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There's nothing revolutionary about Revolution. It's J.J. Abrams and NBC


There's nothing revolutionary about Revolution. It's J.J. Abrams and NBC repeating all of their past mistakes.

An article posted after the Season 1 premier in 2012 nailed it:


NBC's 'Revolution' suffers from a lack thereof

Michael Ross

Bad TV Examiner

September 22, 2012

NBC still evidently hasn't gotten over the loss of Heroes.

In Heroes, the usually fourth-ranked network had a rare hit. It was a far-fetched concept with a very high production cost, but boy did it ever pay off for them, earning the highest ratings for any NBC drama in over five years.


Exactly one year later, NBC is trying it again with the equally heavily promoted and vaguely named Revolution, courtesy of J.J. Abrams, who knows exactly how NBC feels.

Abrams, of course, was one of the masterminds behind the series Lost, which once boasted ratings higher than Heroes.

Yet, also like Heroes, the ratings of Lost steadily declined over the years. For many reasons, though predominantly because viewers began to suspect that all the answers were being kept from them because the writers didn't have any.

This culminated in the most epic letdown of a final episode since the ending of The Sopranos, in which it was revealed that the island was a sort of limbo, something many fans had speculated as early as the first season and which the writers had originally flat out denied.

The sad truth was that, while J.J. Abrams and co. were great at creating hooks -- great at creating very intriguing plot devices that would guarantee viewers keep coming back to learn more -- they were not good at giving them foundation.


What quickly became apparent, however, is that J.J. Abrams hasn't learned his lesson about any of the writing techniques that resulted in the Lost letdown any more than NBC has learned its lesson about giving huge production budgets to a brain-dead writing team.


http://www.examiner.com/article/the-revolution-how-it-came-and-how-it- will-go

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Ah yep the same bunch of people who can create some great scenarios but have no clue on how to close them. must be the lindolf phenomenon. People are still trying to find meaning to Prometheus since it had many great entries but the exits all went meh. Thy still make a ton of money since they can give a great entry to events and let the viewer just guess what the answers might be. Depending on your life, you can come up with one of 100 different things. Thats supposedly considered DEEP. or clueless...

C

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This show was another Lost. Starts off exciting then it goes in too many directions. The audience gets confused
And loses interest. The story should already have an ending if not, it will never make any sense.

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J.J. Abrams was a producer insofar as his company produced the show. Same with LOST. They weren't his writing mistakes because, beyond the LOST premiere and maybe the Revolution premiere, he wasn't really involved. For Revolution, Abrams was working on Star Trek and Star Wars for season 1, and Star Wars for season 2.

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..maybe he should start getting involved instead of abandoning good ideas... and now audiences realize LOST became a giant sham in its last years along with Lindenhoffs help [its magic/pugatory!] people just dump shows when its starts to deviate from its main idea and wallow in pig *beep* .

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To be fair, the type of humour and the general outlook of things in the The Big Bang Theory pilot was different than the rest of the episodes. This is because the way it works in the business now is that the pilot is a "sales pitch" that is presented to production companies one by one until one of them bites.

When they do bite, they want the product they buy tailored to their needs.

The pilot of Almost Human "sold in" that the main storyline was figuring out whether or not he was set up. The expectation is then that the scope of that main storyline is at least a season long, but after 2-3 episodes they stopped bothering with it. I read that Fox wanted it to be more of a police procedural, and as the business that Bad Robot is, they of course complied.

The promos and some of the trailers of Revolution "sold in" that the show would be a post-apocalyptic survival show. It was a "find the kidnapped brother" show, with the background mystery about "what are those magic pendants?" The violence and some of the subject matter suggested to me that this was a show for adults, but then the main protagonist in the first season was a teenager. I suppose NBC wanted the younger audience to watch it as well.

When writers do this kind of customer service, the result will be a convoluted, cynical mess.

If they have a vision, they need to stick with it, regardless of what the executives think the "audience want". Because it is clear that the customer/viewer want a quality product. Let's use a car analogy here. You build a 2-seater sports car. 400hp, lightweight, sleek, spartan - as an upstart company you want a bigger partner that could help you with distribution and whatnot, so you contact Ford. They say it is a fantastic car, but in order to be worth it for them they need to appeal to a broader audience. So they add two seats to appeal to families, which makes the car a meter longer and half a ton heavier. They then say that Americans can't drive stick so they put in an Automatic instead, and of course crams every kind of luxury equipment into the car. They also say that Americans like these big, chrome-glittering front grilles so they change the sleek design to appeal to the Am-Car enthusiasts. And the high-tuned, screaming V6 must of course be a rumbling 8-liter V8 because that's what the audience want.

Needless to say, the car is now just like everything else, except it is very expensive so nobody wants it. Ford blames you.

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But JJ Abrams was only a producer he didn't create the show or write any of the episodes.

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So what did he produce.... excrement?

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^ it's a bit silly to give one person credit for a whole show. His name was probably only slapped on so people would watch, because people are familiar with his work. Eric Kripke and writers he usually works with wrote the show.

And also I'm sure the studios are the ones pushing to hold back on plot lines and draw out the show to cash in on it. Whether or not that works is a gamble like any show though, you never know what an audience will like.

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Oh, I miss "Almost Human" it was growing on me.

Hate that Fox aired it out of order.

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Good analogy, but I think you glossed over the most important part.

A screaming, flashy car that can top 225 mph is useless to most people. You cant drive it that fast most places, even rural areas - the roads just aren't designed for it and its a sure fire way to kill yourself. And even if you are in an area that you an do it safely (and/or legally), not many people could afford such a car. And for those that can, it is a novelty that wears off very quickly.

Specialty items have their niche markets, which is the opposite of broad appeal.

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..maybe he should start getting involved instead of abandoning good ideas...


Why? He's a major Hollywood film director, tasked with revitalizing one of the biggest franchises of all time. He's an owner/leader of Bad Robot, and therefore these shows are partly his productions, but he's never been actively involved in them. Not recently, at any rate, and it'd be silly for him to be involved in all of them.

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The blame is on Kripke, not Abrams whose been directing features for a while now. Revolution was Eric Kripke's mess.


Happiness must be earned.

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I agree with some points in that article but the author was wrong about the premise of Lost. The island was not a limbo. It was only season 6 when the cast was back in civilization that it was like purgatory.

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