The Event S1E7: I Know Who You Are (recap)

If there's one thing I always say -- and I do always say this, and you should ask anyone who knows me -- about TV shows, it's this: "If you can't end an episode of your TV show with a little girl entering a mysterious apartment full of what appear to be other little girls but are actually some kinda weird old people in little girl drag, then your TV show is a complete failure." The list of shows which this old maxim could be applied to is incredibly long, including such illustrious series as "The Wire," "Mad Men" and "The Dick Van Dyke Show," and tonight, "The Event" joins their ranks, as Leila's little sister, whose name I haven't bothered to learn just yet, is ushered into an apartment that looks more like a library in an ancient country house, then confronted with the fact that all of the little girls there look like old women. (And some look like old men!) Cue the end of the episode.

I have no idea what any of this means, other than the fact that "The Event" just wants to keep tossing weird stuff at us in the hopes that we'll keep watching.

Tonight's episode was a decided step back from the last one, which at least suggested the series was figuring out its voice and its structure, so maybe this last scene was just a way to keep the weirdness quotient high. It happens. But in terms of making sense of anything or dragging the story forward or even making Leila's little sister a character who's something beyond "generic little girl," the scene didn't work. It was just oddness for oddness' sake, and the producers would surely be pleased if you tuned in for next week's episode, which is already going to the well of "let's watch the highly-rated pilot from a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ANGLE." Usually, shows don't go to this well until Season 3 or 4. There'd better be a darned good reason for "The Event" to be doing so so soon. (And, as we all know by now, there won't be.)

Anyway, this is the part where I'd theoretically summarize what happened tonight and talk about what sort of bearing it had on other events. Except, the thing is, pretty much nothing DID happen. The show wisely kept to the character-specific flashbacks of the last episode, this time letting us get to know Zeljko Ivanek's Blake Sterling just a little bit better, but the connection between the past and future storylines was far more tenuous this week than it was the last time around. In that last episode, Simon was the focus of both the present and past storylines, and the two of them commented on each other in interesting ways. In this episode, Blake is pretty much just hanging out around the edges of the present storyline, and all of the big decisions are made for him in the past (outside of one crucial one). It leaves the episode feeling oddly shapeless, especially since the main plot -- the aliens making sure that Simon isn't fingered as one of them -- has so little to do with Blake.

The flashback story for Blake isn't a bad one. Fourteen years ago, he was serving in the CIA under his father and happily married to a woman named Laura. Except, whoops, as it turned out, Laura was a Russian spy, embedded in a marriage to Blake to help leak U.S. state secrets to her compatriots back in just barely post-Communist Russia. Confronted with the truth of his wife's betrayal, Blake tells her that he knows everything about what she's done, but he believes she actually loves him. (Ah, we men! Always so stupid in these matters!) Of course she doesn't, and of course she bolts, and of course his father is lurking in the bushes to shoot Laura in the head. Blake's out a wife, but his dad offers to let him take credit for shooting the woman, the better to help him advance his career. Gee. That's great, dad.

Anyway, in the "present," Blake apologizes to the president for not realizing the mole (the recently framed Murphy) was in his department. He's usually better at catching these things -- since he's cultivated a "mole sense" after the thing with his wife -- but he let the country down this time.

This is all well and good, but it has so little to do with the major plots of the episode proper, which mostly have to do with Thomas coming up with a way to get Simon off the hook when he's so obviously guilty and Sean and Leila seeking out a mysterious dude who can help them find her sister, that it feels
inconsequential. It's nice to know more about the past of Blake, but it's simultaneously far from necessary. The title of the episode, "I Know Who You Are," is what Blake says to his wife when he finds out her terrible secret, but I think it's also meant to be applied to more and more of the characters, who reveal little things about themselves in this episode. (For example, as it turns out, Sophia is Thomas' mother, though I have this weird feeling we learned this before.) So, yes, it's good to know more about who Blake really is, but the best episodes of shows like this unite the past and present action through some sort of character and thematic continuity. This episode might have been better off as a flashback about Thomas, but it's obvious the series doesn't want to play that card this soon into its run.

