Revolution: Season 1 Episode 6 Review

Yes, I know I didn't use the name of the episode in the title. I'm trying to keep things relatively clean, alright.

Spoilers Follow.

For it's first five episodes, Revolution has been consistently "good but far from great." With this episode I can say things got kicked up a notch in terms of quality.

So, Nora's knife wound at the hands of Lapidus in "Soul Train" comes back to haunt her by way of an infection, for which she needs help that can only be provided by Miles' drug dealer "friend" Drexel. Things go south very quickly.

I'll start with Drexel: he was cool. On top of a few very funny lines, he was really REALLY evil. I mean that. The guy kills women because he can, and wanted to use Charlie as an instrument of revenge. That is evil. And he reveals the latest tidbit about Miles' less then honorable past: he used to take payments to off Drexel's competition. It hasn't really been a secret Miles used to do a lot of bad stuff, but that's just messed up.

Believe it or not, I actually liked Charlie in this episode. OK, maybe not liked, but its a step in the right direction. She's toughening up, she's getting rid of all the fluff, she was completely willing to off old Irish guy who's name escapes me and was about to when Miles stops her. And she did exactly zero Tobey Maguire crying (and there was much rejoicing). I know that there's a lot of hardcore Charlie haters out there patrolling the web probably waiting to inflict death by trolling upon me for saying that, and don't get the wrong idea, I'm not saying I'm suddenly team Charlie, I'm just saying she was a lot more tolerable this week then in weeks past. Still plenty of work to do on her part, but we're making progress.

Here was the real surprise this week: Aaron-centric flashbacks. I let out a bit of a groan when I read that bit in the episode description, as his attempted comedy relief has proven a bit flat in past weeks, but the flashbacks were surprisingly strong. We got a glimpse of a guy who had everything, only to have the blackout take it all away and make him useless. He really felt it too: he couldn't protect his wife, and abandoned her because he thought she'd be better off without him. Cowardly? Sure, on a whole new level really, especially as she wanted to stick with him. But this adds an unexpected layer to Aaron, and certainly makes him more interesting as a character. I can only imagine what'll happen when he runs into her again (oh, don't act like that's not gonna happen. We all know it will). Aaron got a few more good moments when he literally became willing to take a bullet for his friends. Well done.

Only weak link in the episode was Danny's finally meeting his mother, which, because of the limited screen time for build up, didn't have a whole lot of impact. There were also one or to moments, and this keeps happening on the show, where the characters explain a common knowledge fact through dialogue that doesn't need explaining. Seriously, writers, assume your audience is smart.

Final Rating: 81%