The Event - Page 2

6.9 seems generous. Agree with most of you that the structure kept me at arm's length and the ridiculous dialog (like the "NEED TO KNOW" convo) ruined any brief moments of engagement.

This show is clusterfuck. Poor editing covering poor writing.

Aliens or time-travel?

My vote: A Philadelphia Experiment tie-in. Shadow scientific/government study happening in Alaska. Plane rendered cloaked, and pulled up at the last moment by Mr. Face-Lift from Gilmore Girls.

My vote: a multiverse with different versions of reality intersecting. Somehow the main guy shifted to another reality in which he and his girlfriend DIDN'T board the cruise ship. In another versionof reality, the plane DID crash into the Presidential compound.

It really doesn't matter, though. I don't see this show making it far enough to get around to explaining things.

Ratings weren't bad. But weren't great either. Test will be next week. Fucking Hawaii 5.0 got great numbers. America, STOP LIKING DUMB THINGS.

That would explain the repeated scenes. Maybe there were subtle differences we were supposed to pick up.

What's wrong with fun, well-done dumbness (which is what I find Five-O to be)? Not everything has to be The Wire and Breaking Bad.

Enjoyable enough. I just hope the writers aren't subscribing to the Lost school of 'Hey, wouldn't it be fucking rad if we did THIS!?' and just stringing together a bunch of hackneyed, yet cool shit with no semblance of an endgame.

The pilot was terrible. I don't think I'll be giving this one another shot. If Chewer word of mouth in this thread picks up, I might give it another chance in the future. But as for now, they lost me with Ritter's pube chin.

I will, however, keep watching Hawaii Five-O. Suck it, Tati.

Seconded on 'Hawaii 5-0'. It was certainly more entertaining than 'The Event'.

In a surprising example of network collaboration, "The Event" will turn out to be Grace Park's bikini coming untied.

My own take? The 97 people being held in Alaska are people from the future. They're not technically even "Americans," because their Social Security numbers haven't been issued yet.

Aliens aren't necessary -- when the Laura Roslin character said, "They saved us," she may have meant that people from the future saved them.

All in all, it does indeed look and feel like Traveler and 24 much more than Lost or FlashForward. Even if they did use the same rocky shore that Lost used, for the rescue of the undercover couple (the guy pretending to have a broken arm, and his pretend-girlfriend).

Got confusing with too numerous flashbacks, going to waaaaay too many prior points in time.

Is this what I am meant to gather from the pilot episode?

- Some group invaded the pilot/future father-in-law's house. Seemingly killed the wife. The young daughter is held captive, and used as leverage to get pilot Mike Buchanan to apprently shoot co-pilot and target the President. This same group also orchestrated something to get Mike as a last minute replacement on this flight.

- Some other group (including broken-arm-couple) kidnaps Leila Buchanan, pilot's daughter and future finacee of Sean Walker. This is done as leverage to get Etahn Hawke looking guy on a plane to try and stop his future father-in-law from crashing the plane. Sean obviously has some idea of the fate of the plane. I would guess whatver group recruited him helped orchestrate him getting on the plane - they had his passport - probably planted the gun on the plane for him to retrieve.

So yeah, there's a lot of shit that had to go on in between the flashbacks we were privvy to. Which makes me think that the show will still need to be heavy on flashbacks to fill us in on this stuff.

I got the impression Ethan Hawke guy was on the plane of his own volition, in direct opposition to what was expected of him.

At this point I didn't even care anymore about Ethan Hawke-wannabee.

Didn't he stash his engagement ring in the safe? Woulnd't that a proof of some sort? Guess we'll know in 5 episodes in some poor useless flashback.

It's not Flashforward-bad, but it's really trying.

I honestly figured that the ring would be his 'proof' of sorts...he'd amaze everyone by having the key/knowing the combination to the safe and pull out the engagement ring. AHA!!!!!!

But no.

I'm sure that will be an important plot point in a flashback 10 episodes down the line.

The flashbacks don't really serve the story. Like there doesn't seem to be any reason why this show couldn't be told in a more linear way. With Lost, the flashbacks were integral as it allowed the audience to get to know who those people were before the plane crash and how their pasts motivated them as people on the island. I hope this show just decided to use this story structure for the first episode.