So what we're left with is a centerless episode that doesn't do a lot to justify its existence. So little actually happens -- when the episode ends, we're basically where we were at the start of the last episode -- that it's tempting to write this off as yet another episode for marking time. Yet Ivanek is such a skillful actor and there are just enough neat little touches around the edges that I would rank this above the first few episodes of the show, where it felt like everything was just going to keep running in circles. And then there's that ending, which is just strange enough to make me want to see how it's resolved. (My prediction? The little girls are the ones from that encoded document Sean found, and the conspiracy dudes -- led by Hal Holbrook, who's mostly wasted but always a welcome presence -- have been trying various things to make them ageless, like the aliens, and have mostly failed.) This is a bland, shapeless episode of television, but it isn't as bad as it could have been.

The story in brief, in case you've checked out: It sure looks like Simon's the mole, which means that he's going to face some pretty horrific "enhanced interrogation" as Blake and his pals try to get information about the aliens' plan out of him. Thomas, however, has other ideas, and he spends much of the hour figuring out a way to get Simon off the hook, finally framing Murphy, the guy who caught on to what Simon was up to in the last episode, for the leaks. Oh, and Sophia is his mom. Blake, for his part, was betrayed by his wife 14 years ago -- she was a Russian spy! -- and then his dad killed her. Yikes. Sean and Leila spend most of the episode running around (when don't they?), but they at least find out that somebody somewhere was interested in girls around Leila's sister's age, right before the hacker they've turned to to help get this information blows up his apartment to stop the Feds, who are closing in. Oh, and Leila's sister? She's led to an apartment full of creepy old person kids. Yeah, we have no idea either.

--Todd VanDerWerff (follow me on Twitter at @tvoti)

The Event S1E5: Casualties of war (Recap) (from LA TIMES)

"Casualties of War" has a couple of things that put it ahead of every other episode of "The Event" so far: a sense of purpose headed forward and a central question that puts its characters through something like the wringer. It's the best episode of the show so far because it slows down to tell something like an actual story, not just a long collection of events. And it centers that story on the two characters who actually make sense as characters at this point, Sean Walker and President Martinez. To be sure, most of the reason these characters are compelling has to do with the men playing them, not with anything the writers have done with them. But that doesn't mean that this episode isn't a fine showcase for the work of Jason Ritter and Blair Underwood, all the same.

The episode split down the middle like this: Sean tried to finally get Leila back, with the help of his FBI agent pal and, briefly, Vicky, while Martinez attempted to save the people from the plane, who were suffering from some sort of biological weapon and/or ailment. In the process of doing this, both men were forced to make some pretty terrible threats, and we were left to wonder if they would follow through. Meanwhile, the bad guys showed themselves capable of even worse stuff, and we got some nice glimpses into the past of the aliens, specifically their role in helping spur the Manhattan Project. There was some nice storytelling scattered throughout, and although the show continues to over-rely on hacky devices like the nesting-doll structure of the flashbacks, at least the episode more or less broke down into a concrete set of goals for the characters, and at least it didn't force a massive cliffhanger.

Let's start with Martinez. At this point, an idealistic president who confronts the limits of his ideals when he has to make a terrible choice to save the lives of hundreds of Americans is a TV cliche. The presidents on "24" and "The West Wing" both had to deal with these sorts of issues (fittingly, one of the show runners on "The Event" is a "24" alumnus), and numerous other tales of presidents facing down impossible threats have pivoted on similar plot points. So the idea that Martinez would have to confront his own desires to be a good man in the face of having to save the people on the plane was a bit of a nonstarter for me. Furthermore, within the universe of the show, Martinez has already compromised on his ideals. He was bent on releasing the alien detainees from their camp in Alaska, but he put a hold on that when he learned that there were more of them than he thought there were. Because he's already in a moral gray area he doesn't want to be in, I'm not sure his moral struggle had as much resonance as the show wanted it to, particularly when it came to handing over Sophia.

That said, Underwood really played the heck out of this moral calculus, this attempt to decide whether it was better to let everybody on the plane die and not have to compromise with the show's version of terrorists, or whether it was better for him to play hardball with the aliens by threatening to kill all of the detainees. Martinez knows the one option he doesn't have is to release the detainees, because that means that another species with far greater technology than his own will be calling the shots, and that puts him in a terrible position. Without the detainees, he doesn't have a bargaining chip, even as he wants to do the right thing. The weight of the decision to threaten the detainees was handled well both by the show and by Underwood, who played this with a kind of tense remove. The final moments, in which he and Thomas come to a kind of agreement -- he'll just turn over Sophia for the lives of all of the plane passengers -- were among the best the series has done, and I liked that the show let us know just how much these decisions weighed on Thomas as well.

