Charlie. She's at an age where she thinks she knows everything, when she, in fact, knows very little about very little because she hasn't been anywhere, but she learns everything with such zeal. She's still young enough that things are catastrophized and dramatic, but she's old enough to sometimes be wise beyond her years about her mother and Miles. She loves like Miles does: completely and irrevocably, so no, I don't think there's anything Miles could do or has done that she wouldn't forgive - or at least that would make her angry enough to cut him completely out of her life. I don't think Charlie cares much about the United States, since she was a little kid when it collapsed, nor do I think turning the power back on has a very concrete meaning to her. But I also don't think her only purpose is revenge against or overthrowing Monroe. I think by the time we got to the season finale, Rachel was calling the shots, and Charlie was more following Miles and Rachel to keep the family together. I think at a pretty basic level, sticking with
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(I am working late tonight so I am strike commenting before I go back to regular work and then extra-regular work *pffs*. I will reply to your Rev comments and I totally chuffed you liked it :D I have answers for some of the questions, others I will pretend I did deliberately while nodding sagely :D)
I think Charlie could be a leader. We saw her take charge during Love Boat, but she tends to fade into the background more around Miles and her Mom. Miles has years of experience and she defers to that, while she and Rachel still have no...blueprint for interaction other than adult and child?
...Ben didn't have a strong moral core. I know some people like him, but from what we've seen on screen he was arrogant, careless and self-serving. The morality we did see - not fighting the militia - was more about lying low. If anything, the kids probably got their moral core from AARON and you know he's not my favourite person. What he is, though, is a bit of a nerd and I can imagine him half-assing stories for the kids about Star Wars and
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I have answers for some of the questions, others I will pretend I did deliberately while nodding sagely :D
One of the most rewarding aspects of good writing is all the stuff that just comes out of the author that they were not even conscious of but their readers pick up on and bring to life. The relationship between author and reader is the coolest, and I always say: Reading is an art, too. It's far from passive.
I would engage with your comments on Ben and Aaron, but I'll save them for Ben and Aaron week, otherwise I'll have us on enormous tangents, because you know us and our interminable arguing. ;)
I completely agree on your take on Charlie, regarding caring about people (and family) more than ideals. I think the more she learns about Rachel, Miles and Ben and the things they've done, the easier it'll be for her to forgive people like Bass (or at least accept him) because the people around her, the people she loves are all shades of gray and she still accepts them (even if it's a struggle), I think Charlie is the type to try and look for the good in everyone and she could eventually (with enough exposure) see the good in Bass. It helps that unlike Rachel, she wasn't held prisoner by him and didn't really see first hand his cruelty. But on the other hand, she doesn't have a "pre blackout" Bass to compare him to, like Miles does, so she only knows current power-hungry dictator Monroe.
I think Charlie is having the hardest time forgiving her mother, and things will get even harder when she realizes how her mother cheated with Miles on Ben. I get the sense she'll blame Rachel even more than Miles for it. She's just not over the
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I think the more she learns about Rachel, Miles and Ben and the things they've done, the easier it'll be for her to forgive people like Bass (or at least accept him) because the people around her, the people she loves are all shades of gray and she still accepts them (even if it's a struggle), I think Charlie is the type to try and look for the good in everyone and she could eventually (with enough exposure) see the good in Bass.Yeah, this is great. I REALLY hope the show uses revelations about Ben to make Charlie realize that dire circumstances (like being faced with the death of one's son or maybe even wife - because it was dangerous for Rachel to carry Danny, right?) make people behave in drastic ways. Ben is the kind of untouchable hero right now in Charlie's eyes because he was her dad, her protector, and died prematurely. But as she learns more about why Rachel might have cheated on him, or how he treated Miles, or how much influence he had over the Blackout - she's going to have to come to terms with the fact that everyone she
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Ben is the kind of untouchable hero right now in Charlie's eyes because he was her dad, her protector, and died prematurely. But as she learns more about why Rachel might have cheated on him, or how he treated Miles, or how much influence he had over the Blackout - she's going to have to come to terms with the fact that everyone she loves is extremely problematic.
I have issues with how they're painting/might paint Ben, because I'm still traumatized from Supernatural and John Winchester getting character assassinated post-mortem. I don't mind making Ben a complex character, but almost every single flashback so far has painted him in a negative light- he sold their invention to the DOD not to save Danny (like Rachel) but for greed, he failed to protect his family (Rachel shot the thief), his latest tense flashback scenes with Rachel. I want to see some of the good flashbacks.
