Revolution Creator And Actor Sound Off On The Future Of NBC’s Blackout Drama
It’s no secret that NBC’s Revolution has been an unwieldy beast. In spite of an intriguing concept — all the electricity in the world suddenly stops working — the first batch of episodes spent far too little time exploring the compelling mysteries and far too much time trekking across the country to rescue a thoroughly bland character that wasn’t worth rescuing in the first place. Indeed, Revolution’s first 10 episodes could have given wheel-spinning lessons to Lost’s third season. Now that the show has returned from hiatus, both the cast and the creator are promising the show will evolve into something very different, finally focusing on the conflict of the title.
Creator Erik Kripke (who previously created Supernatural) recently spoke to EW, and says that the scope of the show is going to expand significantly in coming weeks. Here’s Kripke:
In terms of plot, if the first half of the season was to find Danny, the second half of the season, this war really begins … It’s about this rag-tag group of rebels up against the evil empire; it’s as fun as that. It’s so big. It’s action on a level that I’ve truly never seen on network television before. This show is about the characters and it’s about the emotion, and we really keep it grounded, but man, we really blow some s–t up, too.
That’s great if it proves true, and I’d love to see the show finally find its footing. But I’m still irked by Kripke’s earlier explanations that the first half of the season was “prologue.” That’s a nice way of saying “nothing much happened.” It’s pretty damn ballsy to say to your viewers, “Yeah, that stuff didn’t really matter, now we’re getting into what the story is all about.” (Not to mention making comparisons to HBO’s Game of Thrones) He’s writing checks his show better start cashing, before those of us who have been patient decide to bail.
Actor Billy Burke, who plays Miles Matheson, also insists that the show is going to be much more ambitious in the second half of the first season. Speaking to Blastr, Burke says:
The writers told us going in, ‘The journey that you think you’re on is only going to spin into another journey. It’s going to get bigger and broader.’ We’ve got a whole world to explore out there. This is just a tiny piece of the country right now. This is a worldwide event, so there’s so many places to go with it … It makes for a lot of great moveable parts. I think that the writers … I’m sure they must be pulling their hair out every day. But they must be having so much fun, because there really aren’t any lines that they need to worry about coloring outside of. They can kind of go anywhere they want to.
Revolution airs Monday nights at 10/9c on NBC. You can check out a preview for next week’s episode, “The Song Remains the Same,” below.
