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Five Things You Need to Know About the Return of 'The Event'
by Maureen Ryan, posted Mar 7th 2011 1:15PM
'The Event' started out with a promising pilot, but it ran into the same cluster of problems that so many genre-tinged dramas have encountered in the last few years: Inconsistent plot movement, painful flashbacks, a number of characters who seemed irrelevant or downright annoying.The NBC show returns Monday with a two-hour episode that airs at 8PM ET, and you may be wondering, has 'The Event' fixed what ails it? Not entirely. What's frustrating about Monday's return is that about half of it works pretty well, but about half of what transpires is fairly clunky.
So should you tune in? That's up to you. But before you decide whether to check in again or not, check out the Five Things You Need to Know about 'The Event's' return:
1. You don't need to have seen all the fall episodes if you want to check back in. 'The Event' dropped out of my viewing rotation a few weeks before it ended its fall run, but there's plenty of expository dialogue among the characters that establishes what happened before the show took its long winter break. Of course, exposition doesn't make for scintillating drama, but you can't fault 'The Event' for wanting to get everyone up to speed. (If you really want to get caught up, there's a refresher video at the end of this post.)
2. There's a new character in the Washington, D.C., storyline. Virginia Madsen plays a politician from Alaska who begins asking questions about strange things going on in her state (as you may recall, the detainee center for 'The Event's' alien visitors is in Alaska). The scenes featuring Madsen and Blair Underwood as President Martinez are merely serviceable, but at least they're much better than the painfully rote scenes between the president and his wife that aired last year.3. The most painful storyline by far is that of Sean and Leila, the couple inadvertently caught in the middle of various 'Event' conspiracies, plots and lies. Despite being at the center of various story threads, the plight of these two characters gets less interesting by the week. Jason Ritter, who plays Sean, is at least an appealing actor, but Leila, who is played by Sarah Roemer, is blandly written and even more blandly played. As is the case on 'V,' at this point I'm rooting for the crankier cadre of aliens to take out several boring human characters, and Leila's at the top of my 'Event' list. The one saving grace in the Sean-Leila story line is Scott Patterson as Leila's father, Michael, who's deeply implicated in various 'Event' shenanigans. Eliminate Leila and give Michael and Sean interesting things to do and this aspect of the show may stop giving me a migraine.
4. The best parts of Monday's episodes are events that occur in Alaska. I won't say more for fear of diminishing the tension in that story line, but as alien leader Thomas, Clifton Collins Jr. brings real presence and chemistry to the proceedings. And Željko Ivanek is, as always, terrifically nuanced in his role as a tough-as-nails presidential security advisor. Now, what Thomas cooks up in Alaska in Monday's episode is something of a one-off story line, and I'll be perfectly frank: If next week's episode doesn't have a similarly resilient, energetic plot at its center, I'm most likely going to bail on this show. Because...5. 'The Event' works as long as its mechanical plots move forward in a relatively brisk fashion. If the action slows down, it becomes apparent how threadbare and creaky most of the character development is. I'm interested in actors such as Ivanek, Patterson, Collins, Laura Innes, who plays another alien leader and Hal Holbrook, who plays a mysterious character with an unknown agenda. They haven't, as yet, been given truly interesting characters to play, and that's a waste of really good actors. So far these performers are doing their level best with the material they've been given, but they shouldn't have to carry the show -- the writing should.
I want there to be a science-fiction drama on a broadcast network, but it's time for me to stop grading shows like 'The Event' and 'V' on a curve because of my geeky tendencies. If both shows can't step up their games and marry truly solid character development to more thoughtful storytelling, then I'm not going to shed a tear if they both die on the vine. There are plenty of supernatural-flavored shows in development for fall, and I may just have to wait for one of those shows to sate my need for otherworldly drama.
At the moment, the fact that half of 'The Event's' return was moderately exciting earned the drama one more week from me. We shall see then if the drama is worth a further investment of my time -- or yours.
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