I really believe that they believed they were saving people from themselves.Yeah, that was definitely a slippery slope and "road to hell is paved with good
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I have issues with how they're painting/might paint Ben, because I'm still traumatized from Supernatural and John Winchester getting character assassinated post-mortem. I don't mind making Ben a complex character, but almost every single flashback so far has painted him in a negative light- he sold their invention to the DOD not to save Danny (like Rachel) but for greed, he failed to protect his family (Rachel shot the thief), his latest tense flashback scenes with Rachel. I want to see some of the good flashbacks.I know you've mentioned this before, and it's funny - I don't really feel like Ben's been presented in a solely negative light. The most lasting impression I have of Ben is from his interactions with Charlie - her grief and pain at losing him in the Pilot, but more importantly, the scene from Kashmir when she is dying and hallucinates him. His tenderness and kindness is palpable - and that's a product of her imagination, so that's how she viewed him (rather like how we get to see how Miles viewed Bass as friend in that ep).
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I know you've mentioned this before, and it's funny - I don't really feel like Ben's been presented in a solely negative light.
You're right about Charlie's memories of him being positive (despite him not letting her go on adventures and chaining her to her brother basically), but all of this was in the first half, not the second half and I feel that we're moving steadily away from Ben being important. You could argue that Ben in Kashmir was her ideal dad and that it's a fantasy that's meant to seduce her to "keep sleeping", rather than wake up and face the harsh truth. Also I gotta side-eye Ben for his "they'd better be hunting" in the Pilot while he was drinking his morning coffee- I didn't see him doing anything too important, how about he provide for his family instead? Also, I really need some post-Rachel-leaving flashbacks, because I need to see the Ben-Charlie dynamic and why she made her whole life about Danny and his safety- which again, should be Ben's job as their parent.
Again, I didn't see this as a black and white bad thing, but rather, that some humans are able to kill to protect loved ones and others might not be able to kill even when the circumstances are dire. Sure, maybe he's not a survivor, but couldn't you also view him as a pacifist and therefore more moral than Rachel? You're right, but it's an early S1 flashback, before we started seeing more of pre-blackout Ben in the flashbacks that I found problematic. It's more about adding it all up to paint a certain picture. But in this specific episode, I think the moral was that "the world is different and sometimes you have to change with it and take a life"- there was a parallel between Rachel killing the thief and Charlie killing those Militia guys. I could definitely view Ben's actions as moral and pacifistic (if he hadn't help kill 80% of the world), but I'm not sure if that's the stance of the show. Danny was an idiot for saving Neville's life, instead of escaping and letting "an act of God" smite Neville. He got that from his dad.
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Then the show promoted Bobby as a surrogate father figure and started dissing John, even going so far as giving him a family that the boys knew nothing about- and being a better father to that other son. It got to the point that even Jeffrey dean Morgan (who played John) said it would be difficult for him to come back, given how they've basically trashed his character since he's been off the show.
Yikes. That does sound traumatic for the viewer. I can see why you'd feel burned by Supernatural, and then Revolution would feel rather like being asked out by an ex who seems all nice at first and then starts dropping hints that he's the same old dick. ;) Here's hoping that does NOT happen!
I don't think Danny had health issues when Ben approached the DOD. I guess you're right about that. Thinking back to that ep, it did seem like pregnant Rachel had her first hint of a Danny problem after the DOD thing already happened. Ben and Rachel could have had serious financial problems though if, let's say, they were still graduate students.
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Still in two parts, cause I'm ranty that way- sorry.
Yikes. That does sound traumatic for the viewer. I can see why you'd feel burned by Supernatural, and then Revolution would feel rather like being asked out by an ex who seems all nice at first and then starts dropping hints that he's the same old dick. ;) Here's hoping that does NOT happen!
Yup, and that's not even mentioning how Supernatural only has two leads and managed to demonize one brother and saintify the other. I'm at least not worried about that happening on Revolution right now.
