Planes are fully electronically controlled.

If you cut the power it has no flap movement to adjust for turbulence and no engine to keep airspeed and so on - so as soon as the blackout happens it will slowly lose power and the first time it hits a change in air pressure it will quickly lose control banking or pitching out of a glide angle (if it even was in one in the first place) and hit the ground.

Fwiw the plane they ended up in during the middle of the question not crashing is a better question than why the ones that did crash did so quickly. It may be a plot hole, it may be a specific model that has physical flap connections, it may have just been sat there in the first place. I wasnt paying enough attention to know either way, but the planes falling out of the sky over the city is completely expected.

My memory's a little fuzzy on it, but it kind of looked like it was in a taxi position on a runway, which certainly would have happened to a lot of planes when the blackout hit.

I'm going to watch this like I do all post-apocalyptic shows and I welcome the disappointment I will have to endure to sit through this.

Looking from the trailer it looks like ALL electricity is gone which obviously makes no sense but that's what we can expect from stuff like this. I'm also not liking the fact that we we apparently are going to have to sit through martial arts.

Hey we all know how during the middle ages that Karate was way more effective than a sword....

I'm assuming Ben admitted to being himself to avoid what ended up happening. From my experience with end of the world scenario type militias in television, they usually bring the ruckus when they don't get what they want.

When all the militia guys showed up at the hotel Miles was bartending at, he said he would "never go back there" which I assumed meant he was at least part of the militia, if not a founding member with Monroe.

Monroe was in the car with Miles when Ben called Miles to tell him the lights were going off and never coming back on, then they had a long walk back to base so I would assume they talked about it some, and Monroe figured out that Miles/Ben had important information about it.

I liked the show, but I usually like anything with an end of world scenario.

i think this is kind of a poor understanding of the pilot. like maybe what you mean is that it looks like the type of show that could turn into lost and continue to raise questions without giving answers?

bc the questions raised in the pilot seem like the type that are basically impossible to not eventually answer (unless ofc the show gets cancelled). now the show cud very well just get bad, but good or bad im quite confident that if the show is around long enough well find out stuff like monroes journey from blackout--->evil leader/mysterious black lady

i liked the pilot. monroe being friends w miles was a cool twist. lead girl actress is pretty meh but not bad enough where she ruins the scenes shes in. agree w whoever said that well know a lot more about the show after ep2.

So he spent 15 years just chilling then decided one day it was a good idea to go find Miles and Ben?

There is much more going on in the flashback plotline than "they had a chat about stuff while walking back to base".

My guess is Ben and Miles were working with Monroe at the start and then he became more and more unstable as he rose through the ranks but frankly who can say at this point.

Also surprised no one has mentioned it - but its a lock the mother is still alive somewhere. Maybe she is banging Monroe - oh my!

In the scene where they go back to the base, Monroe doesn't have his ID, and gets in because he knows Miles, and has the "M/Monroe" tattoo. What do you make of that? Has he been court martialed, already, but the news hasn't been passed on? Is he not really in the military anymore? Or did he really just not bring his ID with him (least likely)? His affect in that scene was also one where he seemed to be trying to keep as low of a profile as possible, like maybe he knew he shouldn't have been there, and was hoping not to get recognized.

I think you are reading far far too much into that. He just forgot his ID.

It was just the writers working out a way to get him to show his tattoo in a "zomg" kinda reveal. The two of them went out to a bar, he was texting some chick and they were driving back to the base when the blackout happened. Unless you know something I dont there isnt any reason to read anything into it other than what was presented.

If there was nothing more than presented, then that was pretty terrible directing, as everything about it made it look like more was going on.

I agree with nunnehi. I think something else was going on more than simply just forgot his id.

Well, it would make sense that it would take someone a long ass time to find anyone that didn't want to be found, if you're only options to search are riding around on horseback.

Also, I mentioned that Miles was likely a part of the militia for some amount of time so he's probably been looking for less than 15 years.

I still think the plane that falls closest to Ben while he is on the balcony watching the world end defies the laws of physics. I mean I guess it is possible it is falling in a curve and you can't tell from the time it enters the frame until crash, but it is definitely doing something that none of the other falling planes are doing (rotating around a vertical axis while presumably falling straight down).

