Revolution 1.19: Cheney's Bunker

Revolution 1.19, in addition to being another fine, smoking episode, had a nice political punch: the tower was originally Dick Cheney's secret bunker - his infamous "undisclosed location".   We get a hint of that when we see George W. Bush's smiling face in a portrait hanging on the wall, and later we see portraits of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and other notables.   I always like it when science fiction in the future weaves little details of current and recent past political real life.

The gunplay was also excellent - most especially when Monroe saves Charlie with an electro-magnetic weapon that Rachel breaks loose from a cabinet.   Rachel's necessary alliance makes sense - she needs Monroe to save Charlie, and he comes though on his promise to do that - even though she tried to blow herself and Monroe to smithereens with a bomb at the end of last week's and the beginning of this week's episode.

Monroe explicitly declines to make such a commitment to save Miles' life, and this is significant for a bunch of reasons.  First, it makes his commitment to save Charlie more convincing - showing Rachel that Monroe is not just promising her whatever she wants in order to get the guns - and pushes Rachel over the edge of reluctance to give him the weapons.  And it also leads to a point-blank showdown between Monroe and Miles which I'm looking forward to see more of next week in the season's finale.  I'm expecting both will survive.

One thing I didn't enjoy tonight is the commandant of the tower or whoever he is burning Aaron's book.  (But it was good to see Glenn  Morshower of 24 in the role - another Jack Bauer connection to Revolution.) There was valuable knowledge in that book, and its burning means that Aaron will lose the advantage he's been carrying in his pocket ever since he got the book.  (I don't like burnings of books - one of the reasons I wrote Unburning Alexandria.)

Possibly the knowledge digitally encoded in the tower will make the book irrelevant, but if so, why did the commandant destroy it?  And why did Grace, who seems to have a head on her shoulders, not object to that?

Revolution has pulled itself up from the first half of the season into a top-notch science fiction show.  I'm looking forward to next week's season finale and the continuation of the story in season two.

See also Revolution: Preview Review  ... Revolution 1.2: Fast Changes ... Revolution 1.14: Nanites and Jack Bauer ... Revolution 1.15: Major Tom and More 24 ... Revolution 1.16: Feeling a Little Like the Hatch in Lost ... Revolution 1.17: Even Better Nanites ... Revolution 1.18: Whodunnit?