Ben and Rachel could have had serious financial problems though if, let's say, they were still graduate students.Could be, but like I said- that's pure speculation. All Ben said was that they needed the money to keep the lights on. We can make up excuses and reasons and talk about how hard they were struggling and Ben was doing it all for his family.... But unless we see/hear any of it on the show, it's fanon reasoning and not canon, which is my problem. Ben isn't allowed to tell his side of
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Yep. Total spec. *grins* But we do have to connect pieces across episodes as viewers, so I'm hoping some of those flashbacks will gain more relevance once we learn a little more.
That's the writers' job though and I felt they did a better job of it in the first half than the second. Other than Nora's flashback, I never felt that there were repetitive or pointless flashbacks in the first half. The second half didn't have flashbacks all the time, the flashback in Home was pointless and could have been conveyed in a sentence (and lacked any character building moments), while episodes that could use character driven flashback didn't have any (we could have had Nora insight in 'Clue', rather than waste flashbacks on one-off characters like Alec and Emma).
What I really want is to see some flashbacks of Miles and Ben interacting, as kids and adultsI need this like I need air. I have no clue what they relationship was like, because all I've got to go on is the phone conversation in the
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Don't even start me flailing my little hands about the fact that the biggest danger ever posited about nanite tech is the grey goo scenario. There should have been safeguards.
BUT...was the Blackout an accident? Ben knew that the lights weren't going to come back on. He KNEW when he called Miles, before the switch was flipped. So the Blackout wasn't 'something went wrong' (which Rachel knows too) but a deliberate thing.
....yes, I know I beady eyed you guys, but this is good!
Just to bring it back to Charlie, I think she's (much more than Danny ever was) on a journey of: can a good person survive in a world like this, or do good people necessarily have to die off because only the immoral can hack it? And I think that Charlie is the middle-ground? She was mirrored so precisely with Bass during the early episodes, but where Bass lost his moral centre to immediate necessity and Ben hid away from the world so he could play pacifist - Charlie found a way to do what she had to do while keeping
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Don't even start me flailing my little hands about the fact that the biggest danger ever posited about nanite tech is the grey goo scenario. There should have been safeguards.
BUT...was the Blackout an accident? Ben knew that the lights weren't going to come back on. He KNEW when he called Miles, before the switch was flipped. So the Blackout wasn't 'something went wrong' (which Rachel knows too) but a deliberate thing.
It wasn't accidental, but I'm not sure if the scientist knew what the government's intent really was? Maybe they knew it was possible or Grace found out about the secret plans and alerted the rest. I doubt Ben and Rachel would have said "ok, whatever" if they knew with enough time in advance to do something to stop it.
And I think that Charlie is the middle-ground? She was mirrored so precisely with Bass during the early episodes, but where Bass lost his moral centre to immediate necessity and Ben hid away from the world so he could play pacifist - Charlie found a way to do what
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I am being good and saving my Ben speculation for his week. beady eyes But I do agree with ivy_bhe's been cast more shady in the second half of the season. Just a bit - but I think they were trying to whitewash Rachel - so Ben becomes the one pushing the nanites?
And yeah, John was never Dad of the Year, but he did the best he could with the absolutely insane situation he found himself in. Then it was revealed he was borderline abusive, neglectful and a bad husband and it's really hard to justify the second family even with the best squint in the world.
(Most fans go with 'well, John could be a good Dad to Adam because Adam wasn't in danger from the demons like his own kids. Except he couldn't give his own kids some normalcy? He couldn't give Adam some training in protecting himself in case any demon tracked him down? ...poor Adam.)
I am being good and saving my Ben speculation for his week.
Umm, yeah, that sounds smart. Sorry, I guess we got a bit ahead of ourselves.
he's been cast more shady in the second half of the season. Just a bit - but I think they were trying to whitewash Rachel - so Ben becomes the one pushing the nanites?
Not just me then, good to know. I feel like the Revolution writers can only deal with extremes- Miles was General Matheson once, so he didn't just do bad things for good reasons, he was 'The Butcher' and evil and he was rapey towards his sister in law. The Militia are all evil rapey bastards, cause God forgive they actually are competent at running the Republic and the lesser of various evils. Rachel helped break the world, but we need to give her a redemption arc, so let's lay it all on Ben and say that whatever Rachel did, she did for Danny.
And yeah, John was never Dad of the Year, but he did the best he could with the absolutely insane situation he found himself in. Then it was revealed he was borderline abusive, neglectful
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I think Charlie could be a leader. We saw her take charge during Love Boat, but she tends to fade into the background more around Miles and her Mom. Miles has years of experience and she defers to that, while she and Rachel still have no...blueprint for interaction other than adult and child?
