Monsters of Television

No one in this room actually thinks Charlie is going to stab anyone in the eyeball.

My first introduction to Tracy Spiridakos (our gal Charlie) was in a one-page “interview” from the August issue of GQ. As women featured in GQ are wont to do, she was artistically topless and wearing pink jeans that struggle to cover what you would think would be a behind easily masked by off-the-rack clothing but, lucky for us, this turned out not to be the case. I put “interview” in quotes because seemingly she was asked two to three questions, enough to fill enough negative space with words to justify the image and all of them were pointed to a male fantasy. She plays video games! She likes to hack and slash! She watches Battlestar Galactica! All right, it’s a nerdy male fantasy but still, she’s referred to as a babe and not in an infantile way.

GQ isn’t exactly picky about picking women to splash across its pages in various states of undress (“Hey! Can you find creative ways to cover your nipples in front of a blank white wall? Good enough for us!”) but positioning Spiridakos to sell Revolution on her aesthetic feminine wiles in the press might lead you to believe that she would do the same on the show. Surprisingly, for the most part, that hasn’t been the case.

In fact, much of the show and her character trades on her innocence or naivete, both as an emotional core and, in my opinion, as a non-villainous antagonist. She’s constantly walking into trouble like Mr. Magoo but in place of a blindness that gets her onto the girders of a building under construction it’s her not sticking to the plan that constantly gets her captured. She has a variety of tight-fitting shirts (as everyone on the show seems to) but, outside of her cousin getting all worked up for her, there hasn’t been a focus on trying to make her a sex symbol of the show. Until NBC got a hold of this episode.

The promos all week would lead you to believe the show is exclusively comprised of Charlie getting out of the tub, being prostituted by Miles, and wearing slutty dresses. The character we would come to know as Drexel demands that he wants her. Miles has to make a decision between whoring out his niece to get the life-saving drugs Nora needs or leaving Nora behind.

Ostensibly, what we get is an Aaron episode with a little Charlie side-plot. She does, indeed, climb out of a tub all wet and nekkid and wear a short dress but her arc is less important, particularly since she comes out of it pretty much the same as she went in. The episode, not the tub.

Her faith in optimism shaken after a montage of all the awful things we’ve seen over the past few episodes, she tears up her exoctic locale postcards (have your eyes stopped rolling yet?) and says that killing a man in cold blood is no big whoop. She also opens the episode with a rant about how awful the world is because they couldn’t save anyone, shoving Aaron’s attempt at consolation down his throat. It was enough to make me glad that Charlie wasn’t the badass character I thought she would be; Spiridakos definitely pulls of cheerleader with a crossbow better than jaded warrior.

She is reacquainted with her innocence, however, by episode’s end as she’s spared from having to kill a grandpa with a hairpin by Miles having to save the day again. She seems much better after not having to actually do the deed and, when she meets up with Aaron later, she’s her normal self. Her faith in humanity and goodness and purpose is restored. She is John Locke after seeing the light shine out of the hatch.

Aaron, however, has a different tract altogether. Despite what NBC would have you believe, this is his episode and a familiar formula starts to emerge for this show. It’s his turn for backstory (one of the saddest ones so far, sort of the anti-Neville) and we get it intercut with his present. Before the blackout, Aaron was rich and connected with a wife, as he describes, who didn’t care about all that. Unsurprisingly hotter than you would think he could pull, the lights going out flips the field out of his favor, putting his lack of survival skills on display.

When he tells Maggie this sob story before, you get the feeling he’s alone because his wife didn’t survive and she was somehow taken from him. Instead, it’s a pathetic tale of him ditching her in the woods because he feels like he can’t protect her. Leaves the ring and everything and then even watches her like a creeper as she goes with their camping party. I don’t have the actual video here to show but it looked something like this.

Aaron has always been the cowardly lion to in this adventure in a cast of go-getters so it was only a matter of time before he needed to prove his worth. We knew Maggie was on the chopping block after a week of “someone won’t make it” promos because she had nothing left to redeem. She saw the picture of her kids on her iPhone and that was pretty much her end game. But, if there is a “Next-to-Go” bear chasing them, Aaron would certainly be enough for hibernation.

He’s clearly an investment for the future, when they figure out how to turn a computer on and they need someone that actually knows what a computer is. For now, though, it’s the courage arc they need to build and they certainly did that. Though the premise of a duel (complete with wooden box and revolvers) is absurd (I was surprised Drexel didn’t just cock a rife and say, “You have a 30 minute head start until we start hunting the world’s most dangerous game!”), it put them in a situation where Aaron demonstrated some higher-level thinking by solving the riddle with a different angle. One with a bulletproof flask.

So Aaron will continue to limp around as the group’s unnecessary conscience (since Charlie likes to do that herself) and anti-muscle (him killing human once is not going to make him Daryl from The Walking Dead with Miles and Nora around) until we finally start to catch all the pendants, when him sticking around will become useful. At the very least, he hasn’t become a liability yet like Charlie. So, until then, we can just wonder how Greg Grunberg would’ve played the part and hope Aaron doesn’t do anything too annoying until then.

Other things of note:

• I have about zero investment in what happens at Philadelphia while Miles and company are not there. Neville entered the scene and somehow had all the compelling things about the character sucked right out of him. Strausser is so far just another Monroe Republic sociopath. Jason defecting is become more and more inevitable. And Monroe continues to vacillate from whispery despot to desperate man. Today, when he offered his “guest” food and women as part of his hospitality, he swung severely toward the whispery despot.
• Danny meeting the mother he never really knew, to me, has little to no emotional impact. He wasn’t looking for her, he wasn’t reminded of her. I can only rationalize that he even recognized her from photographs. Elizabeth Mitchell is a fine actor but even she couldn’t make me feel anything than a “meh” for that final scene.
• How did the writers talk about Miles having enough gold to swim in and not make a Scrooge McDuck reference? How many drafts was the Money Bin in before finally being redacted? That must’ve took a lot of restraint on the writers’ part, especially since the monologue was already so trivial and over-the-top.
• Of the things I would call Nora, “Latina Barbie” is not one of them. Though writing a line of opportunity here so that NBC could sell the episode on selling Charlie was pretty deft. “I want her — to do it.”
• I’m glad Aaron finally did something this episode. The whimpering and whining was getting to be too much to bear. And, while I don’t think he’ll change much as a character after this (since almost every episode basically resets to the basic “let’s move on until we find Danny” premise), him shooting Drexel will at least tide me over until he becomes useful again.
• What are flasks on TV made out of? Mythril?
• Did anyone else feel bad for Aaron after he shot a dude but Charlie didn’t have to do anything? “Did you do it?” “No.” “Oh. Well, I did. So. I’m glad you’re not scarred for life. Like I am. Because I just shot a dude.” “Yep, you did. Thanks for that! Let’s go find my brother!” “…”