Well, You Know, We All Want to Change the World

S01E01

Ben and his wife and kids are living a perfectly nice life in Chicago, replete with gadgets and refrigerators and all manner of electrical goodies. And then the power goes out. And it doesn't come back on.

Fifteen years later, the power is still out, despite all manner of irate calls to ConEd. Ben has established a nice little settlement for himself; his two kids, Charlie and Danny; and his new girlfriend, Maggie. But then trouble rides into town and Ben gets himself shot by Breaking Baddie Giancarlo Esposito, and Danny gets kidnapped. Turns out Giancarlo works for the local strongman, General Sebastian Monroe, who seems to fall somewhere between Charles Taylor and Joseph Stalin on the list of awesome people you don't want running your local government. Before dying, Ben sends Charlie and Maggie off to find his brother, Miles, in Chicago.

Turns out Miles owns a bar in Chicago, and he's way smarter than Charlie, who keeps getting herself almost stabbed or raped or sold into white slavery or whatever because she likes to trust people. He's smart enough not to want any part of her insane let's-go-find-Danny goose chase, but after a bunch of Monroe's men try to murder him four different ways, Miles packs up all the whiskey he can carry and sets out to find his nephew... and his former buddy, because it turns out Sebastian Monroe and Miles used to be Marines together.

Also, this one lady still has power. And she is bogarting it. Not cool, lady.

Somewhere in Chicago, Charlie, a small child, is watching Bugs Bunny cartoons. Her brother is playing with an iPad. Charlie's mom tries to make her talk to her grandmother on Mom's iPhone, but Charlie is engrossed in Bugs. Brat. Charlie's dad, Ben, who looks eerily like Martin Donovan but is not him, arrives home in a panic and tells Charlie's mom to fill the sinks and tubs with water. She stops his hurry and says flatly, "It's happening. Isn't it."

Port Royal, South Carolina. A man in a car is texting on another iPhone. It's the Cape! Six seasons and a movie! He's making fun of his friend -- whom you might recognize as Bella Swan's dad but who I enjoyed as one of Jordana Spiro's (she's the Mob Doctor now, you know) hot boyfriends on the very decent TBS sitcom My Boys -- for having a non-smart phone. As a fellow Luddite, I sympathize. Ben calls the driver, who explains that Ben is his brother. Ben says, "It's all going to turn off and it will never, ever turn back on."

Before Ben can explain what "it" is (although it seems pretty self-explanatory to me), the power goes out. And it's not just the plugged-in things that turn off. Cell phones, laptops, car engines: everything dies. Ben is fiddling with some sort of flash drive, downloading something from his laptop, and it finishes just before the power goes out. Charlie's brother starts to cry. On the highway, Ben's brother's car has come to a stop; he and the Cape get out and look around and ask, "What the hell's going on?" Everyone else on the highway is all, Jesus Christ, not the zombies again. Ben goes outside and sees all the other houses going dark, then the Sears, er, Willis Tower, and then planes begin falling out of the sky. Which is pretty damn scary, and thanks, J.J., for not dwelling on that. From space, we watch as the entire Western Hemisphere goes dark, one light at a time. It's suitably creepy.

Fifteen years later. Cities are overgrown, flooded, overrun with wildlife, as a voiceover tells us about what we just saw -- the power is gone, even the power in batteries and cars, and it never came back. "Governments fell," the voiceover says. "Militias rose up. If you were smart, you left the city. If you weren't, you died there." Ugh. The idea of living without Seamless makes me sad.

By Sara Brady

Turns out the voiceover is coming from a bearded fellow whose chunky black-framed hipster glasses have survived the apocalypse, teaching a bunch of children in a settlement. Or trying to. His pupils seem like a pack of slack-jawed yokels. Hmph. And they thought Honey Boo Boo was going to make us all idiots. Ben comes out to greet Beardo, whose name is Aaron. He asks where Charlie and (her brother) Danny are; Aaron says they've gone hunting. "They better have," Ben says.

They have not gone hunting. Charlie is now a lovely, willowy lady and her brother is the kind of Iceman-from-X-Men hottie that makes you worry about Blue Lagoon-type scenarios. Together they're exploring an RV turned on its side. Charlie flashes back to just after the blackout, when her mom, who was that lady from Lost, let her eat all the ice cream in the freezer. Her dad tells her to remember what it tastes like. Because apparently winter will also never happen again and people will forget how to make ice cream? We made ice cream in my tenth-grade chemistry class by putting cream and sugar in bags and shaking it inside bigger bags of rock salt and ice. No electricity required! Get off my lawn, show.

