Series premiere: 'The Event' — 3 out of 5 stars
For months, viewers have seen numerous sneak peeks and trailers of “The Event,” a new show on NBC. With the series premiere four days ago, the show both lived up to the hype and also caused some disappointment.
The show circulates around a group of characters all connected by a future incident called The Event. The characters range from a couple (played by Jason Ritter and Sarah Roemer) about to embark on a cruise, a prisoner in a top-secret facility (Laura Innes), and even the president of the United States (Blair Underwood). Through a series of flashbacks, the viewer sees each story and it all leads up to a singular incident that connects them all together.
The structure of the show lacks in originality. The concept of flashbacks is highly reminiscent of both the television show “Lost” and the movie “Vantage Point.” Also, some of the flashbacks are somewhat unnecessary to the plot. In addition, the flashbacks could cause the viewer to become confused, but this is no cause for the viewer to turn off the television. One thing that could have been better is the fact that there were times when the story was very slow, and those moments highly outweigh the exciting parts of the episode.
Despite all of this, the largest flaw in the show is the characters. They feel very plain and unoriginal and it doesn’t feel like there is any way that the viewer can connect to any of them. There are scenes that try to create emotion, like a proposal of marriage, or the president trying to protect his family, but these scenes fail to create any feeling towards the audience since they seem to be always eclipsed by a danger that surrounds the character.
Overall, “The Event” gives viewers many mixed reactions. Depending on your interests in television, this could be the show that falls on the same category as FOX’s television show “Fringe” due to its mystery, or it could be just another show that won’t be given a second chance. Even though the characters are very plain and some elements of the show are not unique, the story is very interesting and it just might keep viewers interested to discover the mystery of The Event.
12:42 p.m., April 21, 2011
Andrew said:
This is a really intriguing show, even though it can be challenging to follow at times. Although personally I find that to be part of the charm. But the bad side of it being the type of show that you need to see every episode to keep up with is when you miss episodes, like I did recently when I had to take a last minute trip out of town and forgot to set up my DVR. Thankfully being a DISH Network employee, I knew about the new website—DISH Online—where there is a ton of online content for free and to make it even better, a lot of it you don’t even need to be a DISH Network customer to view! And sure enough the latest episode of The Event: http://beta.dishonline.com/shows/318283-the_event/videos/849925-cut_off_the_head is on there. And there’s much more on the site too, so I definitely recommend checking it out.