NBC’s ‘Revolution’ season 2, episode 4 review: Torture, torture, and more torture
While there were numerous criticisms that we had of “Revolution” season 1, the thing that had us the most aggravated for most of the season is that the show really was intent on giving us the same exact thing week after week. There was no change, and what we were left with was something that felt listless and a little too reliant on action to drive its story. At a certain point, you become so desensitized to the violence that it doesn’t quite matter anymore.
Through most of tonight’s episode, this is precisely the emotion that we felt. Even though we know that there were some characters in danger, we never once felt for longer than a few seconds that we would see Rachel, Miles, Charlie, or anyone else actually die. These three are the holy trinity of the show, who will probably be standing whenever the last episode airs.
Tonight’s episode sadly felt very much like season 1, save for the dreams that Aaron kept having that reminded us a lot of a certain trippy mission in “Grand Theft Auto V,” most of the hour was spent watching the characters be tortured, tormented, and with guns in their faces. It wasn’t until the last five minutes that we really started to wake up thanks to a pretty stunning reveal: Aaron apparently has one of the strangest superpowers ever in that he can manipulate the little nanites in his sleep. We don’t quite know how it happened, but this is the sort of stuff that we want to see the show focusing on given that Eric Kripke is the one running the ship. He’s accustomed to doing supernatural occurrences, and given that there are already science fiction elements here, why not embrace them to it’s fullest potential? It would certainly beat us feeling like we’re constantly just watching the same thing time and time again.
The most impactful non-nanite-related scene happened at the very end, when we saw that the Charlie / Miles buddy-cop duo (which is what they should be doing, right?) drive into Willoughby, and thanks to that, the majority of the characters are going to be together. This gives the episode a passing grade, if only for the potential. We know that something exciting is coming, we just wish that it’d be back sooner. Grade: C-
What did you think about tonight’s “Revolution,” and do you think that Miles is actually going to succeed at forming a resistance? Be sure to share your thoughts below! For more news on the show, including a preview for next week, just be sure to click here.
Photo: NBC