In the RV, Danny has an asthma attack. Charlie takes him to some sort of granola healer lady, Maggie, who gives him a gnarly concoction to suck down. Ben shows up to chastise her for not taking care of her brother. Charlie is chafing at her father's restrictions, and he's all, the whole world is dangerous! Which it kind of does seem to be, yes. Maggie, who it turns out is Ben's new lady friend, tries to interject her opinion, and Charlie gets all YOU'RE NOT MY REAL MOM! and storms off.

Abandoned playground. Charlie finds her old Return of the Jedi lunchbox, full of a silent iPod and postcards of the big wide world. I find it odd that she'd have what is, at this point, a more than forty-year-old relic (assuming we're in about 2027 now). Do children even have lunchboxes now? Charlie flips through the postcard and wistfully hums "Part of Your World" under her breath. Not really, but only because the rights are usurious.

Back at the village, Giancarlo Esposito rides into town. Now, I've never watched Breaking Bad, but I understand he was a very bad man there, and given that he's accompanied by a bunch of black-garbed guys with weapons, he doesn't seem particularly angelic here. "What a beautiful village," he deadpans. It's not bad, actually, three or four McMansions with garden plots surrounding them, flowers growing in the engine cases of old VW Bugs. Lots of corn. My dad would love it.

By Sara Brady

Ben gives Aaron the silver flash drive/necklace thingy he downloaded a bunch of stuff to fifteen years ago, before the power went out, and tells him to keep it safe. Then he tells Giancarlo that the town has already paid their taxes. Giancarlo says this isn't about that, and asks for Ben Matheson. "You're looking at him," Ben replies. Giancarlo asks about Ben's brother, Miles. His task is to bring Ben and Miles to someone named General Sebastian Monroe, who is apparently fancy enough to have a republic named after him. Giancarlo has a creepy symbol (an M?) burned into his wrist, and the same symbol is stamped on the side of his wagon. He tells Ben to get in the wagon and come with him "or so help me I will conscript all of your children and I will reeducate them until they no longer remember your names." This fits so perfectly with the book about the Khmer Rouge I'm reading! I suppose Giancarlo will smash everyone's spectacles. Watch out, Beardo.

Ben asks for a moment and turns to say goodbye to Maggie. He asks her to look after the kids and she's all, "You're not going to come back, WTF." And then Danny pops up with a crossbow pointed at Giancarlo, which seems like a bad idea when everyone else also has crossbows and muskets. One of Giancarlo's men pulls a gun on Danny, and then other villagers pull their guns and things escalate and everything goes all Bunker Hill crossed with Stirling Bridge. Except the bad guys totally win.

Charlie hears her father get shot and comes running back from her little playground of hopes and dreams. Giancarlo's men drag Danny off while Ben lies dying in the street. Ben tells Charlie that his brother, Miles, is in Chicago, and that only Miles can get Danny back. Charlie's dimples do a whole bunch of "aw shucks, Pa" overacting, and possibly to escape her plaintive-trout face, Ben dies.

In the house, Charlie throws things in a bag. Given how sensibly she's acted so far, she's probably packing a yo-yo and her lunchbox and six shoelaces but no food or clean underwear. Maggie -- pretty calmly, really, for a lady whose boyfriend was just murdered in front of her -- asks her to wait to leave until after she's rested. Charlie bustles around urgently and generally acts like a spiky teenager while Maggie insists on coming with her to find Danny. Maggie's accent is somewhere halfway between Julia Ormond in Legends of the Fall and Miranda Otto in Lord of the Rings. I hope this means she gets to ride a horse and wave a sword, and then get naked with Brad Pitt circa 1995. They march out of town. Aaron goes with them.

Stabbyface is still lying on the ground as Mike explains that she's right-handed, so she did most of the writing herself, but someone else had to do her right arm and shoulder. Of course, the verses on her are from "The Raven." Her last words were also Poe's. Mike has done his homework or maybe he just watched that grim-looking John Cusack movie.

Mason comes over with Stabby's prints: she has seven names and visited Carroll repeatedly under two of them. Her phone was disposable. Mason hands Ryan her phone, with Sarah Fuller on the other end. Ryan assures Sarah she'll be safe (nope, I'm calling it now, she is the Drew Barrymore of this show) and she thanks him for calling. Uh, that conversation could've been done by text message.

Ryan returns Mason's phone, and she asks why Claire Matthews is refusing to talk to anyone but him. Because she has an unhealthy attachment to emotionally damaged lawmen! Come on.

Sarah's gay boyfriends, who are also her -door neighbors, are bitching about how they have to feed the cops and they want to know if one particular cute cop is single. On the TV, a psychologist is opining about how the ladies love Joe Carroll. Sarah flashes back to his class, where he's lecturing on insanity in art. Sarah is starstruck and gives the right answer, about how Poe believed nothing was as beautiful as the death of a beautiful woman. I'm pretty sure that's also the philosophy driving most of CBS's primetime dramas. Carroll smiles at her.

