The “Revolution” will be televised – but only one more episode until the fall.
The freshman season finale of NBC’s hit series about life after a near-apocalyptic power outage airs June 3, and the rebels ready for a climactic assault on the Tower in hopes of ending the Blackout – with potentially catastrophic consequences they haven’t anticipated. Writer/producer David Rambo and the cast reflect on where their characters have ended up over the course of the season, their need-to-know when it comes to the show’s well-kept secrets and their personal feelings about technology dependence.
Elizabeth Mitchell: There's definitely a quest at the end for season two, but it's not so much what we've been questing for in season one.
Billy Burke: They set it up so that when we do find out what actually transpired that you're more interested in other stuff by then. If it were just going to be a show about the power going away, then it wouldn't have been very interesting. Really, once you do take that power away, and that way of life away, the show just becomes about, ‘Don't die, and take care of and fight for what you love.’ And that's really what the show's about, so the power's sort of secondary to that…Miles starts to reveal some things about himself that he would never have even admitted to having, and he starts to realize that there's more to care about then himself. I mean, he's just a selfish bastard, but he starts to realize that these annoying, f**king people that he's been hanging around with for so long, he actually does start to care about them.
On the bigger picture of the show, and what they knew ahead of time about the many mysteries and secrets the show revealed at crucial junctures:
David Rambo: I can tell you we didn't know any of it. I don't even think [series creator] Eric Kripke knew. He's one of the great poker players of plot. He does not show all of his cards, what he's thinking of, until he hears what everybody else is thinking, cause if there's a better idea, he's going to run with it. We came in with some big ideas, about ‘Hey we could try this or we try that,’ but it was not mapped out.
Burke: We all deal with it – we'll get scripts and something will be said or some action will take place, and we will be like ‘What? Why?’ And we'll be on the phone with Kripke – and for me, a lot of it was like, ‘How is this going to be redeemable?’ And he'll say a couple things, and I'll go, ‘All right.’ And we just kind of go on blind faith.
Mitchell: I ask a lot of questions to begin with, and because I'm a dork and a geek and I love my work so much, I write up something and say ‘Does that make sense? Is that true? Did that happen? Is that possible?’ And they usually let me know ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ or ‘Possibly’ or ‘Kind of along those lines’ or that sort of thing. They didn't feel like I needed to know things, but I did. So, yes, I armed myself, and I think that my five-page ‘Is this true?’ was helpful. I had a couple conversations with Eric and he's been really good about it. He knows I like to kind of know.
Zak Orth: The show is so big and it's so ambitious in its reach that the information is all being crammed into a funnel and made into a show. There's not a lot of lead time for these things. Where that might appear frustrating or strange to deal with has actually sort of become a strength. Your character wouldn't know – why should you? You have to trust them that whatever is coming down the pipe for you is not going to create any cognitive dissonance and you'll be able to do it.
Daniella Alonso: The producers will get back to and answer and explain, but for example I had thought that Nora knew about Miles’ past with Rachel and I just decided to ask Eric one day and he was like ‘NO.’ ‘But what about all those looks?’ ‘No. That was something else.’ ‘Good to know!’
On how they handle the notion of tech-dependence in their own lives:
Burke: In the initial stages making the show we talked about it a lot. And the reality is you never really know what you would do, but you start to realize how much you do rely on it. It kind of gives one pause in that it's a bit disgusting, what we've now become in 2013. We are so reliant on power and technology for everything. It does make you think about, ‘Okay – If that was all gone, what do I really care about?’ Recorded music – that's the one thing I would miss the most. I can do without a television or a telephone, I think. As long as I surrounded myself with the people that I cared about, the communication thing would be all right with me. But, yeah, recorded music, that would suck not having.
Mitchell: I take away electronics from my kids all the time, but I always have. Because I don't love it. I understand that it's prevalent, and it's everywhere, but I like us to look each other in the eye. But once that genie's out of the bottle, it's almost too late. That's all they want to do, right? But, yeah, I think about personal interaction. I spent my childhood outside. My mom, we'd come home, and she'd be like, ‘Out, out, out.’ And you'd be like, ‘Okay, sure.’
Alonso: I’m so not tech-addicted at all. Actually, just a few years ago I looked down and I saw my computer and my remotes and my cell phone and my iPod and all this stuff, and I was like ‘I just can’t…’ So I got rid of everything. Got rid of my cell phone for two years. I was like ‘I don’t want this to control me.’ It was just overwhelming. It was crazy, but I’m stubborn so I was like ‘I’m gonna do this!’ I tried it, but it didn’t totally work.
Rambo: We've talked about what we would do in that circumstance. They all want to come to my house because I have a nice, big wine cellar and lots of candles.
