REVOLUTION Episode 17 review: ‘The Longest Day
REVOLUTION “The Longest Day”
Season 1 Episode 17
Executive Producer: J.J. Abrams
Creator: Eric Kripke
Writer: Anne Cofell Saunders
Director: Steve Boyum
SPOILERS follow. Don’t read if you don’t want to know.
Nora wakes up in Miles’ bed and declares that spending the night together was a “mistake,” and probably foreshadows her own doom by remarking, “Odds are once this thing’s out, one of us is going to watch the other one die.” As Billy Burke is one of the major leads of Revolution, I’d guess that odds are now probably not on Daniella Alonso’s making it season’s end.
Now a member of the Rebel-Georgian Coalition, Neville (Giancarlo Esposito) gets his kicks by taunting his son, allowing Charlie to try her hand at some empathy with Jason (JD Pardo).
Aaron (Zak Orth) and Rachel (Elizabeth Mitchell) puzzle over Aaron’s inclusion in The Big Tower Secrets Book. Rachel concludes that the only way to fix her broken leg is to use nanotechnology.
Aaron successfully reprograms the magic nanobot capsule and inserts it into Rachel’s wound, where it proceeds to miraculously stitch together her broken bone and heal her skin. For a while it looks like a passing stranger who witnessed the “surgery” has convinced them to help heal his injured son, but Rachel disables the man and announces her intention of fleeing without doing anything.
“What makes you think I’m in it to help people? I want power so Monroe’s enemies can wipe him off the map. I want to kill the man who killed my son, and that’s it,” she cold-heartedly declares before threatening to leave a shocked Aaron behind.
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Two Monroe fighters attack the Rebel camp with missiles, destroying several buildings. After Miles pulls Nora from the resultant rubble, they reluctantly join forces with Neville and search for a missing Jason and Charlie.
Monroe (David Lyons) narrowly escapes an assassination attempt, and blames his second-in-command Jeremy (Mark Pellegrino), whom he immediately has executed, because that’s what Monroe does. Later he discovers to his surprise that Jeremy had nothing whatsoever to do with the attempt. No wonder he gets so few new applications for major domo.
Miles and Nora find Jason injured, and leave Neville to care for him. Neville is himself shot by approaching Militia soldiers, and in the ensuing fight, Nora draws the soldiers’ fire so that Miles can rescue Charlie. Jason is successfully evacuated to an Atlanta hospital where a now safe Charlie comforts him with a kiss, much to Neville’s dismay. Having been captured by Militia forces, Nora is taken to Monroe, and it is assumed she will be interrogated by the general with “extreme prejudice.”
Unable to counter Monroe’s superior military strength and technology, Georgia Federation President Foster (Leslie Hope) grimly considers surrender.
Things that didn’t work in this episode:
- Enough already with the “Monroe is crazy” scenes. We get it. We got it a long time ago, in fact. Stop beating us over the head with it.
- Maybe I missed it, but where did the working computers come from that enabled Aaron to reprogram the nanbots?
- The flashbacks to Rachel and Miles seven years ago interspersed in this episode were totally unnecessary and did nothing to advance the plot. Can you say “filler”?
Things that did work in this episode:
- There remains some question as to whether or not Neville was attempting to rescue the injured Jason, or finish him off instead. Evil Neville is far more interesting than Daddy Neville, isn’t he?
- The crisp pacing and rapid editing was a nice change from last week’s sluggish steamboat episode. Director and stuntman Steve Boyum’s FX were a great bonus.
My take: If a paranoid Monroe keeps killing every single underling that he wrongly suspects of treason, he will soon have no Militia left! It’s disappointing that actor Mark Pellegrino did not get a longer multi-episode arc. Revolution’s continual use of such fine actors in one-shot guest roles is simply a terrible waste of talent.