Meanwhile, in Texas, Sean used the one bit of leverage he had to get Vicky to betray her own people. He knows about her son, who's not actually her son but, rather, a baby she rescued from a scene where she was supposed to kill everyone in the building. By threatening to expose her boy, Sean got Vicky to gun down her own men (a plot point that doesn't make a lot of sense, but whatever), then managed to get to Leila and finally rescue her. I'm glad the show hasn't stretched this out any further than needed, and that it seems like we're going to start getting some answers soon as to just why the conspiracy's so interested in Sean. A lot of this plot was pretty implausible -- mostly stemming from Sean's hacker friend's oh-so-convenient powers -- but at least it put Sean in the same place as Martinez, forcing him to make a terrible threat (of exposing Vicky's son) and then having us wonder if he'd follow through.

By far the most interesting development, though, has to do with the fact that the aliens destroyed their ship when they crashed in the 1940s and thus spent much of the 20th century trying to influence human technology in such a way as to reattain the kinds of parts they needed to rebuild their ship. This meant that the aliens got deeply involved in the Manhattan Project (of course they did), but we also got to see how Sophia originally sent Thomas out into the population at large, clearly not really knowing just what he would get up to once he was out there. It was a neat little flashback, and it mostly told one cohesive story of its own, something the other flashbacks haven't done.

I wouldn't say that "The Event" has risen to a level where I'm going to recommend it. This was still a bad episode of television in a lot of ways. But at least it was largely competent and told a story that mostly made sense. Sure, plenty of stuff was pointless and/or stupid, but there were some nice moments for much of the cast, and it gave a template for the show going forward. Plus, the cliffhanger -- which just involved Martinez putting Sophia on a train for Thomas to pick up -- was nicely small-scale, compared with the constant stream of cliffhangers involving the plane passengers. Every serialized show needs a sense that its story line breaks more easily into smaller components. This episode finally suggested that was true of "The Event," and I hope the show follows its lead going forward, especially now that the series has a full season order.

The story, in case you didn't bother to tune in: The president, after much hemming and hawing, finally cut a deal with Thomas to obtain an antidote for the passengers of the plane in exchange for turning over Sophia to the alien separatist leader (or whatever you want to call him). Meanwhile, Sean used his knowledge that Vicky's son was the sole survivor of a massacre that Vicky carried out to gain his girlfriend's safety, though the two were far from safe. Finally, it became clear that the aliens have been messing in human scientific development, the better to fix their ship and return to their home, wherever that may be.

-- Todd VanDerWerff (follow me on Twitter at @tvoti)

The Event S1E5: Casualties of war (episode)

Sean and Agent Collier rescue Vicky while Martinez releases Sophia in order to save the lives of the Flight 514 passengers.

The Event S1E4: A Matter of Life and Death (Full Ep and Recap)

Does “The Event” exhaust anybody else? Every week, the individual scenes are crafted specifically to avoid giving the audience any helpful information. After the second episode – where we learned about the aliens and what happened to the plane – we’ve been getting an increasingly elaborate shell game, one seemingly designed just to keep the audience riding high on a buzz of constant plot momentum. But when the plot keeps circling the same five or six things, it just gets tiring to have to cheer loudly as the juggler at the center of the show keeps all of the balls (and chainsaws and what have you) in the air. Put another way, I’m pretty sure I could skip all but the first five and last five minutes of “The Event” and not really miss anything (well, I could, if it wasn’t my job to keep up with it). Everything in between is a long, long journey to nowhere.

“But, Todd!” you say. “Lots of other shows have had this ‘put the action up front and at the end’ structure, and you’ve liked many of them!” Indeed, I have. “24” was the epitome of the super-fun TV thrill ride (at least when it was good). “Lost” was one of my favorite shows ever, combining a bunch of genre tropes I really liked with some awesome plotting and mysteries. I even liked the goofy fun of the first seasons of “Prison Break” and “Heroes,” which were supremely dumb shows but at least sort of proud of that fact, as they just kept coming up with endless strings of insane plot twists. Honestly, if “The Event” were more like those latter two shows, I’d just be rolling with it. I’d know, deep down, that it wasn’t GOOD, but I’d at least be having fun. But look at those four shows I just listed. See how many characters you can name from those shows, just off the top of your head. Now see how many you can list from "The Event." Without checking IMDB, I get to Sean (because he's the main character) and President Blair Underwood before running out of room. Even the DUMBEST of those other shows - "Prison Break," if you're playing along at home - had a wealth of fun characters in it. But “The Event” wants to have its guilty pleasure cake and eat it too. It wants to be dumb and profound and thrilling all at once, and it’s failing at all three tasks.

