'Ties That Bind' - Revolution, Season One

Revolution

Season One

Episode Eight

'Ties That Bind' - 1.5

This is a group of people who all need to die slow, painful deaths. 

No. Just fucking no. I'm tired of giving the stupidity of this horrid attempt at storytelling a pass. Revolution is just every type of idiotic, using every single cliché and over-used trope to give itself a sense of adventure and action, but in the end it is just sad.

Take the shoot-outs we see during 'Ties that Bind'. First, Miles realises he and his friends are heading towards an ambush, and rather than run straight away opts to continue moving closer to the trap, pushing themselves onto a bridge, preventing them from scattering. I swear you used to be a fucking strategist, and now you decide that you'd rather force your crew to run from gunfire in a straight line than let the enemy know they've been made too early. COME ON!!! General Strauss kind of sucks too, because they could have tried to AIM. This is one of those overused tropes I mentioned: action film bad guys can never, ever aim, despite supposedly being trained to do so. It's maybe a bit more passable in a story where guns are hard to come by, but they had machine guns and their targets were fleeing as a group in a straight-fucking-line. FUCKINGLY FUCKING FUCK.

The second and final shoot-out had pretty similar issues. Namely, why not aim? They had clearly been behind Miles and the crew for a while, but they decided that they'd rather fire a few warning shots, instead of taking out someone who could fight back. Yes, I know they wanted Miles alive, but not Charlie or Aaron. Aren't they supposed evil? Isn't that the terribly written idea here, that the militia is immoral and totalitarian and actually needs to be defeated, instead of just being like the police. That's right, according to the laws of the Monroe Republic, Charlie and the gang are criminals! I am yet to actually feel bad for anyone.

The total fail is exemplified when Nora shows up, knifes some guy in the back, takes his gun and TAKES OUT THREE MEN WITH THREE BULLETS. Screw you, show. That's not how real life works, at least one good guy needs to die. Kill Aaron, no one gives a shit about him.

I've said that sometimes watching a show with your brain deactivated can be a relaxing experience, but I have issues when the show's brain is deactivated. If apparent experts don't know how to hold themselves in a fire fight then I'm likely to pull a hissy-fit. It certainly isn't helping that I find Miles to be insufferable, both in the way he's written and the way he's played. Despite his experience, I feel like he should be dead, along with his moralistic niece. Nora, oddly enough, is possibly my favourite character.

Note that that doesn't mean I like her.

With the whole introduction of her sister, I did think that they might kill her off, and I came to the quick conclusion that either she was going to die, Mia was going to die and finally cause some character development, or the two of them were going to ride off into the sunset together. It's probably a good thing that none of this happened, instead Mia turned out to be a fraud who was working for Sergeant Strauss in order to save her sister's life. Fair enough, and I didn't predict it. For once, I did understand why Nora leapt back to go help her friends, ditching her desperate sister standing alone. The realisation that Mia had never actually been to Texas and found their father was probably more affecting though, and I'm practically begging the writers to play on this somehow, and build some of Nora's character up. Finally. 

This show seems to underestimate the intelligence of its viewers, and I've come to the conclusion that it is like an IQ test. If you don't notice the logical failures then you have below average intelligence, i.e less than 100 IQ points. If you do, then congrats you have at least 100 IQ points, like half the world. Anyway, it's patronising, infuriating and nonsensical at times, to the point that I can no longer ignore the stupidity of its writers. They don't even make it cheesy! If it was like Xena or Buffy-type ridiculous I'd probably really enjoy it, but they play it STRAIGHT.

I'VE JUST REALISED: 'Revolution' isn't a failed epic adventure, it's a failed comedic farce! That makes me feel better.