The Event - season 1 thread (1 Viewer)

[TravisR]

Because, the argument goes... how do we know they're just calling their kid or ordering a pizza?  How do we know that they're not making convert calls and subverting the rule of law, or how do we know that someone won't find a way to blackmail them by getting that direct line information?  Cell phones are fairly vulnerable to monitoring and hacking from unauthorized personnel - would you want to stake the security of the entire free world on someone's cell phone not getting tapped?

If I trust the President to essentially run the world, I have to trust that he's smart enough to only use a cell phone only for non-sensitive talk. Looking at a link above, Obama has a Blackberry so I can accept that the President in a TV show with aliens and wacky twists and turns has one too. As for the President doing something illegal (a la 24), if they want to commit a crime, not having a cell phone isn't going to stop them from face-to-face meetings or using an intermediary to do something illegal so not letting them have a cell phone isn't going to do anything to thwart crime.

 

[Hugh Jackes]

But Josh is describing what is, not how you or anyone else thinks it should be. Federal law (or possibly regulations) require that presidential communications be logged and recorded for posterity.


Obama's Blackberry is modified such that every action he takes on it is logged and recorded. E-mails, texts, phone calls, and seb activities are all recorded. Someday, at his presidential library, you'll be able to see whether he ordered a pizza whil on the clock.


GW Bush did cease all e-mail on the day he took office. I remember reading that he was in the habit of e-mailing his daughters, away at college, daily and was disappointed at losing that daily parent-child contact.

 

[todd s]

Would be interesting if the aliens trying to mutate the flu on Leila backfired and made the aliens suseptable and not humans.


Also, with the show all but cancelled. I wonder if the writers saw the writing on the wall and at least didn't end the show on a big cliff-hanger. Again, this is why I think all shows should be told whether they are cancelled or not before filming ends for a season.

 

[TravisR]

But Josh is describing what is, not how you or anyone else thinks it should be. Federal law (or possibly regulations) require that presidential communications be logged and recorded for posterity.


Obama's Blackberry is modified such that every action he takes on it is logged and recorded. E-mails, texts, phone calls, and seb activities are all recorded. Someday, at his presidential library, you'll be able to see whether he ordered a pizza whil on the clock.


GW Bush did cease all e-mail on the day he took office. I remember reading that he was in the habit of e-mailing his daughters, away at college, daily and was disappointed at losing that daily parent-child contact.

OK but does Roger Bart's character know that the cell phone isn't monitored? I've got no idea what his title is or if he'd be privy to that info. Plus, I don't see a need to apply real world laws to a show with aliens that have the ability to teleport across the galaxy and have spent 65 years placing themselves in the highest levels of power just for a Plan B so I can accept that the Prez is using a cell phone.

 

[Doug Smith]

Thanks for the info. that there are only two shows left. I guess the dye has been cast. About Vicky not taking that shot at Sean - i just assumed she was some kind of Sentinal or some sort of other other alien presence that was supposed to protect Sean at all costs, and that this might be a future story arc - probably wrong but I guess it's something we'll never know. Wouldn't it be nice if the creators,of a show like this, would come clean once it is cancelled. Maybe let the audience know the direction the show would have gone?

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I wonder if the showrunners really had much of a direction to begin with. I hate to sound overly cynical (OK, maybe I don't hate it that much) - but here's a show about aliens, and I think it took at least half a dozen episodes for them to call the aliens aliens when it was pretty obvious from Day 1. To me, it seemed like too much of "focus group hell" where someone at the network was looking at this and thinking, these guys want to do a sci-fi show, a lot of people don't like sci-fi shows, so let's see how long we can do a sci-fi show without calling it a sci-fi show. That worked out decently for "Lost" (a show where I can still have arguments with people until I'm blue in the face about whether or not it's sci-fi - I say it is, they'll say, "I like Lost, and I hate sci-fi, so Lost isn't sci-fi"), but really did a disservice to this show.


It's really difficult to do a show where you want to tell a continuing story, where you want to leave enough material to potentially go on for years, without giving it all up at once - it seems like shows like The Event take too long to get going because they want to keep a mystery going, when there's not too much that's mysterious going on in the first place. I have to say that while I think it would be an interesting challenge to have, I don't exactly envy the showrunners for having to walk that tightrope. A lot of times now, when a new serial show comes on the air, you hear the writers or producers talk about having a plan that could last for five years - that's great, and all, but what's your plan for making the first year work?


By the way, if the president could order pizza on a cell phone - he better order a whole bunch, since secret service regulations require that agents sample all food before the president eats it!