Take tonight’s final plot twist, which might just be the dumbest plot twist in the history of plot twists. You know that whole thing where the evil Vicky (or whatever you want to call her) and her good pal Carter (played by the always enjoyable D.B. Sweeney) are apparently foiled by the feisty Leila, who breaks out after the latter leaves a giant chunk of glass in her basement prison, the better for Leila to cut loose her bonds and make her escape, shooting Vicky in the process, leading the evil one to tumble down the stairs. Of course, Leila goes to the cops, and of course, we’re suspecting that the cops have been turned (or the conspiracy is monitoring the phone lines). But what happens at the end is even stupider: The conspiracy has set up an elaborate ruse to get Leila to call Sean, so he’ll come and try to rescue her and they can … do something to him.

Let’s leave aside for the moment that the easiest possible way to get Leila to call Sean is to leave a cellphone within her reach. Let’s also leave aside for the moment that a global conspiracy could probably get a guy’s cellphone number if they really wanted to – regardless of whether that guy is on their radar or not. What makes this whole sequence so frustrating is that it exists purely to keep the audience guessing. Nothing can change, and everything has to be reversed because otherwise, there can’t be a series. Leila can’t escape. Sean can’t find her. The conspiracy must always exist because shows like this always have a conspiracy. It’s like there’s been no thought given to explaining to the audience why any of this is worth caring about or why any of these characters are worth our affection. Instead, every effort has been made to just keep plates spinning as long as possible, while the show tap dances.

Every week, I go into this show thinking that this will be the episode where I can turn off my brain and just go with the stupidity. Every week, I’m wrong. It’s simply a long chase sequence that sacrifices everything in the name of superficial forward momentum. Honestly, if you were to summarize everything that’s happened this season so far, you would probably cover less space than if you were to summarize the events of non-serialized shows like “Hawaii Five-0” or “The Defenders.” At least in those shows, the characters take on new cases from week to week. On “The Event,” everything is devoted to keeping up the illusion that things are happening, even as the show is constantly struggling to get back to the status quo. To take another exceptionally stupid example from tonight’s episode, just why would a threat be made to kill all of the people from the plane when they’ve been killed and resurrected once already (and had their memories wiped)? Why not have the alien leader guy use the death of the people on the plane as a legitimate threat? Or promise to use his technology to make all humans immortal? Or something other than just going a step forward, then immediately taking that same step back?

I write enough about what makes me angry about this show from week to week that I suppose it would be best to talk about some of the things I am still enjoying. Jason Ritter remains a likable presence at the show’s center, and his scene with Vicky’s son (yes, she has a son) was well-done. I like the occasional bit of story development when the show lets the audience figure something out for itself – like when we caught a glimpse of Sean’s phone being low on battery and were able to piece together that Leila wouldn’t get through to him because … his battery died. And I really enjoy the scenes between Blair Underwood and Laura Innes, even if they keep repeating the same basic lines of dialogue over and over. The actors are such pros that pretty much everything they’re handed ends up being more fun than it has any right to be.

But I headed into “A Matter of Life and Death” wanting to write about how I can sort of enjoy the show on that stupid level I did “Heroes” and “Prison Break,” before I realized that that’s simply no longer true. Maybe it was true in the pilot, and maybe it was true in the second episode, but by now, the series has put enough of its cards on the table that we should be getting into some truly insane stuff. Instead, it mostly just keeps having the same chase sequence over and over and over, with a little computer hacking thrown in for good measure. Sure, “Heroes” and “Prison Break” were stupid, but they weren’t afraid to blow stuff up. “The Event” keeps lighting fuses and then snuffing them out just as quickly.

The plot in a nutshell, in case you’ve been sensible enough to give up on this show: All of those people who woke up last week? They’re alive, but they don’t remember what happened on the plane. Until the possibly evil alien guy is all, “Look what I can do!” and gives them nose bleeds, which apparently will lead to their deaths. (You ever notice how often a nose bleed is a harbinger of doom on TV? Sometimes, a nose bleed is just a nose bleed.) President Blair Underwood receives a threat to this effect from a phone that was secretly placed in his kid’s backpack. The other aliens want Sophia and company, and they’ll do anything to get her. Torture keeps getting brought up obliquely because the show wants to seem like it has its finger on the pulse of modern America. (And when the president first met Sophia, she just wanted to be like any other immigrant – also topical!) Sean and his new FBI friend race all over, without really accomplishing anything (though they find Vicky’s mom and son), but Leila breaks out of her bonds on her own. It turns out it was a set up by the conspiracy to lure in Sean. And Hal Holbrook’s disembodied voice controls the conspiracy!

