Revolution

From the creator of Supernatural and executive producer J.J. Abrams (who has no other shows since Alcatraz was cancelled), comes Revolution, the story of a world without electricity.  Speaking of which, my refrigerator broke.
So far, most of the reviews coming in have been pretty "meh" so I really expected it to be a bit of a let-down.  Honestly, after the uneven Alias and one of the best shows ever, Lost, ended, J.J. Abrams-produced programs have been an overall disappointment.  He must be saving all his good work for Star Trek sequels.  So, imagine my surprise when Revolution actually entertained me for its hour runtime.  And by entertained I mean I was more interested in staring at it on TV the messing around with my computer while it played in the background...and that's high praise indeed!

The show opens with a cool little vignette in which rolling blackouts cover the entire globe.  The visual of cars in traffic blinking out one by one while airplanes tumble out of the sky chilled this electric customer.  Fast forward into the future where the little kids from the first five minutes have turned into pouty young adults and everyone has to grow vegetables out of hollowed out car frames.  Apparently life isn't all rosy in the new Dark Ages.  While the idyllic village toils away, various militia-backed mini-governments prey on the unarmed citizens with the help of Giancarlo Esposito, who seems to being doing nicely for himself after his stint on Breaking Bad.  Following a shootout between the militia and the villagers, main teen, Charlie, must go on a quest to find her uncle and maybe find a magic McGuffin that still generates electricity or something.

"Try my chicken"

 So, I guess the initial excitement kind of runs out early on, but I loves me a quest! And while the quest ends pretty abruptly (spoiler alert: they already found the uncle), I found enough to like to warrant another few episodes.  Scenes like a flashback to the past in which a young Charlie and her family eat all the ice cream in their now powerless freezer--"Remember what this tastes like," says her dad--add a personal touch to the premise of a world with no electricity...at least until I remembered that one could probably still make ice cream without power.  Another scene that endeared me to the show was of Charlie, pulling out her Return of the Jedi lunchbox, a collector's item that some random girl 15 years in the future has no right owning, to look at postcards.  Just the other day I discussed the idea that, in a few years, no child will know what a freaking postcard is, and here it is on the show as a precious reminder of the past.  A few neat characters like a nerdy dude who used to work for Google ("That's something to do with computers, right?") and the aforementioned Esposito do nice work with what material they have.

But how will it last over time? Perhaps, like with Supernatural, the ideas will spiral out from the show's central conceit, adding more and more amazing stuff week after week.  Or it'll just be episode after episode of characters walking, wishing their iPhones worked, and planning an ineffectual overthrow of the government.  But I suppose I'll watch it for a while longer as it has started out just OK enough.