What I learned from watching the Revolution pilot:

1. When the power goes out all planes immediately go into a flat spin and kill everyone in them, but cars nicely stop, and no accidents.

2. 15 years in the future no one has figured out how to make a steam engine or a windmill, but there are plenty of brand new skinny jeans, leather jackets, freshly pressed t-shirts, and hair product. The grand tradition of distilling is still alive though.

3. Bullets require electricity, so everyone is using muskets. Except pistols, those are fine.

4. There are giant old growth forests (with RVs in them) a couple days walk from Chicago.

5. Magically USB keys not only power computers after the crash, but also cause near by light bulbs to come to life. And apparently the ham community is still running and eagerly awaiting with their own magical USB key somewhere else eagerly typing at their keyboard.

Yes it’s just a TV show, but there was so much laziness in the story telling that any promise of their being a real payoff to this story seems very low. The throw away “physics went crazy” is just a cop out to explain any of this stuff. That level of laziness means there never is going to be payoff on the actual story. And the characters are pretty flat. Having been along for the ride with Lost, and then getting the steaming pile that was the sideways universe in Season 6, I’m not giving J J Abrams the benefit of the doubt here.

For a much more interesting, and less intellectually lazy, take on what a post power fail future looks like, check out Jericho. The bonus being the pilot episodes end with basically the same scene in front of a computer.