Re-watching and it is definitely an overgrown airport, there are more planes sitting on the ground in the initial wide shot that only lasts a second or two.

Falling vertically while spinning is called a flat spin, it is what killed Goose in Top Gun. If the plan had electronics working it would never happen, but if it cuts out and the plane loses momentum it can basically just fall like a stone spinning about a central axis.

Im not saying that particular plane will fwiw, its possible it wouldnt, but it can happen under the right circumstances.

Just finished watching.... will give it a few more weeks to see where it goes.

Fun Fact: The bearded character who is allergic to bees and worked for google (Zak Orth) is someone I have known IRL since 1st grade.

cool, he was a guest star in an early fringe ep and did a really good job imo.

I wanted to like this. But thought it was pretty bad. The pilots for The Event and Flash Forward were better than this and they both went way downhill from there. Maybe it gets better but I highly doubt it. Acting was also bad aside from Gus Fring IMO.

And really how many times are we gonna have the cliche of a key character facing death only to be saved at the last instant. I counted FOUR times in this episode. Don't we have to at least care about the characters before this type of writing can work at all.

I don't know if I'm being nitty or not but all of the make up and clean stylish clothes did not fit in with the atmosphere at all.

Wow, this was bad from the opening scene. When there are shows like Breaking Bad and Justified being made, I don't see how you squander a great premise on this soap opera-level mediocrity.

They need to fire the **** out of the stunt coordinator. That little battle at the beginning was way too ridiculous and OTT for this type of show.

Lead girl is pretty hot but LOL at running around in a tube top when most other people are wearing handmade pioneer style clothes.

I thought it was more ridiculous that some people were wearing handmade pioneer style clothes in the first place. The power went off. All the new clothes in the department stores didn't suddenly go up in a POOF of air.

Seriously, this was laughably bad. Saturday morning-quality TV, at best.

15 years later... i'm sure pre blackout clothes are getting a bit scarce

This show leaves me with so many ridiculous premise questions, I want to watch it to see how they explain things.

So the internal combustion engine no longer works? Yet guns still work?

If "modern" cars don't work because of the electronics, why doesn't someone go to Jay Leno's garage and get a Stanley Steamer? They can obviously boil water for coffee.

Most cars made from 1890-1910 had no batteries, they had a hand crank starter. 15 years have done by and no one has developed this or steam engines?

Windmills cannot create electricity? OK, but they should still be useful for milling like they were 500 years ago.

What about hydro power, is Niagara Falls still running or did vines grow all over it?

^^^

This is one of the most ridiculous aspects of this terrible show. According to the writers no electricity = no civilization. It's not like we don't have books and stuff to figure out how to have a society without electricity. I guess those poor people back in 1880 were all living in mud huts or something.

True fact: You can also boil water by putting a pot over fire. I have done this many times while camping.

I get what you are saying about the inconsistencies though. Back to the falling airplanes for instance. Why did the wing lights work if nothing else did. Clearly we just needed to have a way of actually seeing them fall out of the sky.

Some of the comments in this thread are hilarious. I mean, it's only a 1 hour Pilot, and you're expecting millions of answers already set up. It's clear, from small pieces of foreshadowing, that the elements you're all talking about exist, they're just in the control of people we haven't seen much of yet (Monroe's people). Monroe's people have modern guns, and there is no reason to think they don't have access to the steam stuff. After all, it was pointed out that Monroe had a glass with ice in it, at the end.

This show is neither good nor bad. It's mediocre, let it develop. If it's about aliens, Scientology, or Mormonism, then it's got major problems it won't be able to overcome. How likely are any of those?

Dom, Breaking Bad and Justified, seriously? How do two low rated highly acclaimed cable TV shows make it into a conversation about ad driven network TV? All they care about is viewers. They don't care how they get them. Shakespeare isn't going to get them viewers, but simple sci-fi shows with pretty people might. Their promos did them no favors either.

Most of you don't check out the ratings discussion, but this show had HUGE premiere ratings 4.1 in the 18-49 demo, and 11.65 million viewers. This is the highest scripted NBC premiere in forever. It could basically s**t the bed and get renewed at a 2.5. It's not going to lose huge amounts of viewers, unless there's a terrible twist, sorry. Those ratings were also even better, considering that the show has been widely available for several weeks, which should have diminished the Pilot viewership significantly.