['The Event' - 'To Keep Us Safe']

Everyone remembers the famous exchange from 'A Few Good Men,' in which Jack Nicholson less-than-calmly informed Tom Cruise that he couldn't handle the truth. (This was long before Destiny's Child informed all of us that we weren't ready for this jelly.)

This second episode of NBC's 'The Event' seemed to reformulate the famous exchange, with the audience screaming, "We want the truth!" and the show replying, "Fine, here's a huge download of answers. Are you not entertained?" (Whoops. 'The Event' slid out from 'A Few Good Men' and straight into 'Gladiator.' In its defense, it's working really hard to please the masses.)

In some ways, one has to applaud the show for not pulling a weekly bait-and-switch, promising a chunk of tasty mythological download and only yielding a crumb by episode's end. But there was also a lot of flop sweat onscreen in the show's eagerness to prove it knows the story that it's telling. Former 'Lost' fans were no doubt confused when a scene of a plane crash was followed a huge laundry list of answers. It was almost as if The Others found Jack Shephard ten minutes after Oceanic 815 landed on the island and told them about a frozen donkey wheel a few miles away. Just utterly jarring. Getting all this info upfront is not unappreciated, but it'll take a bit of getting used to.

As for the "answers" themselves: Well, those were naturally doled out in a manner that doesn't clear things up completely so much as make things slightly less muddy. The 97 prisoners from last week? Part of a large group that crashed in Alaska in 1944. They are just like us, except with a 1 percent difference in their DNA. That 1 percent apparently allows them to do fun things, including "age like Dick Clark" and "collectively create electromagnetic pockets". Apparently the separation between those led by Sophia in Alaska and those hidden in plain sight, led by Thomas, has caused some friction. And those on the outside are done waiting for the reunion.

Rather than focus on what these people are, 'The Event' is more concerned about what they want. The 1 percent difference in their DNA suggests they are from the future, or at least some form of fractured timeline, which might give actual credence to the out-of-sequence narrative that 'The Event' currently presents. It would be much more comforting to think that the show's structure derives from an explanation for The 97's true identity as opposed to simply a trick designed to give the show more weight than it would if told in a linear fashion.

That structure did yield a decent meet-cute between Sean and Leila (though why anyone would learn to swim on their own is anyone's guess), but showing these types of scenes after the fact robs the actual kidnapping of its power. That's not to say Jason Ritter isn't selling the drama here: But the show is asking the audience to retroactively care about an event. It doesn't really matter if Sean/Leila turn into Romeo/Juliet by season's end: It won't change the way the viewers initially reacted to the moment of her disappearance any more powerfully.

On the Presidential level, that sound you heard across America was audiences groaning at Sophia's "we mean you no harm" line. It's one thing to dub the group "non-terrestrials," as Blake did during his presidential briefing 13 months before the disappearance of Flight 541. But to deliver that line, without irony, showed just why so many people have been skeptical of 'The Event.' Having the President mistrust her as Thomas makes his violent move against humanity might be a dramatic necessity, but it didn't do the show any favors in terms of taking this storyline more seriously.

Then again, just trying to keep the various parties involved in the story already makes our heads spin. There are Sophia's 97, part of the 1 percent Group that wants peace. Then there is Thomas's subset of the 1 percent Group, more interested in killing a planeful of passengers than peacefully coexisting. We also have D.B. Sweeney's group, ostensibly aligned with Blake, hell-bent on keeping the existence of the 1 percent Group under wraps. Next, there's Agent Lee, an Army of One in the 1 percent Group, attempting to monitor the government while orchestrating a peaceful coexistence within the group itself as well as between the 1% Group and humanity. Amidst all of that is Team Sean, Army of One, currently under arrest for a murder he didn't commit.

All of this sounds fairly eventful, but doesn't bring us any closer to understanding what happened in 1944. Ostensibly, that Clark Kent-esque crash IS the titular event, even if President Martinez still doesn't quite understand the nature of that catastrophe. With Sophia currently tight-lipped and Thomas currently bloodthirsty, it looks like he won't learn for quite some time, either.

The TV Squad Theory of The Week:
These people were genetically altered to be supersoldiers for World War II. The government's role in covering up their identities stems from the experiments that caused the 1 percent mutation, which not only enabled rapid healing but also the ability to use their collective consciousness as a weapon. Think of it as an analogous effort to "The Manhattan Project." (Call this the "Captain America Theory.")

The TV Squad False Theory of The Week:
Tim Krieg ordered Hiro Nakamura to send the cast of "Heroes" back to 1944 in order to secure a fifth season of the show.

What did you make of the show's second effort? Fears assuaged, or anger engendered? Leave your thoughts below!

'The Event' airs Mon., 9PM ET on NBC.