(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)
