Revolution--A rebuttal

This is "kind of" a guest post. My co-worker Bill and I like to discuss TV over email (because we're basically too lazy to walk across the building to do it in person). We started chatting about Revolution recently and he made some excellent points re: the lack of realism in the show. I've heard a lot of people talking about how the science behind the show just doesn't make sense, and while I'm the kind of person who doesn't really care about whether something is plausible, many of you take such things seriously. So here are some of Bill's comments about the show, copied with his permission.

I am trying with Revolution, but the premise and science are so ridiculous, I am having a hard time suspending belief.  Too many holes in the mythos, and not enough action or character development yet to truly hook me. Still trying, though.  But really, where are the steam engines?  And lightning? 

I can understand nothing happening for a year or two after the blackout, okay.  Maybe you were busy surviving.  But no one comes up with windmill?  I am not talking big time stuff here.  A flour mill.  A steam car on the railroad.  Apparently they have great looms and sewing machines, but can’t generate mechanical power?

The idea that a natural force like electricity could be snuffed out is just too farfetched.  Lightning.  A magnet moving past a wire.  Leyden jars. Static electricity, for crissake!!!!!! It makes no sense.

I read a story a few years ago where a scientist released a bug/organism/nanobot type thing that ate oil.  Designed to stop spills.  Only it kept going and ate all petroleum and petroleum products (by design, the inventor was nuts).  THAT made sense.  It could happen.  And we could reverse it by stopping the bug.  Oil was created through a series of events (dinosaurs, time, pressure, etc.), and the world could go one without it.  But electricity?  Nope, sorry.  It would require altering laws of nature, and I have to think such a thing would cause so many other problems that we would not survive. They come up with a plausible (in their own mythos) reason for it, maybe I’ll bite, but right now it magnifies every other gripe about the characters and writing.

[I then commented on how I totally agreed with all his points, but when watching television I possess a remarkable ability to turn off my brain and just enjoy the story]

I am with you on the turning off/tuning out.  I LIKE getting lost in the show. But for me, the premise was fishy, and they just kept piling improbable on impossible, and that made me look for other mythology problems.  And I found them.  Lots of them.  Too many to shut down. If they had not tried to be all science-y, I could just accept it.  Magic, voila.  But they indicated this was based in science, man made stuff.  And they can’t use OUR world, our time, and ignore what every high school science student (okay, science geek) knows about electricity.  I realize that if science is foreign or unimportant to you anyway, you can set it aside and watch for the ‘venturing.  And I envy that.  But they need to give me something to care about more than how the lights could go out.

So it sounds like Bill is passing on Revolution. I hope some of you (like me) are still enjoying the show, but fair enough if you can't get past the implausibility. Hopefully you can find something else to get your sci-fi fix!