When you think about it: J.J. Abrams, TV’s (and now film’s) golden boy, doesn’t have that spectacular of a track record when it comes to getting series picked up for second seasons. Of the ten shows he has produced, only six have made it to a second season and only one of those, Lost*, ever made that big a splash in the Nielsen ratings.
*I tried to track down Nielsen data for Alias and Felicity, as those were definitely buzzworthy shows for their eras and could only find this link to an Alias forum that underlined Alias’ 90th place position in the ratings with a frowny face next to it.
If Abrams were a baseball player, his .600 batting average would have him inducted into the hall of fame after a season. If he were a high school student, however, he’d have to explain his report card full of “D’s” to his parents.
His upcoming project, Revolutions, could very well be a make or break show for both the deeply suffering NBC** and Abrams reputation as a TV visionary.
** Motto for the 2012-13 NBC season: We beat Univision…most of the time!
I actually had no clue Abrams was taking developing another series for a network. It’s strange that a show with such high profile names attached to it (Iron-Man director Jon Favreau directs the project) could fly under the radar but it could very well work to the show’s benefit. Now that the networks are trotting out their fall schedules with trailers accompanying nearly every picked up show, the impressive Revolutions trailer with the added Revolutions pedigree really leaves a mark.
What looks like a standard “everything goes to hell” disaster pilot quickly takes a turn for the interesting after around the one-minute mark, when the trailer jumps ahead 15 minutes to beautiful post-apocalyptic imagery***, plenty of sword play and most impressively: Gus Fring from Breaking Bad (Giancarlo Esposito).
*** Wrigley Field was my favorite. Of course the Cubs win the World Series and then society as we know it collapses. J.J. Abrams must love incorporating tortured baseball teams into fantasy-esque series. See: Red Sox, Lost.
I’ve certainly burned by excellent NBC trailers in the past (I’m looking at you, Awake) and NBC’s claim that it is the highest testing pilot in their history definitely scares me a little bit (CBS said the same thing about Person of Interest, which is fine but far from the savior of network television).
Still it looks like the one of the few must watch for a sparsely populated fall pilot season.
(photo via Screen Rant)
