I am – Hercules!!
“The Event,” a cross between “24” and “Lost,” comes to us from Nick Wauters, who scripted an episode of “Medium,” an episode of “The 4400,” an episode of “Eureka.”
Though its pilot isn’t nearly as good as the pilots for “24” or “Lost,” I still judge it to be the best of the early-fall broadcast entries.
Its ensemble cast is packed with familiar faces, among them Jason Ritter (“Joan of Arcadia”), Blair Underwood (“L.A. Law”), Scott Patterson (“Gilmore Girls’), Zeljko Ivanek (“True Blood”) and Laura Innes (“ER”).
The narrative is packed with flashbacks and flashforwards covering a 13-month period, a lot of them offering clues to what’s going on.
The Ritter character is a vacationer who finds himself caught up in an enormous conspiracy. Underwood plays a new U.S. president who comes to learn the CIA is maintaining a strange top-secret detainment center in the Alaskan wilderness. Ivanek is the government operative who’s been doing the covering up. Innes is an enigmatic figure apparently possessed of, at minimum, extraordinary knowledge.
We don’t learn in the pilot what The Event is, but we’re left with the impression it’s something big.
I’m not certain there’s a series here, but I can tell you that its first hour is strong enough to guarantee I’ll be tuning in for its second and probably its third.
USA Today says:
… Questions, and lots of them, are what NBC has been seeding all summer with an insistent campaign designed to make you wonder, "what event?" The good news is that by the time you get halfway through the enjoyably exciting premiere, you'll most likely want to know the answer to that query. And the potential, built-in bad news is that by the hour's end, you won't be much closer to the answer. … knows the game it's playing and its risks. You can tell from the wink-at-the-audience last line, delivered by the always-welcome Innes: "I haven't told you everything." … Tell us more — and soon would probably be best.
The New York Times says:
… A thriller that leaves no device of the genre underdeployed, “The Event” zigzags between the personal and the political, and back and forth across the calendar among cruise ships, military drones, planes and automobiles. It travels to a house in Atlanta, a prison in Alaska, a beach on St. Lucia, and Coral Gables, Fla., where the Cuban-American president, played by Blair Underwood with a kind of no-nonsense humanism, maintains his nautically suggestive retreat. You accumulate frequent-flier miles just by watching. … bright and showy and too in thrall to its own hysteria to feel unsettling. It doesn’t quiet down enough to disturb, and as a result its claims to relevance seem merely perfunctory. … In another era it was possible to produce a thriller of this kind and forgo images of children in peril, but today our anxieties are so unevenly divided between potential threats to domestic life and broader distrust of institutions that it seems almost a prerequisite for bad things to happen in living rooms. On this count, “The Event” brings it on.
The Los Angeles Times says:
Welcome back to the big leagues, NBC. With Monday night's premiere of "The Event," the network that as recently as last year seemed hopelessly mired in creative and financial chaos has finally located a tent pole, a new show as big, brash and promising as "Heroes" was a few years back. … clearly seeks to fill the hole left by " Lost," albeit, one hopes, in a less loose-ends-loving way. Just as "Lost's" greatest strength was character arc — what will happen to an assortment of fairly ordinary people placed in extraordinary circumstance — "The Event" seems prepared to make its characters as complex as its storyline, always an event worth attending.
TV Squad says:
… compelling; it kept my interest and it made me want to see more, which is all I can ask of any pilot. The show has an extremely appealing lead in Jason Ritter, who plays Sean, a vacationing good guy who gets caught up in a terrifying mystery. So if you're having 'FlashForward' anxiety attacks, just know that Ritter is far more endearing than Joseph Fiennes ever was in that arcane and off-putting ABC show. 'The Event' was a well-paced hour that played skillfully with time, and if the characters were a little thin, well, it's a pilot -- it'll take time to give characters shading and dimension. …
The San Francisco Chronicle says:
… All of this is intriguing if confusing. Much of it is vague on purpose, of course, but in the pilot there are so many flashbacks (23 days ago, 8 days ago, one nanosecond ago, etc.) that it becomes almost comical. And yet, it's mighty entertaining. The question you need to ask yourself is whether a serialized drama with loads of twists and turns - and no guarantee of success - is worth the investment of your time. There's always a need for a pulse-pounding mystery with a little paranormal thrown in. If "The Event" proves it can let out the story while reeling viewers back each week, it could be something special. …
The Washington Post says:
… a cynical grab for the orphaned fans of both "Lost" and "24," a hybrid drama incorporating threats to national security and a minority president by a group of terrorists (a la "24") and supernatural episodes of dislocation and unexplained phenomena (a la "Lost"). The come-ons are everywhere in this show, from the vaguely Oceanic color scheme on the doomed airliner to the very CTU-like font choice in the title cards, which tell you the names of characters and what day and hour this is. You'll need those title cards. … I, for one, have decided I can't do anything about preventing the event, nor will I help plan for the event or worry about the event; I have something else scheduled. So do let me know how the event went. …
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says:
… a propulsive, edge-of-your-seat pilot episode that raises many questions and is likely to leave viewers eager to learn more. …
HitFix says:
… The pilot is a lot of flash and no substance. It wants me to want to find out what the event is, but I don't care, and I imagine within a week or three, neither will most of the audience. …
The Boston Herald says:
… the most intriguing new fall drama … Will “The Event” turn out to be another “FlashForward” or the next “Lost”? I’m betting cautiously on the latter.
The Boston Globe says:
… The creator of the show, Nick Wauters, has done his mythology-series homework, and now he’s taking his skills public with the hope of delivering the “Lost,’’ “24,’’ or “X-Files’’ of the 2010s. Hijacked plane? Check. Coverup involving the president and CIA? Check. Big Secret that could change the fate of mankind forever? Check. Zeljko Ivanek? Check. Well-drawn human characters? Um, oops. … I’m going to watch next week, in hopes of finding an answer to tonight’s biggest cliffhanger: Can “The Event’’ turn out to be something more than just another mega-conspiracy wannabe?
The Hollywood Reporter says:
… As showrunner, Evan Katz, formerly of Fox's "24," knows a good deal about storytelling at breakneck speeds. In addition, executive producer Jeffrey Reiner, who directed the pilot, barely lets you catch your breath. However, unless they reward viewer trust with a few satisfying answers -- and soon -- "Event" will see a sharp decline in RSVPs. So far, the most enjoyable part of this dizzy ride is the brilliant cast. Underwood and Ritter are entirely convincing in complicated roles. Equally impressive is the work of Innes as the tightly wound conspirator and Zeljko Ivanek as the president's straight-talking aide. …
Variety says:
… does a nifty job of raising suspicions -- and introducing a diverse cast of characters, from an extremely unlucky vacationer to the president of the United States. NBC's stab at a big, serialized "Lost"-like premise gets off to an enticing start …
9 p.m. Monday. NBC.
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