changed some characters, tweaked some story lines…I think the changes made had more to do with that.

I don’t think they had any intention of Monroe surviving episode 10. They planned to use the character to provide the audience with backstory about Miles and Miles killing Monroe was going to be some kind of a literal way for him to kill the man he was, but it didn’t work out like they thought it would.  Monroe became more and they realized they couldn’t/shouldn’t/wouldn’t let him go.

I don’t think Rachel and Miles were ever supposed to have had anything together.  I think that Rachel’s whole storyline actually was an adjust.  They didn’t initially know if Liz was going to sign on so I think a lot of that background inconsistencies we saw was again a tweaking of a character they decided to keep to give her both more power, and make her more sympathetic.  They have her sleeping with her brother in law – so they have to make her look less culpable as far as what happened with the power.  She has to seem like she has been partially victimized somehow…again, I don’t think they ever intended for her and Miles to have had a relationship of any sort other than just that she was the spouse of his brother, but they realized the chemistry and realized they couldn’t just let it go.

So to answer the question, I would say that I definitely think Kripke had a plan.  He is not like Chris Carter.  Kripke doesn’t really believe in free will (I’ve gone through that in a few of my reviews of this season).  He wouldn’t go into ANYTHING plan less…but I have every faith that Kripke’s “free will” started to look more like Scully’s “I believe we are free to be who we are, good bad or indifferent.  I believe our character determines our fate”. In that sense, I think that Kripke almost allowed his actors (the ones strong enough) to determine the fate of their characters in creating their characters. Rambo said in the TV writing seminar I went to that there isn’t really the time in television to write in a lot of subtext–that is something that the actors mostly do themselves.  In that, we see that the story lines that changed where the story lines where the actors were strong enough to effectuate that change…the other ones either fell flat or died.

Bookdal:

The inconsistencies were built into the premise, I think. It’s fragmented and retrospective, so they gave themselves an out for retconning. Sometimes they did it well. Sometimes not so much. However, the character inconsistencies I would explain as part of the unfolding of the characters and how the actors filled in those roles. I do think there was a clear vision of the story – blackout caused by government intervention and involving key main characters. I think the details though were changed to accommodate the progress of the story. It failed in parts, such as with Danny and Nora, but in other parts the story adapted well to the characters, such as Neville and Monroe. So I guess a little of both, but I don’t see that as weak just elastic.

Alice:

It felt to me the entire season they were making it up as they went along.  There was no clear purpose for not only the characters, but the storylines in general.  They had all these great characters and they never really knew what to do with them.  I was most disappointed by Neville, because Giancarlo Esposito is such a great actor.   He finally got some clarity in the final episode of the season, but why did we have to wait that long?  

I believe the greatest atrocity though was spending the entire first half of the season searching for Danny, and then they kill him shortly after.  I’m not saying I missed Danny, his character was bland and very one dimensional, but that only accented a lot of what was happening in the season.  Events were random and didn’t tie into the overall scheme of things. (Do over!)  Danny’s death ended up being a driver to turn the power back on for Rachel, but I didn’t really feel her quest either.  A lot of what Rachel did too was random and I never really sympathized with her in any way.  

Mostly though, I didn’t understand how this is supposed to be a story of hope, yet all we were treated to week in and week out was one senseless killing and betrayal after another countered by characters that often had wooden and dispassionate reactions to everything.  I get this is war, but a bland war?  None of that delivered any impact other than me asking, “Why was that necessary?”  Senseless and random events come across more as scenery chewing to me than having any significance in the overall arc.