I assumed that pseudo-Ethan Hawke got onto the plane by pretending to be a random airport worker. They showed he stuffed some kind of jacket into the airplane bathroom's trash. But who knows.

I liked it. The flashback structure didn't upset me at all, and kept the whole thing flowing along nicely. In all, it was a nice opening episode that made me want to tune in next week. I haven't seen Broadwalk Empire yet but, so far, this is the best pilot I've seen this season

HWHAAA??? Were you watching the same television show as the rest of us? It was chopped up into something that did nothing but hinder that flow.

Not great at all, but I dunno... I guess it's mostly just my affinity for CONSPIRACIES that will keep me watching for now.

Things I liked:

-Secret compound in Alaska
-The first shot of the plane heading for the President
-The hotness of the evil drowning victim

...and that's about it.

Horrible effects work in showing it though.

There wasn't a single convincing special effect shot in the entire show.

I didn't catch this yet. But this Alan Sepinwall quote gives away some mumbling I had lately.

I wonder how Lost finale affected our impatience regarding long term architecture...

Well second episode

Good:

- They at least are trying to dool out info after each episode. First episode was the plane, second episode its "aliens are involved". At least it won't suffer from Persons Unknown syndrome. I actually believe we have a good chance of finding out why that family was targeted and even perhaps what the event is before we go to far.

Bad:

- "Can you keep him in the hospital".
"Well I don't know, I could just get the hospital security to stand in front of the door until you come, but why don't I just become unglued and let the suspect run around the ward".
Oh, and I'm sure all doctors look at people running down their halls with a "I wonder where he is going" look. What there never been any murder suspects in a Arizona hospital before?

- I was willing to give it the first episode, but stop the "x years before" stuff please.

- Pretty obvious that the asian agent was an alien.

- Someone in the public better be talking about the fact that "plane was on suicide run at us, then disappeared". There were more than enough media to see that. And don't give me "the goverment can stop info from coming out" they can't stop wikileaks.org.

Less confusingly bad than the first but their protocol for keeping in the hospital really sucked. I actually don't mind the parts with scraggly guy but every time there's a scene with the 'aliens' or the president it just gets more and more stupidly vague about everything.

D.B. Sweeney though, so that's something.

I am with you nachos, almost word for word. Altho, Clifton Collins Jr., so thats something.

It was a lot better than the pilot, and the flashbacks were better in that they were relevant and explained some stuff.

Still, I don't know how many more shows I can handle doing a slowburn. Somebody should write a book on Lost and the things it did right and the things it did wrong in terms of doing a serialized show with a central mystery and mythology.

Caught some of this and the tail end of Chuck (a show I'm happy to say I've completely lost interest in) tonight while making dinner. Out of all the shows biting off the legacy of Lost, this feels like the one that has the best chance of succeeding. I thought it was a fairly brisk, exciting hour show. But because of that legacy, I'm a bit tired of getting jerked around by a lack of talking. If the aliens (or future people-- whatever) aren't going to talk I think the president should just do away with them. I mean, why would they be silent if they meant no harm? Why should anyone believe anythnig they say? For the humans' own good? This isn't like some prime directive shit.

It seems like there's multiple factions. Clifton Collins Jr. apparently had hundreds of people killed (everyone on the plane). Did I get that right?

And there might be dissention in the ranks for those in alien Gitmo. I hope they don't have them be future people like 4400 did.

Hell, I'm hoping that this can at least match the quality of Invasion America.

That's the obvious answer, which surely won't be the case. The bad govment people killed them to keep all this silent. At least that's my theory.

And, I hope these people are not ET aliens. Something with a bit more flare please.

Much better episode than last week. Maybe these folks are us from a future Earth who travelled back in time. It would explain the slow aging and the fact that they spoke English (maybe). I just hope it's more than just aliens from another planet.

Will they be trying to get back to The Island?

Ha, for a brief moment, I had a Lost flashback when the plane crashed in the desert.

RE: future people, the reason I thought of that as well was the mention how close their DNA was to ours. Chimps are 2% off, these prisoners are 1%. Next step in our evolution?

I was actually a little disappointed when they dropped the "alien" bomb in episode two, especially since this seems like the type of show where they'll only go back and throw all that into question later on anyway.

