The Event S1E4: A Matter of Life and Death

A quote from one of the characters would go here but none of them said anything quotable.

Lemme tellya, this show.

We want to like it. It's got all the elements of a show that would suck us in, but - and this is just about the most damning thing we can think of - we were more invested in the execrable Persons Unknown at this point in the series. We can't be bothered putting too much work into this review because the show's just not grabbing us enough. There's just so much time wasted on stuff that looks totally pointless to us. And if it turns out that it isn't totally pointless; if for some bizarre reason it turns out we the audience absolutely needed to sit in on Thanksgiving dinner with Leila's family five years ago because it foreshadowed some huge development that couldn't possibly be foreshadowed in any other way, EVEN THEN that's a whole hell of a lot to ask from the audience this early in the game.

No, this early in the game, we're supposed to have our favorite characters and we're supposed to worry about what happens next and we're supposed to be deliciously frustrated over all the unfolding mysteries and strange goings on. We're supposed to be sitting around on the internet posing the most bizarre and out-there theories based on throwaway lines and red herrings. Instead, we can barely keep any of the characters' names straight.

We like Sean. In fact, he's the best character and Jason Ritter's doing the best work on the show. As long as the story stays focused on Sean, we're interested. Yes, the whole thing centers around Leila in whom we're definitely NOT interested, but he keeps things humming in his scenes and he has a semi-believable in-over-his-head quality that makes you want to root for him. We also like Agent Collier and their scenes together, even if we find their clandestine, on-the-run "investigation" to be almost laughably implausible.

And speaking of laughably implausible, we can't neglect to single out Officer President Shmarack Fauxbama and his team of Crime-Bustin' Justiceteers. To hell with running the country! Fuck congress! Let's go question some "perps" and wander around disaster sites in our sunglasses because we are way too fucking badass for the executive branch, motherfuckers. We also got to meet Smichelle and little Smasha or Shmalia or whatever the kid's name is. The point is, he's an idiot with idiot Secret Service agents who apparently are trained to eagerly accept candy from strangers.

Vicki is still quite the entertaining bitch, although pudgy D.B. Sweeney is faxing in his performance. The whole thing with Vicki's mom will, we're sure, play out at some point in the future, but once again, it's asking a lot of the audience to give a shit about peripheral characters when we barely give a shit about the main ones. We suppose that Thanksgiving flashback was supposed to make us care, but we were a little distracted with thoughts of WHO ARE THE 97 AND WHAT ARE THEY DOING AND WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE HOLDING LEILA CAPTIVE AND WHY THE HELL DO THEY CARE ABOUT HER ANYWAY AND ALSO WHY IS THE PRESIDENT POUNDING THE TABLE AGAIN?

We don't know. They just threw so much at the audience in the first couple of episodes and it feels now like we're supposed to sit back and just let the rest of the story sort of play out. Leila's not interesting, guys. There's no getting around that. It's mean, but we were rooting for Vicki to finish her off. And seriously, what the hell was with that ridiculous setup anyway? They tricked Leila into thinking she got away and now they're posing as cops, because they need her to make a phonecall to Sean? Why not just hand her a phone and say "Call Sean?"

Feh. This is a pretty sour review and for that we sort of apologize because we don't hate the show at all. It keeps our attention for an hour, for the most part. We like about half of what they've got going on and would be quite happy to see them drop some of the narrative strands, especially the White House Tuff Guyz. And Leila. And the passengers from the plane. You killed them off once. You don't get to use them for a second cliffhanger. Just stick with Sean and Collier, get Sophia and her people freed or at least give them something to do, and put in more scenes of Vicki flipping her hair. We can't get enough of that little minx.

You got only a couple more episodes to keep us interested, Event people.


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