And yeah, what Adam said - Vicky not taking the shot was the show's worst transgression at this point. The president having a cell phone, I take that more as uninformed writing more than anything; as I said, they could have easily covered that by having his desk phone ring, having Sophia pick up and say something like, "I can make any phone in the world ring if I want to" and all of a sudden, it's believable and yet doesn't violate what I know to be proper protocol for presidential communications. But I just don't buy that Vicky suddenly loves Sean at all, much less to the point where she'd risk the annihilation of all humankind just so she could give him doe eyes. I was actually kinda shocked that Thomas died a few episodes earlier; usually shows will put main characters in jeopardy (as would seem realistic) but then find unrealistic ways to keep them alive. It's the same reason that any threat to Jack Bauer's life in 24 (a show that shared some producers as The Event) never were very effective; when it's already been announced the show is coming back next year, you know Bauer's not gonna bite the dust. As much as it sometimes suck when a beloved character dies, that's what makes great TV great: when a circumstance arises where it's not believable that everyone would make it out alive, don't let them all get out alive. They made the right decision with Thomas' fate (as dumb as that whole bit of the story was aside), same with Hal Holbrook's character's death, but this was a stunning example of horrible writing, made even worse when none of the characters are particularly likable and the show's got no chance of coming back anyway. Put a character like Sean in that circumstance, and he shouldn't make it out alive. I would have had more respect for the people making this thing had he died right there. Or heck, I'd believe Vicky was a good enough shot that she could have killed the guy before he killed Sean. But it wasn't believable to me that that scene ended how it did.


I really, really wanted to like this show. There's so little sci-fi on major networks, nevermind good sci-fi, that I'm always willing to give it a little more leeway than a crime procedural or sitcom; even granting that, this show has seriously been tanking for a long time. I'm honestly a bit surprised that it's made it all through the season with all episodes airing and at the same timeslot - I think that may be more of an indication of how lost NBC is as opposed to anything else. Remember when NBC used to be a good network?

 

[Hugh Jackes]

Plus, I don't see a need to apply real world laws to a show with aliens that have the ability to teleport across the galaxy and have spent 65 years placing themselves in the highest levels of power just for a Plan B so I can accept that the Prez is using a cell phone.

Ok, you 've got me there.

 

[EricSchulz]

What I found most unbelievable were the numbers of shoppers in that mall and it wasn't Black Friday or Christmas.


I do agree with the change in direction...The Event wanted to be a Lost/sci-fi action "mythology" series but it tried too had and failed on most counts. Had it positioned itself as a 24 style thriller with the sci-fi overtones from the beginning it might have done better. By the way, what was the point of kidnapping all the little girls earlier in the series?

 

[NeilO]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Josh Steinberg

And yeah, what Adam said - Vicky not taking the shot was the show's worst transgression at this point. .... But I just don't buy that Vicky suddenly loves Sean at all, much less to the point where she'd risk the annihilation of all humankind just so she could give him doe eyes.

While it looked like she did it because she had developed feelings for him, there is a more logical explanation to not risk Sean's life in the case. Dempsey (Hal Holbrook's character) killed himself so that Sean could carry on and stop the threat of the aliens. He pinned everything that he has done in the past few years because he has seen Sean overcome obstacles time and time again. This virus is not their only threat. If Sean dies right here, they might have stopped the virus threat, but now Vicky would bear the responsibility to carry things on alone. It would have just taken a line or two of dialogue to explain it - "Dempsey believed you could stop the threat, I couldn't risk your life at this point."

 

[RickGr]

No surprise but this one has been cancelled.

 

[NeilO]

But from

http://www.deadline.com/2011/05/nbc-cancels-the-event-too/

But there is a twist, and it's not only the big surprise planned by the producers for the finale. Talks are underway with at least one distribution partner to take over the serialized drama. The Event executive producer Steve Stark wouldn't comment, but I hear new original programming player Netflix's name tossed around. Word is that there has been interest from several cable and digital entities. Stark said that they are exploring the opportunities with the "full support" of the studio, UMS. "NBC has been an amazing partner, it launched the show beautifully," he said. Added creator Nick Wauters: "We have a dedicated fan base, and we promised them we will deliver one way or another and will continue to tell our stories."

If it really does get picked up elsewhere that would be a giant surprise.

 

[EricSchulz]

did everyone here skip

this week's episode?

 

[Patrick Sun]

I watched it, but didn't have much to say about a canceled show. I guess we'll finally find out the hoopla surrounding "the event" next week.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I enjoyed it. They addressed Sophia's guilt, and did a good job resurrecting the president. I think Jarvis will be mistaken in thinking that the cabinet won't back the return of Martinez. Under the terms of the 25th Amendment, the president only need transmit "to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists" to resume his duties and powers. To get the declaration of disability reinstated would take another vote of the vice president and the cabinet, so it's not Martinez who'd need to win the cabinet over, it's Jarvis who would need to rewin the cabinet over. Since Martinez is ambulatory and in demonstrable charge of his faculties this time around, I don't think it will be nearly so easy.


