Revolution Kashmir Review!

The ninth episode entitled Kashmir is the second to last to air before Revolution will take the rather long break until late March. Unfortunately Kashmir was hardly the game changing episode that the show needed in order to secure proper viewer ratings when it will return to air. Instead, Kashmir can be best described as a bottle show intended to save funds for the mid-season finale airing next week. This may raise hopes for the next episode but also means that Kashmir is flawed when it comes to action scenes and the exciting context that go along with them. This episode focuses mostly on delivering drama to its audience but after every character has had a flashback in previous episodes it is either not necessary or it flat-out doesn’t work. Kashmir is saved by the last scene involving a showdown between General Monroe (David Lyons) and Rachel Matheson (Elizabeth Mitchell). If my surmises are correct,  Bad Robot productions can write up another cancelled show to their name after this episode….

As for the plot off Kashmir…

Charlie and the group get closer to rescuing Danny. With the aid of the rebels they use abandoned subway tunnels to get under the walls of a heavily defended Philadelphia. However, their efforts are impeded when they begin to hallucinate due to oxygen deprivation after a mined tunnel collapses. During his hallucinations it is revealed that Miles fears that if Monroe asked him to rejoin the Militia, he would abandon his friends and do so. As they finally manage to reach an exit that isn’t bricked up the rebel that guided them takes Miles captive and reveals himself to be a spy for General Monroe with the rebels. One of the rebel women accompanying them is killed when she tries to rescue Miles, Charlie (Tracy Spiridakos) manages to arrow the spy but also suffers a glancing bruise to her head when the spy manages to shoot her in his death throes. Charlie stays for a while in a coma where she has an encounter with her deceased father Ben, after she awakens Miles thanks her for rescuing her, he refers to more than just his plight with the spy.

Meanwhile Rachel, still under duress by Monroe, purports to be building a device to enhance the radius of the pendant devices, but Rachel’s former colleague Dr. Jaffrey reveals it to be a bomb. In order to maintain her usefulness to Monroe, Rachel kills Jaffrey.

Conclusion…

As stated in the introduction Kashmir was hardly a good episode, you would have to pick out individual scenes in order to say that anything memorable remains of this episode. The scene between a hallucinating Miles Matheson and General Monroe to the music of Led Zeppelin was OK but in my mind tried to hard and the resolution was rather weak. The final scene between General Monroe and Rachel Matheson was probably the most sincere drama we have seen on Revolution so far. The intensity reaches a boiling point as Monroe screams that both she (Rachel) and her son Danny are so dead after her deception is just frightening. Rachel plunging a screw driver into the heart of her former colleague so Monroe must keep her alive was a twist I didn’t see coming. The implications are that her former colleague’s daughter will probably end up dead because of it wasn’t lost on me. The episode ends with a General Monroe who is just fuming with anger, his face shows his slow decline into mental illness after he already whacked the son of one of his generals in the previous episode.

That final last scene is pretty much the only thing keeping me interested in the mid-season finale of next week. The rest of the episode simply didn’t try hard enough for me and probably alienated viewers who believe they have already seen it all before. Revolution suffers from a sense of predictability, so far the twists in the story have been few and we are merely seeing the characters going through the motions in order to get to the final showdown.

If change isn’t forthcoming than the only thing that will prevent Revolution from being cancelled during the mid-season break are violence, gore, tanks and boobs.

Score; 6 / 10. Saved by the bell (hmm, last scene).

Viewer Rating; 7.02 million. Another decline though not as much as I would have guessed.

Source; www.nbc.com/revolution

Here is the exciting preview of next weeks episode entitled ‘Nobody’s Fault But Mine’, I hope the episode will live up to the promise as Revolution has been no stranger to deceptive promo’s.