'Revolution' on NBC - Page 25

This is Abrams. It has to be "my boy Walt!".

Thanks for reminding me.

I had since blocked that one out...

12 pendants? We only know of 2 so far. There must be a larger group of people that were working with the Mathesons and Grace on "the power project", people that Monroe - and even Miles - don't know about.

Why didn't she just make something up instead of drawing a perfect representation of the pendant - and why admit that she was also working with him on the program?

Just tell him that you know there were at least 5 devices that were hidden in toasters and distributed to different people. All you know is that the toasters were either black or silver.

Ok, I give up. What did you see in Philadelphia that made this obvious?

Not that I disagree with your conclusion, mind you. I’m still trying to figure out why nobody’s playing daytime baseball at Wrigley Field.

Honestly, this is the most pathetically dysfunctional and uninventive society I’ve ever seen. Their apparent aversion to any sort of technology, even the wheel, is simply mind-boggling.

= = =


We know of three: Ben, Grace, and Randall, the cattle prod guy. And there may actually be more than twelve. Rachel could be lying or unaware of all of them.

In episode two, Grace encrypted a list of names, many more than twelve. The top three were “Rachel Matheson”, “Grace Beaumont”, and “Randall”, all of whom are or were members of the Magic Pendant Society.

Also, fwiw, “Randall” was the only one shown with no last name.

For 15 years with no power these folks very well bathed and also well taken care in the shaving and hair cutting areas.

Sent from my SCH-I405 using Tapatalk 2

Yes, because haircuts didn't exist 3000 years ago.

Of all the gripes I have about the primitive state of their society, haircuts are going to be near the bottom of that list. Last I checked, scissors don't run on batteries, and people have been bathing and washing clothes for millennia.

Baseball, though, that's a good question. One has to wonder why Wrigley field was in disrepair. There are sections of Cleveland with less cobwebs than that, and no one's been there for much longer than 15 years.

Well, 9 out of 10 isn't such a bad score:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-10-dumbest-things-tv-so-far-this-season/

I especially loved "#2. The Least Dying-Looking Dying Person Ever".

Funny you mentioned Wrigley, because I had deleted a comment suggesting that it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't have the Eagles, Falcons, Texans, Chiefs, Cardinals and Seahawks up and running in an inter-territory league.

My point about Philly is that it was clear that a level of normalcy existed there. People were dressed well, and the streets were clean and bustling. It's not difficult to believe that some small portion of the population is working on various forms of entertainment - including some motion pictures.

They would reestablish the real sports before moving onto the niche sports. Having no electricity doesn't make baseball any less dull to watch.

You sure hit the nail on the head w/ that one. Never understood the interest in a game taking 3+ hours to play that could be done in < 1 hour if they eliminated all of the superfluous time outs.

I almost fell out my couch when they showed the horses pulling a car, a regular car, they should be pulling wooden wagons... poor horses.. I bet that car still had the engine inside..

Probably a game from 15 years ago still being played in there.

And your point? Cars roll very easily. If your car doesn't start rolling on a slight downhill angle, then there is something wrong with it.

But you could easily repair the wagon wheels, but car tires? most of them would be ruined after 15 years of non usage, heck some get ruined in a few months..

Makes me rethink about watching the show any more. Then again, it sounds like the writer only watches football and Revolution. Blue Bloods is one of my favorite shows, but they had a doozy in their season premier. Guess it wasn't enough to top all of these.

Wasn't that two big oxen pulling that car, I didn't think it was horses.

That was spectacularly funny! Thanks for the link! :D

Non use? They're clearly being used if they're on the car and it wouldn't be that crazy for them to last this long. What kills tires that are being used regularly is acceleration, braking and speed. You don't get that when horses are pulling your car.

Even with tires being stored, the big issue would be dry rot, which wouldn't be catastrophic at horse speeds. At 70 MPH on the interstate, you betcha, but at 20 MPH, if it goes flat, it's not going to kill anyone. Besides, at those speeds, they could just fill the tires with solid material to make a hard wheel out of it.

It's perfectly logical for them to pull cars, or frames of cars instead of wagons since they'd be everywhere. Just yank out the motor, tranny and drive shaft from a pickup truck and modify a tow bar to hitch to horses and you've got a wagon. It would be no heavier than a wagon built well enough to haul stuff. If I could get ahold of a horse, I've got a pickup truck in my garage. I don't have enough wood to build a wagon or the skill to build wagon wheels for it. What I have is an engine lift and enough random material to attach a hitch tongue to it.

I'd buy that over making wagon wheels. Trust me, I used to know a guy who built, sold and repaired wagon wheels for antique rigs and to nearby Mennonites. It's not all that easy. I'd be willing to bet there are twice as many people in the world who would be able to get that steam engine running as could build and true a wagon wheel with manual hand tools.