I'm looking forward to the season/series finale on Monday.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Adam, as per 25th Amendment - I'm curious if the people writing the show know that as well as you do. They obviously don't know (or choose to ignore) other bits of presidential protocols from communications to secret service protection, so while I think we will see Martinez returning to his post, it should be interesting to see if they write that in a constitutionally correct way.


Thought the episode was OK. Knowing a show isn't going to return, especially a serialized show, does take some of the impact away from watching it for me - when they start setting up potential threads for following seasons, and you know there aren't going to be, it's hard to keep the same level of enthusiasm as a viewer - at least, that's my feeling of it.


It was nice to see Sophia more or less acting like the character she was for most of the run of the show.


Wondering if Leila being a hybrid human/alien and being infected will somehow lead to a cure - maybe her alien genes end up producing some sort of antibody that can be used as a cure? Assuming the thing gets out in the first place.


The idea that the aliens might have been here first - I think that was a really interesting idea and might have made this a better show had they started exploring that in earlier episodes. A lot of the show's tendency towards being secretive to me seemed more like stalling than anything else, i.e. "we have a multi-season arc, therefore we can't give too much away this early in the game" which I hate - just go and do the best show you can every week, and don't worry so much about inventing short things to prolong a mystery that doesn't need prolonging. (An example of that might be when Sean was shot earlier in the season - amazing how quickly one can recover from a gunshot wound on a TV show; in my opinion, it was a needless obstacle.) So if the aliens and the humans are somehow related or share a past history, I think it would have been interesting to get into that sooner. It also might have gone a ways towards explaining how pretty much everyone on the alien side seemed to have no real issue with mass genocide; I'd like to believe that even a species faced with possible extinction wouldn't do something so drastic as lightly as they seem to be. When Sophia says that humans would do the same if the situation was reserved - maybe I have too much faith in mankind, but I don't know that I agree that would automatically be the case. But, if they're more than simply visitors, if they have reason to feel that this planet was theirs and was unfairly taken from them - I think that makes their actions a bit more believable.


I'm still looking forward to the finale and hoping for a fun ride for the last sixty minutes.

 

[NeilO]

Originally Posted by Josh Steinberg

Wondering if Leila being a hybrid human/alien and being infected will somehow lead to a cure - maybe her alien genes end up producing some sort of antibody that can be used as a cure? Assuming the thing gets out in the first place.


The idea that the aliens might have been here first - I think that was a really interesting idea and might have made this a better show had they started exploring that in earlier episodes. ...

I'm still looking forward to the finale and hoping for a fun ride for the last sixty minutes.

I was thinking about Leila possibly providing clues for a cure as well. I'd find it hard to believe that they could stop all three threats completely. I'm think that in at least one of the threats, some of the local people might be exposed and they might be able to quarantine them before it spreads. Of course, Agent Lee's body might also help as well. Maybe suing his blood could cure Leila or any humans? We might see.


The thing about the aliens being there first just poses more questions. Were they here and then went to their current home for some unknown reason? That might explain why they thought to come here first when when their current home was threatened. Still, it makes me think that in the course of finding their current home they might have found somewhere else on the way as well. From when Dempsey saw the stuff in the cave, we knew that there were aliens here a long time ago.

Another thing that was bothering me - Dempsey wanted Sean to carry on and stop the aliens. Now, why before he killed himself, didn't he let his people who he wanted Sean to carry on the job so that Sean could use some of his support apparatus? He must have had tons of resources that would help.


I do want to see where they leave us. I guess we'll find out what "the event" actually was.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

OK, dumb question - I totally forgot what happened to Leila's little sister. Her mom was murdered (right?), and the sister was kidnapped at one I point (I think), but what then? I feel like I definitely saw whatever happened and have just forgotten.

 

[NeilO]

Originally Posted by Josh Steinberg

OK, dumb question - I totally forgot what happened to Leila's little sister. Her mom was murdered (right?), and the sister was kidnapped at one I point (I think), but what then? I feel like I definitely saw whatever happened and have just forgotten.

She was rescued from the van (and other tested children were freed as well) and they stashed her with another family for a time and was forgotten?

 

[ScottH]

I thought it was funny how Sean can hack into basically any government computer network, including the pentagon, NSA, and whatever other entity, but he couldn't hack into that laptop?

 

[Doug Smith]

I know its cynical, but when the line "we were here before(or first?)" was uttered, I couldn't help but think - yeah so was Jericho, Flashforward, V and other sci/fi fantasy shows that have failed recently. I love this genre of Television. But the patrons of such shows have definitely fallen on hard times since Lost.