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Revolution Recap: ‘Children of Men’ (Season 1, Episode 19)

Revolution Recap: ‘Children of Men’ (Season 1, Episode 19) 1

Movies & TV

Revolution Recap: ‘Children of Men’ (Season 1, Episode 19)

Revolution Recap: ‘Children of Men’ (Season 1, Episode 19) 8

Photo by: Brownie Harris/NBC

For all intents and purposes, the official television season is over. Check the “Scheduled Recordings” on your DVR, and it should be comparatively skimpy. And it’s Memorial Day weekend. And we still have a week of this show left. All of these factors make “Children of Men” seem a bit odd and even more forgettable than the series usually is, despite it being a relatively decent installment.

Picking up from where we left off last week, Rachel’s attempt to kill Monroe and herself via grenade fails because some of his bodyguards stop her before she can drop the weapon. Long story short, with her in tow, Monroe, Flynn, and some of his soldiers finally gain entrance to the tower. Shortly thereafter, Team Miles arrives and we get yet another ATTACK THE COMPOUND!!!! as they use Aaron to enter with the backdoor codes from the Winchester Journal. Unfortunately, Nevilles Senior and Junior are unable to reach the door before it closes, much to Charlie’s dismay that subsides by the time we get back from commercial.

Inside the tower, things legitimately get more interesting, and we get some answers as the gang splits up. We also finally see the mysterious creatures lurking within the floors. It’s just security guys with guns that produce CGI red mist that makes The Walking Dead blood look positively realistic. Very disappointing, show. I wanted monsters.

Rachel and Monroe are stuck in a room together and exchange horrible dialogue about the problem with suicide and whether she regrets trying to kill herself or if she thinks that martyring herself is a mistake. The biggest problem with this scene is that the show has spent its entire first season building Monroe as an unstable lunatic who is completely delusional and has lost control of his mental faculties. There’s a way to make an insane person have a point, or at least sound like he does, but Lyons does not do it. Instead, it’s just more rambling from Monroe where you give into him just to get him to shut up. However, he does save Charlie from one of the security guards before going to have a standoff with Miles, which is how they leave the episode.

Revolution Recap: ‘Children of Men’ (Season 1, Episode 19) 9

Photo by: Brownie Harris/NBC

While Miles and Monroe are ready for another one-on-one, everyone else is being led into the bowels of The Tower. Here, a gang has revealed themselves as the self-appointed guardians who will ensure that the lights are never switched back on. Kind of like those mutants with the bomb in Beneath the Planet of the Apes. They are led by Glenn Morshower who is best known for his role as omnipresent secret service agent Aaron Pierce in, surprise surprise, 24. Morshower is probably the best of the 24 castoffs thus far as he gives his character an almost religious level of duty to his mission to prevent electricity from returning. He has barricaded himself in The Tower for so long that he no longer remembers sunshine or rain. He also declares that their children and their children’s children will guard the tower in in perpetuity. Of course, the idea of a bunch of fourth generation inbreds trying maintain the equipment is very funny.

Thankfully, the show gives another reason why it would be dangerous to return power. Sure, we get the usual crap exchange of “we can’t do it because people will have guns, and be dangerous” (as opposed to how things are now?) with the follow up of ”But hospitals!” But tonight, we learn that when the light is restored, there’s a chance that the world will catch on fire… so they burn the Winchester journal.

Something I wondered about during the episode was, what exactly is the relationship of Flynn to these people? Flynn presumably kidnaps Grace in the first episode. We’ve seen her chained to a desk and forced to work under armed guard. The last time we saw her, she was obviously afraid. But now she’s calm and relaxed. Is Flynn working with the “religion,” and is he a good guy to them? Or did Flynn go rogue when he gave Monroe the amulets? I assume they all live together in The Tower, so I’d like to know whose side he is on. But, as usual, he vanishes without a trace. Also, do the security guards with the super-weapons work for him or for the cult? Because if Aaron Pitman is “a big deal” and many of them know and welcome Rachel, why send people to kill them?

Elsewhere in Revolution, the Nevilles are captured by Monroe’s men. Tom gives a speech to one of his captors where he convinces him to let him lead an open mutiny against Monroe. Realizing that Monroe’s lost it, they agree and Tom is ready to lead the Republic. That seems like something to look forward to, until you realize it’s going to happen on this show.

Additional Thoughts:
• Did the lights go out during George W. Bush’s presidency? Because I thought the show “started” in 2012. If it did, why was a picture of George W. Bush hanging up at the Department of Defense? Is this yet another tired, hackneyed “George W. Bush is to blame for everything bad that has ever happened” nod like in Star Trek Into Darkness? Did they not get a chance to hang up a new picture?
• Speaking of potential controversial side topics, did anyone else get a sense of Atlas Shrugged”s “Galt Gulch” when it came to Morshower and his cult? As though they believed that the public lost the “right” to use electricity due to being untrustworthy and not good enough? That might have actually been an interesting angle for the show to take, but alas.
• I’m beginning to think the Georgia Republic plotline is going to turn out to be completely worthless. By the end of this season, Revolution will have more dropped/pointless storylines than American Horror Story: Asylum.

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To contact me, e-mail brett.davinger@gmail.com.

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