Revolution: Not since Power Rangers has a TV show forced me to completely leave my brain at the door in order for me to be able to enjoy it (My thoughts on season one of Revolution) (Part 3 of 4)

  (Part Three)

For the third part of my review, I thought that I would spend some time talking about my speculations regarding season two of Revolution. First off, it’s going to be really interesting to see how NBC moving the show to seven o’clock on Wednesday nights will impact the ratings. Hopefully, the show will be able to avoid suffering the same fate that Smash did in its second season when it wasn’t airing after The Voice, especially since I like Revolution more than I ever liked Smash, but that’s not really saying much though. Personally, I’m not sure that The Voice was ever a very compatible lead-in for Revolution to begin with, so whatever help The Voice provided Revolution in the ratings department didn’t last very long, at least that’s my guess having followed the ratings throughout the season.

After all, The Voice is a singing competition, while Revolution is a science fiction show, so I don’t think that there’s much of a crossover between the audiences for the two shows. Sure, I like both The Voice and Revolution, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s also the case for the people who watch at least one of the two shows, and I think the fact that Revolution repeatedly lost about half, if not more of The Voice’s viewers in the ratings throughout the entire season proves that. If I had to guess what the NBC network executives’ logic was behind scheduling Revolution on Monday’s after The Voice, they were probably thinking that since they obviously had high hopes for Revolution they should give it the best lead in that they could offer one of their new shows, which is The Voice. They were also probably thinking that while Revolution and The Voice are obviously not the most compatible with each other in terms of the kind of audience that the two shows attract, The Voice is at the very least one of NBC’s highest rated shows. That’s just my theory regarding the decision to air Revolution on Monday nights after The Voice for its first season though.

Honestly, I feel like the ratings for Revolution looked a lot more stable by the end of the season compared to the ratings for Smash’s first season. The fact that Smash didn’t seem to hold onto very many of The Voice’s viewers is something that really surprised me, because I thought the two shows would share the same audience, at least to some extent. Season two is definitely going to be a big test for Revolution, in my opinion. First off, it’s going to have to prove that it’s strong and stable enough to stand on its own since it will be kicking off NBC’s Wednesday night lineup now and unlike the show’s first season, it won’t have The Voice to provide the show with at least somewhat of a cushion in the ratings.

On a more personal level, the writers of Revolution are going to have to prove to me that the show is capable of maintaining my interest for the duration of the series, or for at least the foreseeable future and not quickly once again lose me as a viewer like Fringe did once its second season started. Honestly, I’m fairly optimistic that they will be able to keep me interested and invested in the show considering the fact that they managed to capture my interest a lot sooner than Fringe did, and they’ve kept me interested in the show since the episode “The Children’s Crusade”. Plus, as I mentioned earlier, they still managed to keep me interested in the show after not being all that impressed with the first episode, but at least I saw that the show had potential to be good, unlike Fringe’s first episode, which didn’t really show much potential in my opinion.

As for my predictions regarding the show’s second season itself, I’m not entirely joking when I say this but there’s a big part of me that’s half expecting that the season two finale cliffhanger will be that Miles and Monroe are shown lying asleep in bed next each other, naked, leaving the viewers to spend the entire summer wondering if they slept with each other, especially considering the homoerotic subtext that a lot of their scenes together had throughout the season. Like I said earlier, I was very surprised that the producers not only revealed the cause of the blackout fairly early on in the series, the characters also turned the power back on in the first season as well. As I said earlier, I was really expecting the producers to stretch that out for several seasons.

I haven’t been able to find the interview, but I read a comment on the IMDB message board for Revolution from a poster who claimed that Eric Kripke apparently said at one point that the show isn’t supposed to primarily be about turning the power back on, but instead it’s supposed to be about the characters rebuilding the United States. If that’s indeed the case, I think that sounds like a very interesting direction to take the show in, so I kind of hope that’s where things are headed.

As for the reveal that the President of the United States has secretly been hiding in a U.S. Colony at Guantanamo Bay, I can’t wait to see what happens when he returns to what used to be the United States. It would be nice to see the writers address the whole issue about how he can still be considered the President when the Constitution is supposedly no longer valid and there’s a law about term limits, not to mention the fact that fifteen years have passed since the power was turned off. Who knows how far into his presidency he was when the power was turned off? I’m not holding my breath about whether or not they will answer those questions though. The writers do have a tendency to overlook details like that at times.

As much as I loved the reveal about the President, it kind of bugged me that they had the President talk, but they didn’t show his face. Since the producers did that, I’m guessing that they will just to expect viewers to simply ignore the fact that viewers will have already heard the President speak if they end up casting an actor whose voice sounds nothing like whoever it was that said the President’s lines in the season finale. From a practical standpoint, I’m guessing the producers did that so they can decide who they want to cast as the President later on. They’ll probably want to find an actor who’s at least somewhat of a big name actor to play the part. What I think would be interesting if the writers have the President become the main villain of the show in season two. Like I said earlier, the show definitely needs to have one clear cut central antagonist instead of flip-flopping back and forth between acting like Neville is the main villain of the show at times, and then act like Monroe is the central villain of the show the rest of the time.


Part 1 of 4:Revolution: (Part 1 of 4)
Part 2 of 4:Revolution: (Part 2 of 4)
Part 4 of 4:Revolution: (Part 4 of 4)