Revolution, along with Arrow, have been the most frustrating shows on TV for me. There was a lot of hope for both shows, but as time has gone on each has gotten worse. It’s fascinating to watch both shows because I’m waiting for them to get incredibly bad. Neither has taken the turn to Terra Nova territory, but both have come close.

The recent episode of Revolution, called The Song Remains the Same, gives the one reason why this show hasn’t jumped the shark in my eyes. The writing has been sub-par, the plots have been laughable and the mystery of the lost energy, revealed in this episode, wasn’t as satisfying as it should have been. The shining jewel in this mess of a show has been the acting talents of Giancarlo Esposito. Esposito feeds off the backstory of Neville, making his character, and in turn his acting, more potent than any other character or actor on the show. Unlike other characters who were adults when the power went off, Neville hasn’t forgotten what a little man he was in the corporate food chain. While he has power now, he knows any slip could put him back in the same position he had pre-blackout. In the new world, failure doesn’t mean firing, it means death. That’s why the scene between him and Randall Flynn (side note: really, his last name is Flynn. Since he has a TOWER, why not call him Flagg, or if you want to be cute let his last name be King) are very powerful. Randall even says he’s like a corporate headhunter and he doesn’t think much of Neville. It is a similar scenario Neville had with his job and the neighbor that we saw in some flashbacks.

You never get a sense of a former life from any of the other characters in the show. All the other characters we have been introduced to, except for Aaron, basically have the same motivations now as they did before the blackout. Miles and Monroe were military then and now. Rachel was a scientist and is still using that skill. Randall was a DoD man and is still has the vibe of ‘serving at the behest of the President’ kind of things. Yes, I do figure he’ll angling to take over from Monroe when he has the chance but he’s a management guy doing what he has to do to reach the top of the food chain, just like he was pre-blackout.

Let me talk about Mr. Frodo, I mean Aaron for a bit. Why does Aaron seem so out of place with the group? I know in these types of shows the formula is to have a person who seems to be out of place with the group and in some sense is the person representing the audience asking the important questions, but we’re talking a world 15 years after the blackout. If anyone who was around pre-blackout had a possibility of changing like Neville, Aaron would seem to be the obvious choice. He was the head of an Internet company but, and this will make sense to the hardcore geeks in the audience, he seems like he was more Steve Jobs than Wozniack. Translation, he was the marketing end of the company, not the builder of products. When we were told how the blackout happened, I thought nanites, I thought midi-chlorians; my mind went geek mode. Aaron had the blank look on his face of surface understanding. He just didn’t get it; he couldn’t even reference anything close to what they might be like. I saw his reaction and thought what an odd look because if he was an exec at a Google, I would figure if he didn’t know it from a science end, he’d know what she was talking about from a geek end. Nanites is true geek lore 101. You had Rachel tell Aaron the blackout happened because of nanites and no Star Trek, Star Wars, comic book or any other geek reference from Aaron? It’s more of the odd disconnect I have with the show. He’s a tech guy who doesn’t have a tech reference. By the end of the episode, after still having a few more ‘gosh give me a minute to figure something out I should recognize instantly’ he’s heading to the Tower with Rachel, and I guess the writers will give him some magical moment of scientific knowledge that will allow him to help save the day. Up until then we will have to put up with his Dr. Smith moments.

Maybe because of it being on network TV, I don’t get the Walking Dead vibe this show needs. Everyone is very clean, very nice and even the ‘rebels’ are fighting for a bland reason. Neville, in this recent episode, showed the fire in the belly that many in the cast should have. I would ask anyone following the show to think about this when looking at the rebels in the show; supposedly they are fighting to restore the United States of America. The American flag is a symbol for them. Unless they have been killed off somewhere in the fifteen year timeline, where are the good old boy survivalists? I mean, I’m sure some would have joined Monroe or the other militia groups that took over the United States, but I can’t see the Hollywood types they have on screen now leading a hardcore revolution. Miles might not have been so wrong in telling Jason he looked like he was from a boy band. The cast has the look of pretty people who learned survivor skills from watching reruns of Survivor. They don’t look or act like people who have adjusted to a brave new world after the lights went out. It reminds me of the first season of Star Trek, The Next Generation where Tasha Yar had the backstory of growing up in a tough, backworld environment. What we got in her character didn’t fit her backstory. A few years later when Ensign Ro was introduced, her character had the rough around the edges vibe living in a harsh environment would give you.

Neville has that fire, has that survival skill. Giancarlo Esposito brings that rage to life and it works for the tone of the show. Unfortunately the other cast members aren’t tapping into that energy and with other problems plaguing the show many like myself have a love/hate relationship with Revolution. The big reveal about the power didn’t help, neither did the obvious (building it for weeks with a sledgehammer) Miles and Rachel relationship, in making us feel emotionally invested in the show. It was just more stuff thrown out there that didn’t work to spark interest.