Mike is looking at the computer Carroll used, which he's infected with a virus so Mike can't figure out the sites he visited. Ryan asks who the guards were who were supposed to be supervising Carroll's Internet use and Riley says there was one constant, Jordan Raines. He's Candice Bergen's bum of a son from Miss Congeniality! And he helped Carroll escape.

The troops head to Raines's house. Turner bangs on the door and when there's no answer, they break the door in. The house is empty. Ryan finds a wall full of missing-dog flyers, and when Mike wakes up Raines's computer, there's a video of Raines with a puppy -- I don't think I can do this, you guys. Carry on without me until the threats of violence toward puppies are over. (I know. Animal violence bothers me more than people violence. I blame James Dobson.)

By Sara Brady

In the plane, our three wanderers are surprised to wake up with blades to their throats, courtesy of some unsavory-looking fellows. Maggie tries to avert disaster by giving the men her whiskey (note to self: stockpile whiskey to use as bribes, also only thing that makes life worth living when Kindle and DVR go dark). Despite Maggie's generosity, the bandits' leader carries Charlie off to do things to her that you can only do on Sons of Anarchy. But then his men start coughing up blood because of something in the whiskey (Drano? Razor blades? An inquiring public wants to know!) and Charlie's attacker suddenly has an arrow in his chest. It's Nate! Nate's back! So Nate A'Dayle joins their merry crew.

Maggie is suspicious of Nate's sudden appearance and asks his destination. Chicago, he says, to try to join a fishing crew. Oh, I bet there are pirates in Lake Michigan. That episode will be fun. Maggie reminds Charlie that they can't trust everyone, and Charlie snarks, "Is that why you carry poison whiskey? They can't all be monsters." Yeah, but you just got very clear evidence that some people are monsters. God, Charlie, we're only 32 minutes in. Try to be a little less too stupid to live.

Danny has escaped but wandered directly into a visible mass of free-floating pollen. His delicate trachea starts to close up and he collapses on in someone's backyard. Kind of amazing he's lived this long, really.

Charlie and company arrive in Chicago and stroll past various landmarks. Wrigley Field is abandoned and mossy, although in fairness the Cubs have been playing like they live in an apocalyptic wasteland for years now. People are fighting in the streets, there's an open-air market, and the lake has partially reclaimed the city. They find the Grand Hotel, and Aaron says back in the before times, he got married there. Inside it looks like the Deadwood saloon (from the TV show, not the deliciously cheesy movie, which I love), all dimly lit by kerosene lanterns. Which is very atmospheric, but I'm still finding it hard to believe that no one could jury-rig some better lighting sources in fifteen years. Third-graders can make batteries out of potatoes, for crying out loud. Anyway, Miles is the bartender at the Chicago House of Gloom and Firewater. He's all stubbly and grumbly. And he has whiskey. So in case of the apocalypse, I'm Team Miles. Maggie inquires after him and Miles says, "Never heard of him." Charlie explains that Ben is dead and tells Miles who she is. Miles tells her to come with him and Nate objects, palming his knife arrogantly. Miles smacks it out of his hand and has it against Nate's throat in a second. Charlie goes with him to a back room to talk.

By Sara Brady

Danny wakes up in a farmhouse, with a wary-looking black lady pointing a shotgun at him. But she gives him an inhaler, so he seems to have broken even. He explains why he still has handcuffs dangling from one wrist, and she asks if "Monroe's boys" followed him. Danny says he'll go, but when he just about keels over trying to get out of bed, she lowers the shotgun. This reminds me more than a little of the beginning of The Walking Dead. I wonder if we'll ever see Morgan again.

Charlie is explaining her sudden appearance to Miles, which doesn't take long: "My dad is dead, he said to come find you. Love meeeeee." She asks Miles why Monroe wants the Matheson men, although she doesn't do it quite so alliteratively. He says Monroe thinks Ben knew why the lights went out, and that he also knew how to turn them back on and told Miles the secret. It occurs to me that everyone's clothes look pretty good for fifteen years without manufacturing. Shouldn't they be wearing, like, homespun gingham or repurposed blankets or the kind of shmattes Laura Ingalls would've spent four books whining about? Miles explains further that if someone -- in this case, Monroe -- could turn the power back on, he'd have access to tanks, planes, and factories and could basically become the ruler of everything. And not in a nice, democratic way, either. Charlie's all, that sounds great, how do we get Danny back? Miles goes whoa, whoa, I have a spot here, kid. I'm not getting lured out of my spot by your baitfish brother.