...Ben didn't have a strong moral core. I know some people like him, but from what we've seen on screen he was arrogant, careless and self-serving. The morality we did see - not fighting the militia - was more about lying low. If anything, the kids probably got their moral core from AARON and you know he's not my favourite person. What he is, though, is a bit of a nerd and I can imagine him half-assing stories for the kids about Star Wars and ( ... )
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One of the most rewarding aspects of good writing is all the stuff that just comes out of the author that they were not even conscious of but their readers pick up on and bring to life. The relationship between author and reader is the coolest, and I always say: Reading is an art, too. It's far from passive.
I would engage with your comments on Ben and Aaron, but I'll save them for Ben and Aaron week, otherwise I'll have us on enormous tangents, because you know us and our interminable arguing. ;)
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I think Charlie is having the hardest time forgiving her mother, and things will get even harder when she realizes how her mother cheated with Miles on Ben. I get the sense she'll blame Rachel even more than Miles for it. She's just not over the ( ... )
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I have issues with how they're painting/might paint Ben, because I'm still traumatized from Supernatural and John Winchester getting character assassinated post-mortem. I don't mind making Ben a complex character, but almost every single flashback so far has painted him in a negative light- he sold their invention to the DOD not to save Danny (like Rachel) but for greed, he failed to protect his family (Rachel shot the thief), his latest tense flashback scenes with Rachel. I want to see some of the good flashbacks.
I really believe that they believed they were saving people from themselves.Yeah, that was definitely a slippery slope and "road to hell is paved with good ( ... )
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I know you've mentioned this before, and it's funny - I don't really feel like Ben's been presented in a solely negative light.
You're right about Charlie's memories of him being positive (despite him not letting her go on adventures and chaining her to her brother basically), but all of this was in the first half, not the second half and I feel that we're moving steadily away from Ben being important. You could argue that Ben in Kashmir was her ideal dad and that it's a fantasy that's meant to seduce her to "keep sleeping", rather than wake up and face the harsh truth. Also I gotta side-eye Ben for his "they'd better be hunting" in the Pilot while he was drinking his morning coffee- I didn't see him doing anything too important, how about he provide for his family instead? Also, I really need some post-Rachel-leaving flashbacks, because I need to see the Ben-Charlie dynamic and why she made her whole life about Danny and his safety- which again, should be Ben's job as their parent.
And, btw, I' ( ... )
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Again, I didn't see this as a black and white bad thing, but rather, that some humans are able to kill to protect loved ones and others might not be able to kill even when the circumstances are dire. Sure, maybe he's not a survivor, but couldn't you also view him as a pacifist and therefore more moral than Rachel? You're right, but it's an early S1 flashback, before we started seeing more of pre-blackout Ben in the flashbacks that I found problematic. It's more about adding it all up to paint a certain picture. But in this specific episode, I think the moral was that "the world is different and sometimes you have to change with it and take a life"- there was a parallel between Rachel killing the thief and Charlie killing those Militia guys. I could definitely view Ben's actions as moral and pacifistic (if he hadn't help kill 80% of the world), but I'm not sure if that's the stance of the show. Danny was an idiot for saving Neville's life, instead of escaping and letting "an act of God" smite Neville. He got that from his dad. ( ... )
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Yikes. That does sound traumatic for the viewer. I can see why you'd feel burned by Supernatural, and then Revolution would feel rather like being asked out by an ex who seems all nice at first and then starts dropping hints that he's the same old dick. ;) Here's hoping that does NOT happen!
I don't think Danny had health issues when Ben approached the DOD. I guess you're right about that. Thinking back to that ep, it did seem like pregnant Rachel had her first hint of a Danny problem after the DOD thing already happened. Ben and Rachel could have had serious financial problems though if, let's say, they were still graduate students. ( ... )
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Yikes. That does sound traumatic for the viewer. I can see why you'd feel burned by Supernatural, and then Revolution would feel rather like being asked out by an ex who seems all nice at first and then starts dropping hints that he's the same old dick. ;) Here's hoping that does NOT happen!
Yup, and that's not even mentioning how Supernatural only has two leads and managed to demonize one brother and saintify the other. I'm at least not worried about that happening on Revolution right now.
