What I'm Watching: Revolution, Beauty & the Beast

I'm gonna give y'all a tv two-fer today, playing some catchup on the new season.

I've been watching Revolution for a few weeks now.  This is the new show from J.J. Abrams, and Erik Kripke.  The basic premise is that one day, the power goes out, and doesn't come back on.  The story picks up 15 years later, the power is still out, militias are slowly consolidating power, and the adventure begins.

That's a solid premise for a show, and I think for the most part, we've got something good here.  The acting is decent enough, the show looks great...in fact, the biggest complaint is that it looks TOO good.  It has that 'pretty people in a post apocalypse' problem that is all too prevalent in visual media.  But for me?  I can live with it.  It doesn't really bother me that much.

The other big complaint is that comments have point out how things don't make sense, electricity doesn't work that way, why haven't they made more yet, etc.  But I do not get these complaints.  THE SHOW ITSELF is constantly pointing out how this is wrong, how unnatural it is, and how the laws of science are broken, because this is wrong!  This is a plot point, not a plot hole, people.  Granted, it will probably just be handwaved with a magic explanation, but I am not overly bugged by it.

They're slowly expanding the world, and things are mostly holding together.  I'm interested in where things are going, and so far, this is my fave new show of the season.

Meanwhile, on the CW, we have Beauty & the Beast.  This is a remake of the 80s series starring Linda Hamilton and the heavy makeup effects on Ron Perlman.

This time around, the show is about a cop who had a strange encounter that has haunted her life ever since; she was saved from an attack, by a strange, beast-like man.  Years later, she's investigating a case, and it leads her straight into that same man.  He's wrapped up in a government conspiracy, and now Catherine is drawn into it as well, although she may have a larger connection to it than she at first suspected.

I didn't watch much of the original, so I have no major connection to it, but I found this show to be mostly okay.  It didn't blow me away, I saw most of the twists coming, and I kinda roll my eyes at not going all the way with the Beast side of things, and leaving us with a handsome leading man to draw in the ladies.  Making him permanently and always a monster is more interesting, IMO, and showing that someone like that can still be a romantic lead as well.

But this is the hand we're dealt, and what we get is good enough of a start.  I'm not really as intrigued by what may come from B&B as I am by Arrow, but the mystery was nice.  And it feels like it has been a while since we've done the detective with a supernatural partern trope, so I'm gonna keep watching for now.

J