I’m Pretty Sure You Should Be Watching The Event

I’m going to start off assuming that you haven’t been watching The Event (which airs on NBC Monday nights at 9pmEDT).  Later, I’ll write a little more assuming the opposite, but I will mark it clearly so as not to spoil anything.

You might have watched that first episode and decided, “no thanks.”  I wouldn’t blame you – in fact, I almost wrote the show off myself.  Then I saw the second episode and thought that it addressed and corrected so much of what I had seen the week before that I concluded it was supposed to have been aired as a two-hour pilot. 

I have no idea if that’s true, but I was pretty excited to sit down and watch the third episode, and it didn’t disappoint me.

First, I do have to say, I’m on board now.  There are aliens afoot.  I’m pretty seriously capable of suspending some disbelief at this point, maybe more so than your average guy.  So to be clear – the show isn’t perfect yet.  Some kind of clunky coincidences happen, but on the other hand, the pace is nice and quick.  I’m not sure I’d want them to slow it down just for the sake of appeasing wiseasses like myself.

But the characters are starting to grow on me, in particular Sean Walker, played by Jason Ritter.  I really was not crazy about three of his biggest scenes thus far – the swimming pool scene, the proposal scene, and the scene where he gets her dad’s blessing.  I thought they all seemed too forced and cliche and really felt like bricks.

So I was pretty surprised when he gets into a rhythm later – he’s weirdly suited for the old Harrison Ford Everyman character. 

His storyline involves some really tense and well-done scenes, starting with a car crash that feels pretty real despite the kind of uninspired Pending Fuel Spill Explosion backdrop.  And later a character handcuffed to a bed has to stretch to retrieve a bag with her foot, just barely in reach, which was really tense.  

And then later it’s wall-to-wall action, and I can’t really go into it without spoiling anything except to say comparisons to 24 were apt, and in a good way.

The last two minutes are jaw-dropping.  I can assure you, I did not see that coming and it gave me chills and I am at a (nearly) complete loss as to what on Earth is going on.

So, I’m pretty sure you should be watching this show, is what I’m saying.

Okay, now if you haven’t been watching it, you should go – spoilers ahead.

SPOILERS!

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All right then.

The main thing I was looking for when I watched this episode was for anything to contradict my time-traveler theory.  I didn’t see anything, but on the other hand, I didn’t see much to support it.

However, listen:  Suppose the aliens are humans from the future.  The reason their DNA is different is because they are alien hybrids.  They are coming back in time to flee the end of the world or something. 

The military figures if they can keep the entire existence of their crash and the survivors totally secret, then the time traveling aliens will not be able to figure out where to come back in time and save them.

The time traveling aliens can intercede, they just need to know when and where.  So for instance they were able to determine when and where the plane would be, because once it crashed it became a matter of history.  So they went back and changed it.

If the alien crash had been public and everyone knew where they were being held, then they could have used similar technology to come back and get them. 

Now, someone in the comment section said The 4400 was also about time travelers.  I haven’t seen the show, so I’d be interested in hearing how close I am to it.  Maybe I’m psychically predicting the wrong show, through some kind of wormhole.

And then there’s the end – again get out of here if you haven’t seen it. 

All the dead bodies wake up.  Everybody was pretty clear that they were all extra super definitely dead earlier.  When they woke up, my first thought was that if they test all these people who are waking up, they’ll find their DNA is one percent different. 

Do the aliens change us into aliens?  Or do they inhabit human bodies?  Or do they just go around making time traveling alien zombies for no reason?

That was a pretty chilling thing, all those dead people.  If they’re just alive now and not aliens or zombies or anything, then they’d better have a good reason for taking it back.

This is a strange show when practically any sci-fi device can serve as a theory.  Clones?  Parallel dimensions? Alien hybrids?  Teleportation?  Time travel?  Almost a little too much – it reminds me of another show that used to whack me over the head with a jawdropping cliffhanger every week. 

Yet here I go jumping on board – there’s one born every minute.
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Earlier: The Event: First Impressions

And: The Event: The Second Half Of A Decent Pilot
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And initially: The Event Shows Promise And Cause For Alarm

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And not-very-related: THE WAY OF MCCHEESE