Sure, the Amish, Mennonites and other similar folks could, but it wouldn't surprise me if those people get beaten down and overrun for all their non-electric supplies long before they could establish "how to survive without electricity" seminars sponsored by Home Depot.
Edited by NetworkTV - 10/19/12 at 3:23pm

Okay, you should be running the show...

Watching the oxen pulled car, I immediately had similar thoughts.

Maybe because we live in a world of rapid replacement of goods that 15 yrs seems way past what the manufacturers build them to last for. If the scene had been framed to show the hood removed and heavy engine, it wouldn't have been thought about further since it would be a much lighter husk. The advantages then would be it affords the driver better protection against the elements and mankind's crude projectile weapons, in comparison to a riding in a covered wooden cart/wagon. Also, if you get the car with the right options, you get the rich Corinthian leather seats. Bonus, if the brakes still work so you can get the ox to stop, turn radius on car wheels better than a cart, cup holder for your beverage, and a port to plug in your dead iphone/ipod for the day the electricity comes back.

As for the wheels, I'd guess a good number of bicycle pumps are out there that would keep air in them versus have to cut trees and shape into wheels for carts, so for the less skilled, the materials are there to keep cars. I'd gone with a truck for the flatbed, but maybe the car in the scene was the social town car, not the hauling supplies . . . same engine (oxen) different chassis. That I cared more about that than the characters, . . . kinda not a great reflection on the show.

Here are my thoughts:

- You can remove the engine and leave the hood on. With the engine removed, you could plank in a floor to add storage, including room for an extra couple of wheel and tire sets.
- A good solid wagon would likely yield better protection than the thin plastic or metal of a car body. A .45 bullet would rip right through both doors and keep going. The only really protective part of a car is the engine block and the wheels and brake mechanisms.
- The brakes would be pretty well useless on a car without engine power that never really gains any speed. First, you'd get no braking power without power brakes working and the rotors would be toast due to the lack of polishing you get from higher speed braking. You'd be better off taking them off so they don't seize up on you, other than for cars that still have mechanical e-brakes that would be like the brake on a wagon.
- The turning radious of most wagons is way tighter than any car. You can practically go 90 degress with them.

I do agree that a pickup would be a better choice for use as a wagon, though. Without an engine, there's not much to a pickup. Further, the beds are removable to make it into a flat bed or a panel truck or anything else you need it to be. Plus, the heavy duty suspension would be better for roads that wouldn't be improved and for using improvised wheels when tires might be scarce.

I'm pretty sure the F-150 would continue to be in high demand even after a massive loss of technology.

For the most part, though, the only practical reason why people would be using cars and pickups as wagons is because they're right there and could be modded for the use with minimal effort compared to building or finding an available wagon. If you have access to the real thing, you're better off.

Honestly, something like a pickup would be a perfect candidate for rigging up a steam engine. There's a ton of space under the hood on a full size model if you didn't want to waste space in the bed. You'd definitely have to run without the hood in that case, though.
Edited by NetworkTV - 10/21/12 at 8:02am

Yes, baseball is dull, but it beats looking at postcards of baseball stadiums on a broken down Ferris wheel.

And baseball would come back before football, because (a) the lower injury rate would be a better fit with lower tech medicine, and (b) the minor league business infrastructure could easily be transformed into regional leagues. A coast-to-coast league of any sort would be difficult without air travel.

Or staring at a dead iPhone screen wishing there were pictures on it...

Yeah but after staring at a dead iPhone screen for awhile, you can stop and do something else.

Well I called it, electricity does not work. Steam does but from what you guys said diesel should if they had any laying about. Repeater guns should be about and come to think about it. the;y would be rare but Steam powered cars. Wish they went steam punk on us here. Great change to intro new re-found tech here.
Edited by Wytchone - 10/22/12 at 4:49pm

That would have added a lot of interesting things to the show.

That it would have!

One word about the steam-punk thing: Budget. Now, if this were a movie with a $200 million budget, they could have let the fevered dreams of some talented production designer fly and let him create some awesome steam-punk machines powering a very different type of society than we see here. Or HBO -- they've got all the money in the world (or used to anyway - they once declared a billion dollar annual profit). I thought the sets and special effects they built for 'Terra Nova' were pretty spectacular for a broadcast net and the FOX network must have taken a bath on that one.

That's the thing that limits TV shows -- time and budget. They may have only 8 days to film a one-hour episode and the producers are constantly facing battles about what they can afford to film and what they can't. I used to listen to the BSG podcasts where Ron Moore would talk about all the compromises they had to make every week because of lack of money or time or both. It was pretty enlightening -- and they had an even smaller budget to work with as it was a basic cablenet show. Still, what they were able to accomplish with their miniscule vfx budget was phenomenal.