Previewing The Event

Back in the first year of Lost, I was so invested; I re-watched the show during its summer repeats to try to catch anything I missed the first time around. I know it was all for naught because 99% of the mysteries on the show was just a big red herring. I bring this up because during every commercial break I was stuck hearing some annoying kid say, “Mom, you smell different” to the point of when Invasion started up that fall I was already sick of the show. I have to imagine anyone who watched any of NBC’s summer shows are tired of hearing, “We have a problem, he’s going to tell him about… The Event.” Thankfully I already know that America doesn’t have talent, so I am only mildly annoyed by the campaign.

Invasion of course was added to the schedule to capitalize on Lost’s success, but much like Lost, Invasion (as well as Surface, Threshold, Heroes, The Nine, Jericho, Journeyman, Bionic Woman, Life on Mars, Day One, Flashforward, and Persons Unknown) is no longer on the air. That hasn’t NBC from trying to recreate that half season buzz they produced themselves during that three episode arc when Heroes didn’t absolutely suck with two shows announced for this television season.

The only one on this fall will be The Event (The Cape is set for midseason, but then again so was Day One last year). It is hard to talk about the show without spoiling it because everything seems to tie into each other. So if you watched Lost to analyze the going on’s of the Dharma Initiative and could have care less about if Kate ended up with Jack or Sawyer, The Event may be for you. And the show does promise the answers will come quickly. Even mentioning some actors in the cast may be too much of a spoiler and certainly explaining why they are on the show are some.

What we do know:

1. The disappearance is not The Event. So Jason Ritter (Joan of Arcadia) and the moderately attractive Sarah Roemer (Fired Up) are on a romantic cruise and of course just when he is about to propose she disappears. And not just goes missing, but disappears with no trace of her ever being on the boat. Do we find out in the Pilot where she goes: no.

2. The CIA cover up is not The Event. Perennial creepy dude Željko Ivanek (Live Free or Die Hard) is the Director of National Intelligence who failed to inform the President of a hundred detainees, led by ER’s Laura Innes. Do we learn why they were detained: no.

3. The assassination plot is not The Event. Blair Underwood (Deep Impact) is the black president with a Hispanic name (take that President Palmer) who sees an airplane barreling toward him during a press conference. Do who know who is piloting the plane: yes (though not who is behind the pilot).

Of course the big question is do we actually learn what The Event is? Not only do you learn what The Event is, you learn of it in the very first scene (I think, something big happens though no one comes out and says, “you see what just happened there, that is The Event we are talking about”) though you won’t know what the frack is going on until the final scene of the episode.

Yep that means we will be doing the time warp pretty early in the show and quite frequently. And this isn’t like Lost where they (usually) fliped in-between two different linear storylines, The Event bounces between three non-linear storylines (Ritter’s, Underwood’s, and CIA agent played by Ian Anthony Dale, Mr. 3000) throughout the whole episode to the point where you wished you took notes because sometimes it is hard to wrap your head around what is going on. So if you added to Lostpedia, this show is definitely for you. Just demand to the writers on The Event that they are not allowed to close the series finale in a church in purgatory.

The Event airs Mondays at 9:00 on NBC.


One quick note on the show that will follow The Event, Chase is your run of the mill Jerry Bruckheimer event. It shows some flashes but is at the end of the day very bland. Less than half way through I thought how they could not have caught the fugitive of the week by now? And the casting is pretty laughable; seriously, the gardener from Desperate Housewives? I guess after assembling most of the main cast of Swinf@n on the network, NBC next will try recruiting actors from John Tucker Must Die with Brittany Snow attached to a midseason show (I can not imagine Sophia Bush has anything better thing to do to create the trifecta). But if you like procedural cop shows, you can do much worse, you will still be better off waiting for the return of the much more superior show about a federal marshal, Justified.