REVOLUTION Midseason Premiere: What Did You Think of the Latest Twist?
March 26, 2013 by Marisa Roffman
[This post contains spoilers for the REVOLUTION midseason premiere “The Stand.” It also contains references to FRINGE’s final season, but you’ve all watched that already, right? If you have seen either, turn back, because you’re about to get spoiled.]
Well, that was depressing.
After REVOLUTION spent the entire first half of the season tracking down Danny, he was gunned down in tonight’s midseason premiere while taking out a helicopter. Mind you, this was after his sister, Charlie, asked him to please sit this fight out, as her one request for walking a thousand miles to save him. He couldn’t — or wouldn’t — back down when the opportunity came to take out an opponent and ended up paying the ultimate price.
And, honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about it.
One one hand, it was a bold dramatic move, because killing Danny has to impact Charlie, Rachel (his long MIA mother) and the rest of the characters we’ve been traveling with this season. But on the other hand, why now? Is there really more impact of killing off Danny after he had just reunited with his sister and mother versus right before? Would Charlie and Rachel have been any less crushed if they had lost him while he was with Monroe? Now, a part of me feels like the vast majority of the journey these characters went on during the first half of the season was for nothing.
When I was watching the episode, my mind immediately made the connection to Peter, Olivia, and Walter losing Etta in FRINGE’s final season. Just like Etta’s death gave the Bishop family an extra incentive to fight for humanity, Danny’s death has done the same thing for Charlie and Rachel. (Heck, they explicitly stated they’d continue on so his death wasn’t in vain.)
Of course, FRINGE had their happy ending — Walter ended up sacrificing himself so Peter could get his daughter back and humanity would be saved. REVOLUTION doesn’t have that easy out. But are you still OK with Danny being gone? And are you okay it happened so soon after he was rescued?
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Danny sure looked dead as a doornail, didn’t he? But I wonder if dead is really dead here on Revolution. Miles specifically told Rachel that he saw her dead body. Was she dead? Or what? And what about the tech puled from Danny? *insert Observery vibe here*
I can’t decide if I feel cheated. or if this makes it more real. After watching so many Bad Robot shows, call me skeptical about any death.
Major difference.
Fringe ——————————— ——————————————————> Revolution
It just makes me think Kripke is a total liar when he talks up his shows being about family. What a load of bull. He just used Danny as a prop for more Charlie emo. What a waste. What a shame. I’m so sick of the bad way Sam is treated on SPN for much of the same reasons (because God forbid, Dean doesn’t get some excuse to be an emo princess at Sam’s expense ALL.THE.TIME.). Meh.
And Maggie, who died in episode 4 or something, is still more interesting than most of the team left on this show. Pointless waste for fake drama. Sick of it.
@Aimee: FAIR! If we’ve learned anything from BR shows — and really, it’s basically all of them at this point — dead is rarely 100% dead.
If you have to compare Revolution to Fringe, I think it would be fairer if you compared them in the right context or frame of time, that is, the first half of S1. That was Fringe at its worst, with only a couple of good episodes spread wide among really terrible ones. Only at the end of S1 Fringe seemed to start to know, what it wanted to be.
It’s entirely possible that Revolution won’t get better, but just like Fringe took its sweet time to realize Walter was the key to the show’s survival and that focusing on him was their chance to make a good show, Revolution might do the same with its more interesting characters, fix Charlie or put her in the background and get rid of the extra weight, like Danny.
I don’t consider Danny the equivalent of Etta. I think he was the equivalent of John Scott and just like John Scott made Olivia utterly annoying, the same could be said about Danny and Charlie. I think Charlie can only improve from now on.
Or I could be wrong and they’ll bring Danny back and it would be all for nothing.
@Mallie: Fair that FRINGE was in a different place in season 1…my reason for comparing Etta versus John Scott is simply due to impact: Etta’s death touched everyone; John Scott was mainly an Olivia loss. Danny’s loss will impact everyone (Nora to a lesser degree, but certainly Charlie, Rachel, Miles and Aaron), too.
I tuned in to Revolution after meh-ing out on it in the early going, specifically because this is the start of the back nine, when the producers have (presumably) been given some notes after the first 13-episode order and are starting the sharpening process. Fringe underwent this same change after the end of the John Scott arc (which ended in episode 13) and Person of Interest improved quite spectacularly after its initial 13.
Obviously the death of Danny is part of the back-nine reshuffling process on this show. I still find Revolution to be meh, but we should know by the end of Season 1 if they are really serious about making it better.
Fringe’s S1 was dodgy, but (unlike Revolution IMO) it was actually delightful in its details and at least one character (Walter) was a clear treasure.
I don’t get the Charlie hate, either. She was written to be naive and annoying at the start. But she is growing, because of what she has experienced. If we want to get into Fringe comparisons, think of what people said about Anna Torv’s acting in S1. I always loved Olivia, because I saw how she was written. She was closed off emotionally because of John Scott. But she grew, along with Peter and Walter. And she continued to grow. Which I guess bothered some people, but I loved Season Five. Stagnant, predictable characters bore me to tears.
But this isn’t about Fringe. Revolution is not even anywhere in the same ball park. I am not sure if it ever will be, and it saddens me IT gets the ratings. But I made the mistake before of comparing my prior fave show — The X- Files — to everything. Decided, some shows aren’t perfection, but good enough. Interested to see where all of this goes.
One more thing: Walter was the last character I liked in Fringe. He grated on me quite a bit. But then something clicked, and I fell in love.
As far as Revolution, I’m a big sucker for Elizabeth Mitchell, so I like Rachel. But TBH, a lot of the character s still feel quite thin to me.
I think it stinks that Danny died Cuz they just found him and then he dies plus I Thout that he was pretty cute:3::(
A bold dramatic move is right! I replayed that scene a bunch of times after I left my office at DISH last night, and I still wouldn’t believe that Danny is dead if I had not seen it with my own eyes! But I am still happy that I was able to see it at all because of my DISH Hopper. It automatically records all of the prime time shows on the big 4 networks, so even though I forgot to set this half of the season to record I never have to worry about missing an episode.
More than anything; it’s great to see Revolution finally return from its midseason hiatus. Having such an action packed episode was to be expected and it makes sense to me that Danny would be the one to die, but sad all the same. I’m just getting caught up with Monday’s midseason premiere because I’m working nights at DISH this week and haven’t had the time to watch before today. I’ve been reading all the recaps however because I couldn’t wait to watch it this afternoon on my iPad during my commute in to work. It’s easy to do with the DISH Anywhere app which can stream all the shows on my DVR anywhere I go with access to the internet.