For the past six weeks, I have been watching the NBC mini-series, Revelations. Why? It was something different and I am a fan of Bill Pullman.
After watching the final episode, I can honestly say that I would rather have watched moose copulating. They built this series up as some sort of epic good vs. evil battle royale. It turned out to be a six-hour long bad X-Files episode.
The story was about a nun (Natascha McElhone) and a scientist (Bill Pullman) searching for the second coming of Jesus Christ and a Satanic cult who murdered his daughter and kidnapped his son. These characters could have been crushed by an 18-wheeler in the first episode and it would have made no difference to the storyline. In the six hours of my life that was pissed away, nothing was resolved. The Anti-Christ and Jesus Christ were reborn, but the main characters never saw it nor anything they did changed anything.
Why would I rather have watched moose copulating than the Revelations? At least, the moose would have finished. I’m not a huge fan of witnessing a moose ejaculate, but it ends! With Revelations, there was no climax. Just good and evil walking off into the sunset waving angry fists at each other.
NBC, I am begging you to stop this nonsense. If you are going to show something that requires us to invest six hours of our precious free time, end the damn story! And if I see advertisements for a Revelations DVD, someone is going to be bludgeon to death with a Tivo.
I actually rather liked it, and plan to copy my Tivo’ed episodes onto VHS so I can watch them again some time.
One of the things I found interesting about the series was how you could trace certain thematic elements from “The Omen.” David Seltzer was the creator of “Revelations” and wrote the screenplay for “The Omen.” The seven daggers of Meggido in the movie were, for example, transformed into the Enochian daggers in the TV show. Enochian, by the way, is supposed to be the language that angels speak and write in.
I suspect that “Revelations” is an experiment like the USA Network’s “The 4400″: feeling out an audience with a miniseries before committing to a full-fledged season. “The 4400″ was successful in that a new season of it is due to be broadcast starting in June. Yay!
Another example is the USA Network’s movie “Frankenstein” with Parker Posey; from the loose ends deliberately left loose, it’s clear that if the ratings for it were favorable, we’ll either see more movies, or a new show. For my part, I liked that too. Go figure.
Will this “testing the water” strategy work for the networks? We’ll see when the Nielsen ratings come out for “The 4400.”
They were clearly setting up for a series… I enjoyed it. I have all the episodes on a DVD to watch on my laptop when I go to Cali next month.
Although, I will say, at about hour 4 I figured they weren’t going to be able to tie it all up. I still enjoyed it, though, and see a lot of potential for a series (if the NBC folks are into the idea). Anyone know how it did in the ratings?
What was the purpose of the nun and the scientist if nothing they did affected the overall storyline? They didn’t even get to witness either event that was taking place. What if the series isn’t picked up?
I had a problem with the standard formula that evil is well-prepared and understands everything that is happening while the good side sits around with their thumb up their ass until the very end. Does anyone really think that the Catholic Church would be caught with their pants down in this kind of situation? It would be kind of cool for once to see the good guys have a plan right from the beginning.
I guess I set my expectations too high, but I was just generally annoyed by the lack of some kind of ending.
The problem is that the good (holy cow, the Catholic Church is actually the good guys on TV!) is in a reactive position, while evil tends to be proactive and sets the tone.
The side of good also has its hands tied in that it simply can’t just drop a fuel-air bomb onto a prison where the herald of the Anti-Christ is starting a riot.
It actually makes sense insofar as the nature of self-defense is concerned: when you’re in the position of having to react all the time, you’re by nature behind the curve. Pre-emption is the only truly effective form of defense.
Actually, the Catholic Church wasn’t really the “good guys.” The Good Guys were Tovald Ekland and Sister Josefa, who were at best, outsiders because of their beliefs.
I know, this is late. I just forgot to write it earlier.
I still enjoyed it.