Revolution: Preview Review

I caught the complete first episode of Revolution last night - set to premiere later this month on NBC - courtesy of NBC putting this up On-Demand. Herewith a review, with soft (non-specific) spoilers.

Revolution is J. J. Abrams' latest. Now, I know what you're thinking - or, what I was thinking, anyway. With the exception of Fringe and (to a lesser extent) Person of Interest, Abrams has not come anywhere close to his extraordinary triumphs of Lost or even Alias. Half of his efforts have been like last year's Alcatraz, promising at first but pretty soon an irredeemable turkey.

So I approached Revolution with caution, and - I found the debut episode superb! It's chock full of punch-in-the-gut surprises, with characters we think are major dying on and off camera, and big, unexpected revelations right up until the end. The set-up, though it might seem at first glance to have too much in common with the ill-fated FlashForward and the high-flying Walking Dead, turns out to be refreshing and original.

The world has been beset by a power failure from hell - all electricity is gone, including battery power (which, in our real world, the Amish use instead of electricity from power plants). This means that everything digital is gone - useless - too.

We follow a family - no Family Robinson - in the Chicago area. (You notice how often Chicago is popping up in television drama these days? Boss, Revolution, Chicago Fire, last year's Playboy Club - probably another good consequence of Obama, seriously). Charlie, the daughter - a little under 20 - is strong, attractive, and believable. The others are good, too, and I found myself disappointed when the first episode was over - disappointed that I couldn't see more.

There's an endearing hipness about Revolution - the Hurley-like character (we had one, Hurley himself, in Alcatraz last year) - was a big exec at Google, before the permanent blackout. So far, I like this guy better than the Alcatraz guy.

"You say you want a Revolution, well, you know ..." I'm looking forward to this one on NBC.




"As a genre-bending blend of police procedural and science fiction, The Silk Code delivers on its promises." -- Gerald Jonas, The New York Times Book Review

"Daddy, this the best book I've ever read!" -- Molly Vozick-Levinson, age 12 at the time

"cerebral but gripping" -- Booklist

The Playboy Club Closes on NBC

Nervous NBC, never one to stay with a series that shows any signs of weakness, has canceled The Playboy Club after three episodes.

The series did have plenty of weaknesses -

• no nudity - NBC, like all networks, still marches in lockstep to the FCC's unconstitutional restrictions -  The Playboy Club would have done better on a premium cable station, with no restrictions on dress or language
• no great acting from most of the bunnies, who tended to rattle off their lines
• a gay story that made no sense (unlike the way it was treated on Mad Men)

On the other hand, the music was appropriate and fabulous.  The third episode featured someone who sounded and looked like Leslie Gore singing "It's My Party" (probably the singer and the actress were two different people).  You don't see or hear Leslie too often these days.

And the political story - the lead male running for State Attorney, and having his sights on higher office - was pretty good.  As was the mobster story.

But the Parents Television Council - self-appointed guardians of our welfare - launched a campaign against the show.  And with ratings not the greatest to start with, advertisers were happy to leave the show, and NBC, as per usual, almost eager to admit to poor judgment in programming (not poor moral judgment, but mistaken programming because the show was floundering in the ratings).

And so it goes.   The course of true television programming never did run smooth.

See also The Playboy Club

---

                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

---

---

The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

---

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

The Playboy Club

I twisted my arm and saw the first two episodes of The Playboy Club on NBC - reviewing is a tough job but somebody has to do it.  The Playboy Club would make the second new series - along with Pan Am - inspired by the success of Mad Men and its 1960s setting.

But make no mistake about it.  Although The Playboy Club takes in place in early 1960s Chicago, it has little of the meticulous period detail that dresses up Mad Men and Pan Am.   What The Playboy Club does have is very pretty women - including, like Pan Am, a blond lead (Maureen, played by Amber Heard) who is knock-out gorgeous - and a lead man (Nick Dalton, played by Eddie Cibrian) who looks a lot like Booth from Bones and sounds like Don Draper.

The story mines the sleazy side of 1960s Chicago - with a corrupt Mayor Daley, and a big mob presence in the town as well as the club.  The plot has Maureen accidentally killing a mob boss, as she was defending herself from his attempt to rape her in a back room of the club, and Nick coming to the rescue to dispose of the body.  Turns out he used to do this very work for the mob.  But he now he his eye on the State Attorney job (what is it with State Attorneys in Illinois on television these days? - the job also figures in The Good Wife).   He also has his eye on Maureen, even though he has a relationship with Bunny-Mother Carol-Lynne, whom he genuinely cares for.

The real Hugh Hefner did the voice-over intro for the pilot, and his character has a continuing role in the story as a faceless character shot from behind or in ways that otherwise obscure his face.   David Krumholtz plays Billy, who runs the club, but they have poor David looking like Bosley from the original Charlie's Angels (what's the point? - that the only kind of a guy who can work around highly attractive women is someone who looks like a frog?).

Playboy - the magazine and the clubs - has been controversial, to say the least, in reality.   Hefner has always claimed the magazine broke through the repression of sexuality in the 1950s (undoubtedly true) and empowered women (that's the point that's controversial).   The series gets points for continuing this theme, but would be worth watching even if it didn't.

---

                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

---

---

The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

---

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...