SPOILER: The Event (USA)
Mr Martini
That nice house in the sky.Posts: 2,703MI6 Agent
Not sure how many people have heard about this new show set to premiere on NBC on Sept 20th. Just found a 4:18 second teaser trailer on-line. Give it a watch and see if it captures your interest. Since 24 and Lost both went off the air last season, I think we need something to talk about this fall and winter.
Here's the trailer:
http://www.nbc.com/the-event/
Look interesting?
Here's the trailer:
http://www.nbc.com/the-event/
Look interesting?
Some people would complain even if you hang them with a new rope
Comments
What exactly is The Event? Us, the viewer have no clue. This show jumps all over the place. It starts at 2pm with a plane hijacking. It then jumps backwards to 14 days earlier. It comes back to the Hijacking then goes to 8 days earlier. The show goes to a commercial break then comes back to a different character in present time (2pm). Then this characters story line jumps backwards 13 months. It's a continuos thing, with different characters. They get introduced then the story line jumps backwards. As of right now we know a guy named Sean Walker has hijacked a plane (2pm). 14 days earlier he went to his girlfriends father to get his blessing for their engagement. 6 days after he gets the blessing we see the couple on a vacation. They meet a couple after Sean saves a girl from drowning. The four have drinks together. While they have drinks, Seans girlfriend gets a call from her parents. She takes the call, but doesn't talk long. After she hangs up, her parents house is broken into. Her young sister is kidnapped, her mom is killed (I assume) and her father........well, you'll have to read on.
President Eli Martinez is having a party in Florida at the Presidents retreat. He's going to have a press conference to tell the public about what he has found out about Mt. Inostronka. He learned about Mt. Inostronka 13 months earlier and feels the public should know about. The leader of Mt. Inostronka Sophia is at the Presidents party. 13 months earlier though she is kept handcuffed on the island. Probably so she can't go anywhere.
Back to present day (2pm. Probably a few minutes after now.) Sean has hijacked a plane. He hijacked the plane knowing the pilot was going to crash the plane at the Presidents party. A air marshall intercepts the hijacking by telling Sean to drop his gun. After Sean drops his gun a gunshot is heard and it came from the cockpit. Sean convinces the air marshall to open the cockpit, but due to a override system the air marshal can't get the cockpit door open. As the plane descends towards the Presidential party Sean get's on the phone to pilot. Who's the pilot, it's his girlfriends father. Sean trys to convince him not crash the plane. But Sean can't get through to him. The plane descends faster and faster towards the party, then we see a porthole open up in the sky. The plane enters this porthole and disappears into thin air. Sophia and the President both see this. Sophia then says, they saved us. The President asks, "What do you mean, they." Sophia tells him she hasn't told him everything.
Looks like we have another Lost type show.
Flash Forward is a perfect example of the dangers of these kinds of shows; they introduced a long-term story arc in the tradition of Lost but fans were wary about jumping aboard. After a promising start ratings quickly plummeted, the show was cancelled after one season and the "big mystery" was never solved. Heroes is another show like that and it seems Fringe is on the razor's edge of cancellation/renewal every year even though it doesn't seem to have an end in sight.
After Lost, I don't think its possible to sustain these types of shows indefinitely; people want resolution and a payoff for tuning in week after week and asking them to wait for an indeterminate period just won't cut it anymore. If a studio is going to release show with a long-term arc they really need to be up-front about how long it will go and they need to make a commitment to stick with it until the end. They also need to be realistic about how far they can drag it. Most viewers don't want to be strung along week after week, year after year with no end in sight. A few weeks is one thing, maybe a whole season, but nobody wants to go six years again before another payoff.
The longevity of Lost is something that can only occur once in a very great while every show that's tried to ape its format since then has failed. That's why I think shows like The Event are flawed and doomed from the getgo.
According to Nick Wauters, the show's creator, later episodes will use flashbacks more to develop the characters. "There will be big reveals and big clues in each episode," he said, promising that viewers will not have to wait too long for answers to questions raised. After the pilot aired, he and executive producer Steve Stark answered some viewer questions on their Twitter feeds, for example explaining that the fate of the plane will be disclosed early in the next episode - Taken from the Wikipedia page for The Event
Lets hope this is true.