Ben and Rachel could have had serious financial problems though if, let's say, they were still graduate students.Could be, but like I said- that's pure speculation. All Ben said was that they needed the money to keep the lights on. We can make up excuses and reasons and talk about how hard they were struggling and Ben was doing it all for his family.... But unless we see/hear any of it on the show, it's fanon reasoning and not canon, which is my problem. Ben isn't allowed to tell his side of ( ... )
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Yep. Total spec. *grins* But we do have to connect pieces across episodes as viewers, so I'm hoping some of those flashbacks will gain more relevance once we learn a little more.
That's the writers' job though and I felt they did a better job of it in the first half than the second. Other than Nora's flashback, I never felt that there were repetitive or pointless flashbacks in the first half. The second half didn't have flashbacks all the time, the flashback in Home was pointless and could have been conveyed in a sentence (and lacked any character building moments), while episodes that could use character driven flashback didn't have any (we could have had Nora insight in 'Clue', rather than waste flashbacks on one-off characters like Alec and Emma).
What I really want is to see some flashbacks of Miles and Ben interacting, as kids and adultsI need this like I need air. I have no clue what they relationship was like, because all I've got to go on is the phone conversation in the ( ... )
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Don't even start me flailing my little hands about the fact that the biggest danger ever posited about nanite tech is the grey goo scenario. There should have been safeguards.
BUT...was the Blackout an accident? Ben knew that the lights weren't going to come back on. He KNEW when he called Miles, before the switch was flipped. So the Blackout wasn't 'something went wrong' (which Rachel knows too) but a deliberate thing.
....yes, I know I beady eyed you guys, but this is good!
Just to bring it back to Charlie, I think she's (much more than Danny ever was) on a journey of: can a good person survive in a world like this, or do good people necessarily have to die off because only the immoral can hack it?
And I think that Charlie is the middle-ground? She was mirrored so precisely with Bass during the early episodes, but where Bass lost his moral centre to immediate necessity and Ben hid away from the world so he could play pacifist - Charlie found a way to do what she had to do while keeping ( ... )
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Don't even start me flailing my little hands about the fact that the biggest danger ever posited about nanite tech is the grey goo scenario. There should have been safeguards.
BUT...was the Blackout an accident? Ben knew that the lights weren't going to come back on. He KNEW when he called Miles, before the switch was flipped. So the Blackout wasn't 'something went wrong' (which Rachel knows too) but a deliberate thing.
It wasn't accidental, but I'm not sure if the scientist knew what the government's intent really was? Maybe they knew it was possible or Grace found out about the secret plans and alerted the rest. I doubt Ben and Rachel would have said "ok, whatever" if they knew with enough time in advance to do something to stop it.
And I think that Charlie is the middle-ground? She was mirrored so precisely with Bass during the early episodes, but where Bass lost his moral centre to immediate necessity and Ben hid away from the world so he could play pacifist - Charlie found a way to do what ( ... )
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And yeah, John was never Dad of the Year, but he did the best he could with the absolutely insane situation he found himself in. Then it was revealed he was borderline abusive, neglectful and a bad husband and it's really hard to justify the second family even with the best squint in the world.
(Most fans go with 'well, John could be a good Dad to Adam because Adam wasn't in danger from the demons like his own kids. Except he couldn't give his own kids some normalcy? He couldn't give Adam some training in protecting himself in case any demon tracked him down? ...poor Adam.)
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Umm, yeah, that sounds smart. Sorry, I guess we got a bit ahead of ourselves.
he's been cast more shady in the second half of the season. Just a bit - but I think they were trying to whitewash Rachel - so Ben becomes the one pushing the nanites?
Not just me then, good to know. I feel like the Revolution writers can only deal with extremes- Miles was General Matheson once, so he didn't just do bad things for good reasons, he was 'The Butcher' and evil and he was rapey towards his sister in law. The Militia are all evil rapey bastards, cause God forgive they actually are competent at running the Republic and the lesser of various evils. Rachel helped break the world, but we need to give her a redemption arc, so let's lay it all on Ben and say that whatever Rachel did, she did for Danny.
And yeah, John was never Dad of the Year, but he did the best he could with the absolutely insane situation he found himself in. Then it was revealed he was borderline abusive, neglectful ( ... )
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