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.
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.
On hindsight, I should’ve skipped the Cup O’ Joe panel for this. The premise looks really, really good. I just hope the plot delivers too.