Episode Title: "Everything Will Change"
Writers: Nick Wauters & David Schulner
Director: Norberto Barba
Previously on "The Event":
Sophia (Laura Innes) officially returned to her people and told them that she was going to take them home. However, she was surprised to learn that many of them don't want to leave Earth. Her son Thomas (Clifton Collins Jr.) and his lover Isabel (Necar Zadegan) plotted to kill Sophia after she retrieved one of the main components needed to get back their home. But Sophia cowered Thomas into backing down and forced Isabel to shoot herself in her knee to prove her loyalty.
Elsewhere, Sean Walker (Jason Ritter) and Leila Buchanan (Sarah Roemer) sought out a young girl named Abby (Ellery Sprayberry), who had been held captive by the same group that kidnapped Leila's sister, Samantha. While trailing Abby and her family, Sean managed to overpower Berg (Peter Murnik), one of the henchmen working for Dempsey (Hal Holbrook). And to Sean's surprise, a picture in Berg's pocket revealed that Leila was his primary target.
Back in Washington, Vice President Raymond Jarvis (Bill Smitrovich) was nearly killed by a car bomb when he attempted to confess his transgressions to President Elias Martinez (Blair Underwood). As the President and CIA Director Blake Sterling (Zeljko Ivanek) waited to question him, Jarvis' wife warned him that their family had been threatened by Dempsey's men if he went through with his confession.
Story:
As Sean and Leila examine the unconscious Berg, they find a key card with a symbol similar to the one Abby told them about and a syringe filled with a strange liquid. When Berg wakes up, Sean threatens him with his gun, but Berg isn't impressed and knows that Sean won't kill him. Undeterred, Sean injects Berg with the syringe which ages him rapidly. He begs Sean and Leila to take him to Willow Brook Hospital before he dies of old age. Back in DC, Jarvis feigns memory loss from the explosion, but neither the President nor Blake believe him. Instead, Jarvis threatens to blackmail the President about his role in keeping the Inostranka refugees a secret from the public.
Afterwards, Blake and the President are told about an emerging crisis in the country of Amalah, which apparently has a nuclear missile ready to launch that could hit the United States. And they quickly realize that Sophia's people must have built it. Back with Sophia, she and Simon (Ian Anthony Dale) share tea with Thomas and Isabel while Sophia grills them about their financial assets. After Thomas and Isabel leave, she orders Simon to discover what they are really planning to do. Meanwhile, Thomas warns Isabel that Sophia knows they are hiding something and tells her that they have to leave before Sophia figures it out.
At Willow Brook hospital, we briefly see Samantha scribbling her name on a wall. Outside, Sean and Leila arrive and pretend to be visiting one of Leila's relatives in the elderly ward. However, Sean is quickly discovered snooping around by a security guard who users them out. Before they leave, another patient at the hospital confirms that young girls are being held there and the exterior of the building matches Abby's description of where she was held. At the same time, Simon finds that Thomas' personal banker has been killed as way to cover his tracks and Sophia alerts the rest of her sleeper agents to find him. Meanwhile, Thomas and Isabel tell their operatives in Amalah to get the missile ready for launch.
That night, Sean and Leila break into Willow Brook again and make their way into the locked basement levels using Berg's key card. They find that part of the complex abandoned, but discover Samantha's name written on the wall in her former room. They also discover pictures of Abby's father taken over several decades which suggest that he is one of Sophia's people. They also find a similar file on Leila's father, Michael; which may mean that Leila is a second generation alien, or whatever they're called.
The President orders an air strike to take out the missile, but it comes too late. The missile launches and turns out to be a satellite rocket, which reaches Earth's upper atmosphere and is deployed. The satellite begins sending a transmission away from Earth, presumably to the homeworld of Sophia's people. If this wasn't an invasion before, it may soon become that.
Breakdown:
It's amazing that after the last episode spent so much time tearing down Thomas and Isabel's credibility as villains that the producers and writers seem to think we won't remember just how easily they were thwarted by Sophia before. For this turn to have worked, we can't have already seen both of our would be bad guys humiliated and on their knees. It's just bad and lazy writing.
However, there are some interesting things going on in this episode. The satellite ending seems to give the theory that Sophia and her people are aliens some additional credence. And if "The Event" really does become an alien invasion oriented show, it would be a big improvement over the sometimes listless series that it's been to this point. "The Event" is being shelved until late February, which seems like a risky move. This wasn't necessarily the best cliffhanger to go out on (that probably would have been in episode 13). And this series has had enough problems drawing an audience without disappearing from the schedule. It's like "Flashforward" all over again. But I'll give "The Event" this: it's never been as dull as that series.
The other revelation of the episode is more intriguing in that it finally ties Sean and Leila to the bigger story in a more meaningful way than trying to track down a lost sister. I actually guessed that Sean was a second generation member of Sophia's people, so having it be Leila instead was a nice swerve. But I'm starting to loose faith in Sarah Roemer's ability to carry her role. Ever since she's been freed, Leila has been a fairly one note character and before that she was just the victim that needed saving. It may simply be that Roemer is just following what's written for her, but Leila badly needs some more development. And maybe this twist will give her that.
The Vice President's story took a turn for the worst when he tried to pull the amnesia card before moving on to blackmail. Neither of those tactics should have worked and the President looked weak for even backing down at all. Plus, how realistic is it for the CIA director to follow shadow the President as often as Blake Sterling does? Someone should tell the President that Blake is America's spy general, not your damn secret service butler. But since Blake is played Zeljko Ivanek, I expect that he'll die horribly soon as almost all of Ivanek's other characters have done on "Damages," "Heroes," "True Blood" and so on...
In the end, "The Event" closed out the first part of its season on merely an average note. It wasn't enough to be either a good or a bad episode. It just simply was; which isn't going to give it the audience it needs unless something drastically changes when it returns next year.
Crave Online Rating: 6.5 out of 10.
