Episode Title: "To Keep Us Safe"
Writer: Evan Katz & Nick Wauters
Director: Jeffrey Reiner
Previously on "The Event":
An ordinary man named Sean Walker (Jason Ritter) found himself wrapped up in a conspiracy when his girlfriend Leila Buchanan (Sarah Roemer) was kidnapped while on board a cruise ship. Elsewhere, President Elias Martinez (Blair Underwood) made preparations to release a mysterious group of refugees led by Sophia Maguire (Laura Innes) with a major press conference over the objections of his cabinet and advisers, including CIA Director Blake Sterling (Zeljko Ivanek).
Several days later, Sean found his way onto a plane piloted by his girlfriend's father, Michael Buchanan (Scott Patterson). With Michael's wife murdered and his youngest daughter Samantha presumably held for leverage, Michael ignored Sean's pleas to call off his plan and attempted to assassinate the President by crashing the plane on to his Florida estate. When military fighter jets were dispatched to shoot it down, their weapons jammed.
Before the plane could hit the ground, it was surrounded by an energy field and vanished. Stunned by the turn of events, the President looked to Sophie, who said that she hadn't told him everything.
Story:
The plane reappears in the desert and violently crashes. Sean and the air marshal hustle to get the passengers out ahead of the advancing flames but have to leave before seeing Michael get out of the cockpit. Outside, Sean sees Michael emerge and confronts him. In flashback, we see a scene from four days ago in which Vicky (Taylor Cole) holds Leila at gun point to make him agree to the assassination attempt. Michael relates the tale to Sean and even identifies Vicky by name, whom Sean remembers from the cruise ship as the girl who lured him away while Leila was kidnapped. When black helicopters approach the crash site, Michael urges Sean to run into the desert and save Leila.
Back in Florida, the President's team discredits media reports about the plane's disappearance and try to figure out what happened to it. In a flashback to thirteen months ago, Martinez is briefed in full about Sophia's people. Apparently they are all aliens who crashed in an unknown craft back in 1944. The 97 survivors in custody appear human, but differ by 1% in their DNA which may account for why they don't seem to age. Sterling insists that the aliens have a hidden agenda and that they have withheld the truth from them.
In the desert, Sean finally collapses from heat stroke. Flash to seven days earlier, as Vicky drops by Sean's cabin and gets an ill Leila to convince him to go snorkeling together with her. After they leave, Vicky's boyfriend Greg (Wes Ramsey) visits and begins to sexually harass her. Leila tries to leave, but the man who held her father hostage in the earlier flashback is in her doorway dressed as a ship's officer. Greg and the man get into a fight, which ends with a knife to Greg's chest. When Leila runs away, another man grabs her before they drug her into unconsciousness.
In the present, Sean wakes up in a hospital and discovers that he's in Arizona. After being told that he was found by a couple in the desert, he insists that the nurse call the police so they can help him locate Leila. When the nurse complies, she learns that the police are already seeking Sean for Greg's murder. Meanwhile, Sterling tells the President that an alien sleeper cell must have caused the plane to disappear. Martinez then demands to speak with Sophia. In a flashback to '44, we see the aftermath of the alien crash as Sophia sends a man named Thomas to lead all of the uninjured passengers away before the rest are captured. Sophia stays with the 96 wounded survivors and promises Thomas that they will be together again soon.
Back to the present, Martinez confronts Sophia in her cell and says that he made a mistake by trying to release them and go public with the knowledge of extraterrestrial life. All she's will to tell him is that her people mean them no harm, but their patience is wearing thin after six decades in captivity. At the hospital, Sean completely misses the signs that the nurses are nervous around him until the cops are surrounding the building. He asks the nurse about the activity and is stunned when she says that she knows that he killed a man. Sean tries to get away but is quickly captured by two FBI agents. Back with Sterling, Simon Lee (Ian Anthony Dale) is given the assignment to hunt down the alien sleeper cells. But in a flashback, he is revealed to be one of Sophia's people as well.
After his meeting, Simon goes to see Thomas, who questions the wisdom of making the plane disappear because it sapped their resources. Simon tells him that the prisoner exchange is off the table and asks him what happened to the plane. Thomas tells him that the plane went down in Arizona and implies that he used the passengers as part of a message to the government. Back in the desert, Sean continuously tries to explain his situation to the two FBI agents from the backseat of their car, even as they mock him for the absurdity of his story. Realizing that a roadblock in the desert is keeping them from seeing the crashed plane, he tries to get them to drive on. But they simply turn around and drive back the way they came.
When Simon arrives at the crash site, he finds Michael's dead body in the sand and then a much larger pile of bodies, as all of the passengers and crew appear to have been killed.
Breakdown:
So... the secret of "The Event" is that Sophia's people are aliens who crash landed on Earth.
I'm cool with that.
It's not like there haven't been dozens of shows with the same premise, but the alien aspect of "The Event" is actually the most interesting thing about the series right now. Although, I'm just waiting for the next NBC ad to proclaim that the alien crash "WAS NOT THE EVENT!"
And all of the advanced technology and different physiology of the aliens is completely plausible... compared to everything else in the episode.
Let's start with Greg and Vicky. As predicted last week, Vicky turned out to be in on the abduction of Leila. But apparently Greg wasn't. Let me explain to you why that doesn't make any sense. The entire way that Sean met them in the pilot episode depended upon an extreme set of circumstances. If that was a plot, then they had to know that Greg's cries for help would get Sean to jump off of a cliff(!) to save Vicky's life. That's hard enough to believe. But to imply that Greg wasn't in on that? Really?
On the boat, it seemed at first that Greg was at Leila's room immediately after Sean and Vicky left. And his intentions seemed to be more sexually aggressive towards Vicky as opposed to trying to kidnap her. So, clearly he wasn't a good guy. But if he wasn't in on the plan, then none of his actions correspond to any kind of logic. The freakin' aliens are more believable than what we're being told about this abduction plan!
The FBI agents near the end of the episode even pointed out the absurdity of going through all of this to kidnap Leila and incriminate Sean. This was probably done to defuse the same argument from the audience, but the agents were right. It would have been far more effective to simply kill Sean. What is it with villains and overly elaborate plans? Sean's not even useful as a hero. His solution to every problem is to run towards the camera. And despite all of the swimming scenes, this ain't "Baywatch!"
In fact, the writers still haven't explained how Sean got off the cruise ship safely and back to the US in time to become aware of the plot against the President or even how he learned that Michael was being used as the pilot. That long, convoluted sentence was also more clear than anything in the series so far.
I forgot to bring it up last week, but the non-linear storytelling in this show is very annoying. It's an obvious trick picked up from "Lost," but it's employed so frequently here that it just comes off as lazy storytelling. We've mentioned on The Idiot Box that "The Event" can't seem to decide if it wants to be "24" or "Lost," which is why this story in today's Hollywood Reporter made me laugh. Apparently, all of the onscreen flashback text in "The Event" is the same font that "24" used through eight seasons.
In short, "The Event" is still a series with a severe identity crisis. I actually enjoyed this episode more than the pilot and it did a better job of laying out the premise. But it's not a show yet.
Crave Online Rating: 7.5 out of 10.
