Revolution, Season 1, Episode 15: “Home”
Written by David Rambo
Directed by Jon Cassar
Airs Mondays at 10 pm (ET) on NBC
At its heart, Revolution is a show about coping with loss. The loss of power. The loss of comrades. The loss of loved ones. “Home” deals most broadly with the latter across its two stories.
Aaron sees his wife for the first time since he abandoned her. She’s moved on and has a family. He still pines for her. The setup and execution is maudlin. It was painfully clear Aaron would attempt prove that he could, in fact, protect Priscilla. A heroic moment doesn’t really add more pathos to a character who seems irrelevant to the overarching plot.
There is also little reason for us to care about Emma, as admirably as Annie Wersching tries to flesh out the character. There’s been little groundwork laid for this triangle or the men’s attachment to the people in their hometown. If Miles struggled to accept his niece at first, why would he be overly concerned with the townspeople he grew up with and left behind? He’s been painted as a lone wolf since leaving the Monroe Republic. This mini saga comes out of nowhere and is completely ineffective at adding greater tension between Monroe and Miles. Their relationship is already about as contentious as it can get, and the storyline comes across as a lazy way to fill time for an episode.
That Monroe has fathered a child is a easy plot twist on the surface. It gives him something to do, however, beyond trying to snuff out the rebel uprising. He has a purpose beyond his power. He now has a legacy to discover; a quest to continue the lineage of the Monroe Republic, assuming he can fend off the rebels. It somewhat makes up for the hamfisted attempt to make Monroe sympathetic with the visit to his parents’ grave and family home.
Revolution does some of its best work on the family scale but there needs to be a balance. The brief battle in the opening and the firefight in Miles’s and Monroe’s hometown is lacking some of the punch seen elsewhere. Miles’s stone-faced execution of Emma’s killer is bad-ass, however.
In dealing with the issue of loss more overtly than it has in previous installment, “Home” hits one distinct loss more than others: the hour spent watching this running-in-place episode.
– Kris Holt