Note: Do not read on if you have not yet seen Season 1, Episode 14 of NBC's "Revolution," titled "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia."
Steam-powered buses!? Welcome to Georgia. Turns out there are alternative methods of power that have been developed on "Revolution." Monroe was just being stingy and not letting any of his people have access to them. The easier to control them, I suppose.
But Madame President of Georgia is cash rich and her people are living the dream -- as much as you can live the dream in a post-apocalyptic world with a mad General on your northern borders. Charlie got to trek with Miles and Nora into the heart of Georgia to try and stop Monroe from detonating a nuclear bomb there.
On the way, Charlie got to have a Samwise Gamgee moment. She stopped, looked at Miles and said, "I've never left the Monroe Republic." A few moments later, she and Frodo ran into Pippin and Merry, running through Farmer Maggot's crops ... No wait, that's not this show. When your references are that lame and obvious, it's easy to get confused.
The gang decides to sneak into Atlanta as soldiers, which means Charlie had to use her feminine wiles. The scene of her undoing her top two buttons and adjusting her breasts must have been for the viewing audience only because the soldiers were already dead. A knife left at the scene told Miles who this was: It was Charlie 1.0, or Alec.
Flashbacks revealed that Alec was Miles' protege back in his Monroe Republic bad dude days. After Alec botched an assassination job, Miles traded him to Texas to keep the peace. Whatever happened to him there messed him up enough that he agreed to go on a suicide mission to Atlanta for Monroe. Of course, it all lies at the feet of Miles. Considering Monroe is the big bad of this show, it's surprising how much everything horrible is always Miles' fault. He's trying to atone for the man he was, but every week, more and more gets piled on.
This week, Alec revealed to Charlie that Miles had done something horrible to her mother. And while Rachel must be over it, as evidenced by her making out hot and heavy with Miles not that long ago, Charlie was filled with questions. And as the Han Solo -- or maybe Sawyer -- of this adventure, Miles was ready with a snarky comment that answered nothing. Oh yeah, and he did something horrible to the president of Georgia, too. Is there anyone he hasn't done something horrible to?
The actual takedown of Alec and the nuclear bomb was as anticlimactic as it could get. Nobody could find Alec until it was significant for their character. Miles found him first so he could feel guilty about abandoning him. Then, Charlie ran into him alone so he could plant seeds of doubt in her mind about Miles. Finally, of course, it was Miles who had to have the final showdown with someone he once cared about so deeply.
So how did their story end? The way all of Miles' stories end: Somebody died. He killed Alec with Monroe on the horn trying to get Alec to detonate the bomb. And as far as we can tell, Miles didn't even respond to Monroe to give him crap, unless it happened off-camera.
The episode ended with Madame President making a proposition with Miles. She would help provide him with more geurilla soldiers. After the nuclear threat, she's ready to go to war with Monroe. She wants Miles to infiltrate the Monroe Republic and open a second front from the inside while her forces attack his southern border. Classic wargames. But will Miles do it? It would mean leaving more dead bodies in his wake, and he's proven pretty good at that.
Lest we forget, Rachel and Aaron made it all the way to Jane's house. She's one of Rachel's associates who knows all about the Tower and the nanites that are keeping the power off. Rachel here confirmed that those same nanites were also somehow keeping Danny alive -- because he had killer asthma? They're also keeping Jane's wife, Beth, alive. Only Beth doesn't know anything about it. Until it was important for the plot that she find out, so she overheard a key conversation between Jane and Rachel.
Jane didn't want the power back on because it would mean Beth would die of the cancer that's been held at bay for the past 16 years. But when Beth found out it was her or power for everyone else, she demanded Jane give Rachel what she wanted. If she didn't, Beth promised she'd kill herself anyway. It was a rather hasty decision, but we really needed to move things along.
So Jane gave Rachel a book that apparently has all of the answers to what she needs. I couldn't read the title, but I'm assuming it's the final volume of Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series. Rachel is so clearly Roland, willing to abandon everything in her obsession with this Tower. Will she be able to turn the power back on?
Even if the power comes back on, there's still plenty of material here for great drama. Sure, it'll feel even more like "Jericho" then, but is that a bad thing? The battle between Georgia and The Monroe Republic will certainly get a lot more bloody, but power for all could be the edge Georgia needs to beat Monroe's powered forces.
- Nanites that can turn off power and keep sick people alive are doing more than the two commands Rachel said (absorb electricity and replicate).
- Jane's magic stick that burns people alive still looks like magic to me, and I have power.
- "It's not magic, but it might as well be. Must be what God feels like. Come back to the house. We've got sandwiches," Jane. I love this abrupt transition from feeling like God to offering sandwiches.
- Dropping thousands of notes about the nuclear attack on Atlanta via helicopter can't be the most efficient use of Monroe's resources. Why not have a banner hanging after the chopper that says, "We're gonna nuke you. Love, Monroe"?
"Revolution" airs Mondays at 10 p.m. ET on NBC.