Charlie pitches a hissy, of course, and starts overenunciating with her astonishingly-white-and-straight-for-fifteen-years-with-no-dentists-or-orthodontia teeth as she explains that her parents are dead and she doesn't know where her brother is and Miles has to help her because it's not faaaaaaaaaiiiiiirrrr. "Because we're family," she says for the first of forty million times. "Kid, I don't even know you," Miles replies, not unreasonably. Charlie storms out to where Maggie and the others are waiting. Nate and his cheekbones decide to play white knight and confront Miles, who grabs Nate's wrist and pulls up his sleeve to reveal his militia brand. Nate pulls a knife (again. So many knives). He head-butts Miles and backs out the door, arrow drawn. Aw, Nate Scarlett. I thought you were cool.

By Sara Brady

Charlie apologizes to Miles for blowing up his steez. Aaron asks what Miles plans to do now. Miles pulls out what he says is the last bottle of single malt in Chicago, and explains that he plans to drink it in the two, maybe three hours he has before Nate and the militia come back for him. How very Jason Dean of him. Charlie pleads with Miles to come with them, but he tells them to get out and let him get his drunk on in peace.

Giancarlo shows up at the farmhouse looking for Danny. Shotgun Lady lies that Giancarlo is the first person she's seen in weeks. Disarmingly, he takes off his sunglasses and asks what she did before the blackout. She was an algebra teacher. Well, that explains the gun. Giancarlo says he was an insurance adjuster, and that most of his job was figuring out if people were lying. He says there are day-old tracks leading to her back door, tracks that indicate a woman was dragging a man. She lets him in and he runs up the stairs, catching Danny trying to climb out an attic window. Ah. Well. Not as nice as the guy from The Walking Dead, after all.

The militia arrives at the Grand. Miles makes his last stand on the landing of the hotel's great staircase, then draws his sword. I am not being figurative. NBC, remembering how much we enjoyed all the Olympic fencing, now lets Miles go all D'Artagnan on the militia fellows (although this time there are no sobbing South Koreans). He has weapons hidden everywhere and he is a total badass. There's lots of stabby-shooty-punchy... musket reloady? Yeah, that part takes awhile. I guess the blackout took out all the semiautomatics as well, so we're back on flintlocks. At least the diehard Civil War reenactors will have something to be happy about after the world ends. The militia leader is just standing there letting his men get skewered and looking peeved.

Charlie and her crossbow show up to save Miles's bacon, and then Maggie and Aaron join the fight. I would suggest to Charlie that if the blackout didn't destroy all the world's supply of short bits of string that she tie back her glorious mane of hair before the elaborately choreographed battle scene, as that will make it easier for her to see her attacker when she gets cornered, but what do I know. Nate fends off the guy trying to kill Charlie, so maybe he's a good guy after all? Or he just wants to get into her pants. I bet that's it. Miles nonchalantly stabs one final guy, the eerily Littlefinger-looking militia leader, and surveys the damage. There is much damage.

By Sara Brady

Maggie sews up a gash on Miles's back while he grumps that he didn't ask them to come back and save him. "We're family," Charlie says again, overly earnestly. Miles has had enough too, because he says, "Kid, if I'm coming with you, you're going to have to dial it back a notch." Aaron still has the MacGuffin, in case you were wondering. Charlie has a photo of her sainted parents. Miles has the whiskey.

Miles flashes back to the highway where he and the Cape were stranded when the power went out. "We should get back to base," the Cape says. They were Marines stationed at Parris Island, apparently. Miles shows his ID to the guards at the base and is let in, but the Cape doesn't have his card. Instead he pulls up his sleeve to reveal... his giant M tattoo. "Sergeant Sebastian Monroe," he says. AAAAAHHHHHH. Back at the Grand, Miles is all haunted by the monster he helped create, or something.

Valley Forge. Er, Monroe's military encampment. Giancarlo's courier arrives and hands Monroe the message that says Ben is dead. Monroe seems peeved. Sure. Last time he was in Chicago, he was a handsome playboy doctor with a sexy Australian accent, and now the world has no toilet paper.

The farmhouse. Shotgun Lady unlocks an(other?) attic room. She has the same little gadget that Aaron does, and when she pushes something, the power comes on. She has an all wires-and-circuits setup that's controlling a computer monitor. See? She remembers the electronic potential of root vegetables! A War Games-green C: prompt has never looked so sweet. She tells someone the militia came, but they didn't find "it." She asks for further instructions.

time: More flashbacks to Dead Mommy. Nate is still following Charlie, and Miles is leading her into evil. I like Miles, you guys.