The Event: An Eventful… Event

September 20th is going to be a huge night for TV, old series have been returning slowly but today we have hit the motherlode. With it we have a selected few TV shows returning or premiering – Castle, Chuck, The Event, Hawaii Five-O, House, and, well, How I Met Your Mother. Just those episodes alone are going to be enough to get your TV working overtime, and after seeing the previews for Chuck I am very very excited for what’s up this year, and I’m really glad they’re back. But this post is going to focus on something else entirely different – The Event. I had the honour to watch it at San Diego Comic Con (skipped out on a Marvel Panel to do it, and still managed to get into a room that was packed), and I think I remember enough of it to provide some insights as to what’s coming up.

There has been quite a bit of buzz for The Event, with comparisons to Lost, or even 24… some would say Flash Forward or Persons Unknown, but that’s pretty much cursing it and declaring that it’s going to be cancelled. Created by Nick Wauters (that’s him on the left, not Kristin Dos Santos), who’s creating his very own show for the first time, The Event is a show that’s doing the whole Lost thing of jumping back and forth in timelines. We’re surrounded by mysteries once again, this time about an event which only a select few know about, but one that is going to change the course of quite a few lives (if not the world). I won’t go into details, since this is a mystery/conspiracy-based show, but to put it simply, think of it as a mixture of Flash Forward with timey wimey bits from Lost.

I went into the premiere screening without knowing what to expect. It was just something on the schedule that had a little buzz, and since Pete was going to cover the Marvel event I thought I’d do something different. The Event was just down the same stretch of halls – but little did I know that the queue extended way out of the place. I managed to get in, and right after I sat down E! columnist Kristin Dos Santos came up to do the introductions. Nick Wauters and executive producer Evan Katz (who looks scarily like Jeph Loeb) had a few quick words to say – and suddenly, boom, we’re watching The Event. I was still half thinking about what I was missing on the Marvel Panel and thanks to lack of internets I totally did not expect to watch the whole episode – expecting it to end once the titles came up. It didn’t stop there, and proceeded to take up 40 minutes of time… I must admit I felt like I had struck the lottery. Free shows! Whee!

Crowd response to The Event was pretty solid, but sadly thanks to them airing the entire episode the cast and crew was only up there to answer a few questions before they were ushered out to let the next panel come in. That was sad, since audience participation is a great way to get even more buzz going. At any rate, I too clapped after the premiere was shown. The cast and crew were pretty enthusiastic, so not being able to interact with them in a Q&A was a little wasteful. Embarrassingly when I ran into Ian Anthony Dale in the corridor later I was stuffing my face with museli while trying to choke up a “that was really cool!” and then forgetting to get a picture with him. Blair Underwood seemed a little more popular.

I don’t do dark rooms very well, easily falling into narcoleptic sleep, but in this case I was awake throughout, which speaks a lot about how thrilling the show was. The action was quick paced and there were tons of questions raised, and if anything my interest was piqued. The actors all did a fine job, with quite a few of them familiar from previous shows, – as did the crew, there was really nothing outright BAD about The Event, and for the most part is stood afloat. Sadly, while other early reviews were effusive in their praise, I felt somewhat unimpressed by a few things –

1) More “event” television. After Lost ended – there has since been a huge vacuum in that slot. Flash Forward was more like a flash flood, coming, drowning us in pure bathos, then leaving, and Persons Unknown left… unknown. And let’s not talk about Heroes. I can’t remember much else, really, which tried to do the whole mystery show schtick, but what I’m trying to say is that I’m really jaded – so The Event has to really be on its game to keep my interest. Hopefully Nick Wauters has an end story in mind.

2) A little too serious. Maybe I like my sitcoms a little too much, and this is a drama – no, scrap that, this is a DRAMA. IT IS SRSBZNS. No time for levity here folks, everybody’s fighting to stay alive.

3) One more thing that had me groaning was the possible taglines for the show – I’ve not seen much advertising, and I’m really glad I’ve not heard “tune in for THE EVENT of fall! THE EVENT!” in a growly, raspy voice. I wonder if they were tempted to do that – after all, it’s so very, very obvious. I know Lost did it tons of times. The show does take itself very seriously tho, so I doubt they’ll resort to that. (Until Jeph Loeb comes on board.) Still – well, I’m not sold on the title.

All these problems relate more to the genre itself than to the show specifically (save the title) and so it deserves a bit of slack here. I think The Event is definitely worth a shot – these things don’t show if they’re keepers until at least 3 or 4 episodes into the season, where at the very least while asking more questions they’re answering some of the older ones. Actually if a show manages to do that, they’ll beat Lost in that aspect. I’ll be watching and hoping.