I'd rather they just slowly feed us tid bits of correct info instead of constantly giving us the wrong answers.

Story is becoming a little more interesting, and DB Sweeney is a big plus. Between him and Ian Anthony Dale I might stick with it for a while. But they fucked up with Ritter. I just want to punch him in his wide-eyed face.

By this point in Lost, I already had an attachment to multiple characters. I have no interest in anyone in "The Event".

These shows trying to duplicate Lost's success are run by the kinds of people who stopped watching Lost in season two "because nothing happens". They think a hyperactive plot makes up for paper-thin characters given stiff life by mediocre actors.

The Event is like a Lost spinoff starring Nikki and Paolo.

Well, I knew that aliens were going to be involved. Now let's see how long it takes to get to time travel.

Reading the recaps is much more fun than watching the show.

Well, the third episode of Lost was "Walkabout," wasn't it? That's the episode that took me from digging the show to being hooked until the end. Maybe we need to wait one more episode?

That said, I agree it has not engaged me as much as early Lost yet. The key to Lost was it's structure that first season where each episode we got to know a character. We have yet to learn anything about that "main character" (I can't even remember his name) aside from he was going to propose to that girl and now he's caught up in this mess.

I want to get to the time traveling please. I hated LOST and stopped watching it during season 3, so I don't give a shit if this show is "biting" or whatever. It's all new to me.

Time Travelers of an advanced species who came back in time to stop "The Event" from happening, but as always in time traveling, they fucked up and now they have to wait it out and be saved. I'm guessing this is why they can't tell the President or the government anything, because they would be giving away too much information, and risk changing future history.

Both episodes seemed strangely disjointed, and I think (hope) that it was filmed that way deliberately. It seems like we're seeing alternate universes and alternate realities playing out alongside each other.

The stolen identity while vacationing in an exotic locale thing totally reminded me of The Net.

Needs more shirtless guys who aren't named Jason Ritter though. The smoking hot Asian CIA Agent/Alien, he can be the first to strip.

I'm still in. If they keep throwing in enough wild developments like what happened at the end of episode 3 (the bodies from the plane crash waking up) then they will have me hooked for a good long while.

The about-to-tell-all-and-be-released prisoner's girlfriend killing him was so telegraphed though.

Again, the annoying points of the show are when it gets away from the 'chase' and into the mythology. Based on that guys little comments about how nice DC looked, it seems more and more like they're from the future where the planet has been completely hosed up.

Good thing they hadn't 'plane crashed up' the bodies yet. That would have been awkward.

Yeah, future-people seems really likely at this point, with what nachos said above and also the way that they refuse to talk about their agenda. I know that "good future people trying to affect the past so that they can prevent a certain future, but there are also bad future people with their own agenda" was already done on The 4400, but that show got cancelled before they could give it a proper ending so I wouldn't mind if they attempted it again and did it well. If these revived victims start displaying powers and create their own city, I'll have to facepalm though...

I gave this show a final chance to hook me last night and dammit...it was a really, really good episode. The action sequence with the 'agents' trying to kill Scruffy was well done, and the re-animation sequence was really creepy at the end. The narrative is also starting to move forward, which is nice.

I'll stick around for a while.

Oh yeah, big time.

This show has got me hooked.

I don't know if the show is getting much better but it is gelling and finding its groove. I think we take Lost for granted as to how it was great from the get go. Many shows need a little more time to really find its footing like this one has. I'm committed for a few more eps anyway. Great stuff!

This was a better episode. But I feel it lacks the sense of doom that a show like the X Files had. And, going back to Lost, it's disappointing that so few characters have stood out. Lost had a much bigger cast to deal with.
So you missed the finale where it's revealed Jack and Kate were living off of the island years later? That was the best episode of the series!

This is getting good, yeah. I'll stick for now. Things happen, for a change. And that's good on these kind of shows.

You know, it hit me while watching this weeks episode. This is a lot more like Surface than Lost. You have all these characters that are unrelated working on one big giant mystery and you know they're going to meet up at one point or another and have a big reveal of this giant mystery only to lead to other mysteries. I think it was right around the point where the Chief of staff wanted to track down Shawn that it hit me.

I'm in this to win it, just hope they drop the horrible editing and switching from future to past to current shit.