The Event

So, I had no intention of watching this show. The previews prior to its premiere kind of turned me off. For me, there were aspects of the premise that were too played out to make it worth my time. However, my TV just happened to be on the channel this show comes on and nothing else good had started yet so I stuck it out. The ending of the first episode made me want to know what would happen next. It took until the 3rd episode to get me hooked. Now, I love it. Yeah, the cutting in and out was problematic at first, but I'm a fast learner. The acting, in my opinion, is largely very good. I think it's smartly written and well paced. I will be honest, though. If I didn't have DVR I wouldn't have stuck this show out long enough to find that I like it because Lie To Me comes on in the same time slot. It did take a while to warm up and get into a groove that wasn't so chaotic and confusing, but now I can't wait to see what happens next.

This is a fun series to watch as it builds up with each episode. You cannot be sure who are the good guys or bad guys and which ones to kibitz.

The basic story is aliens with only 1% DNA difference crash-lands in the artic and are rounded up and kept prisoners for 66 years. Well, maybe some got away.

The Event- The Complete Series. There is very little potty mouth. No gratuitous sex. Even car chases and shoot-em-up scenes are not that graphic. Again, it is people vs. People.

The only drawback is after watching 5 DVDs the program abruptly stops.

The book series is humongous so I am not sure I will get closer by reading. But I will try.

So I wasn't impressed with the pilot, found one of the main characters (Sara Roemer)to be a hum-drum drain that we have to work too hard to find believable, still some strong actors to pull it thru like Ritter, Innes and Underwood so I decided to give it another chance. Holy boring-soap-opera Batman! Was that ever a waste of time. The second installment was a duplicate of the first. It simply repeated everything they showed us the first time only from a side view perspective of someone else. OK, we already got that. It was not news, it was wholly predictable and painfully boring. I thought maybe there must be some interesting tidbit of news before the show ended but was ultimately punished for my patience. Unbelievable that producers think so little of our intellectual capability, treating us like toddlers that need everything to be repeated repeatedly. All the flashbacks are just annoying because we live a linear existence and like our stories to not deviate from that natural time flow so drastically. Lost interest now.

I was intrigued by the 4 minute extended trailer, and so I eagerly tuned in for the premiere. Unfortunately, it was very underwhelming. I didn't learn anything new from the 43 minute premiere that I hadn't already learnt from the 4 minute trailer. I actually found the premiere to be boring and unnecessarily drawn out.

Also, none of the characters really seemed all that interesting, except for maybe Mike and the lady from ER, but those aren't the main characters, so that's not a good sign.

I don't mind non-linear story telling, but, there didn't seem like all that much of a reason for the tactic here - it felt contrived. Also, this may seem like a minor point to some, but the way the "flashback" subtitles changed sizes really distracted me a lot. What's wrong with normal subtitles?

Anyways, I think I will give it one more episode to suck me in, but if the second episode is as underwhelming as the first, then I won't be tuning in.

This show has been one of the best Sci-Fi series to come out for years, I enjoyed Lost but occasionally got "Lost" with it, The Event is not hard to follow, something happened during each episode leaving a cliffhanger and you wanting for the next. I can understand why NBC has cancelled another season due to a plummet in viewing figures, but I cannot understand their thinking, the pilot and subsequent episodes faired really well with great viewing figures, they decide to allow the show to have a 3 month break, without warning the show restarts at a later time in the schedule and on a different night (In the UK it went from 10pm on a Friday to 11.55pm on a Monday), I would not have noticed this, only did due to the fact I had it on series record on satellite TV so was able to resume my viewing, many people I think will have been unaware of this or unable to do this, I just don't think the viewing figures dropped due to it being a bad show, I think bad decisions by NBC and lack of advertising. It was truly an entertaining show, especially the last 7 or 8 episodes of the series when it all kicked off, its like an emotional roller coaster at the beginning you can sympathise with the Aliens and dislike the humans especially the president and his decisions but all that changes, I don't want to go into it too much but I think its a series that anyone could enjoy given a chance. There are the odd annoyances, there are a few plot holes and a few minor irritations i.e. the character Sophia, her acting at time was a bit wooden and emotionless, but I suppose you get people like that in real life, I know some myself. Anyway give it a chance and I am sure you will end up thinking like I do, hope they back another series, don't want to be left in another forever limbo with the fantastic cliffhanger of the final show of the series !