--Todd VanDerWerff (follow me on Twitter at @tvoti)
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2010/10/the-event-recap-dumb-plot-twists-galore.html

The Event S1E3 "Protect Them From The Truth"

On the third episode of The Event, Sean gained an ally in FBI agent Claire Collier (Heather McComb). Sterling wants to use unscrupulous means to get Sophia to talk, but the president and vice president have a different plan. We learn confusing new information about the victims of the "crash" of Avias Flight 514.

SEAN WALKER

Just seconds after the FBI agents were told to take an alternate route because of a "chemical spill" last week, an errant RV plows into their car. Sean escapes easily, but the agents are both trapped inside. He extracts Claire, but Claire's partner doesn't make it.

Sean takes Claire to a motel room, where he attempts to use her laptop to gain access to the bureau's facial-recognition software so he can identify the nefarious Vicky Roberts. Claire explains that he can only access it from inside the building. When Claire's colleagues arrive to rescue her, Sean appears to have escaped, but actually he has snuck into the agents' trunk. He's captured at the FBI building trying to identify Vicky, and Claire arranges for a transfer of the prisoner.

At the FBI office, a newscaster says that air traffic control lost contact with Avias Flight 514, aka Sean's flight, about an hour ago. Claire realizes that it has been four hours since Sean told her about it, so clearly this is some sort of cover-up. So she's starting to believe him.

As if on cue, the office erupts in gunfire, as what was expected to be a standard transfer is something else entirely. Nearly everyone is shot and killed, but Sean escapes with Claire.

PRESIDENT MARTINEZ

Speaking of a cover-up, the vice president is concerned that Sterling, left unchecked, will resort to unscrupulous means to get Sophia to talk. He's concerned because that's exactly what Sterling says he's going to do. The president says that the Martinez administration does not practice torture, and that he has a better plan. He makes an announcement to the detainees at Inastranka, promising to release whoever helps them solve the mystery of the plane crash.

Sophia says it won't work, but one prisoner, the erratic William, steps forward. He wants money and protection for him and his girlfriend Maya, who is also a detainee at Inastranka.

Simon visits Sophia and figures out that William hasn't revealed anything about what Thomas did to the passengers. "I know he hasn't talked, since we're all still alive," Sophia says. "And now you'll have to deal with him ... harshly," she tells Simon.

And he does. Maya is released from Inastranka, and just as the happy couple starts to plan their future together, Maya's face changes and she stabs William.

LEILA

It's still unclear who Vicky works for, perhaps some sort of governmental black-ops division. That said, whatever Vicky & Co. are doing, it is not in consultation with the executive branch — unless ... they're working on the sly for Sterling.

Vicky drives to a storage facility at the port, where she locks Leila into a marine storage container. She intends to return later to kill her once she hears that Sean has been eliminated, but since he escapes, they have to keep Leila alive a little bit longer.

MICHAEL

And she's not the only one. In the final scene of the episode, we see a soldier patrolling the temporary morgue for victims of the "crash" of Avias 514. As the camera pans over the corpses, we see that Michael is among the dead. But then we hear moaning — someone is still alive! And then one by one, each of the victims wakes up. Nobody is dead.

The Event S1E2: To Keep Us Safe

The Event is the newest show to leave you guessing and wanting more at the end of an episode. Last week's episode ended with questions, and this week's is supposed to have answers.

Where's the Plane?

When the plane disappeared in mid-air, it traveled to the desert, where it makes a rough landing. They realize part of the plane is on fire and everyone evacuates. Michael tells Sean that four days earlier, he was kidnapped and forced to fly the plane because they showed him Leila and threatened to kill his daughters like they did his wife. Vicky has Leila. Helicopters are headed their way but Michael says they're not there to help and tells Sean to go save Leila. At the end of the episode, Lee arrives on scene with other government officials, but no one else is there except for Michael. But then they find all the passengers dead, and not from the plane crash.

Who Are the Detainees?

Meanwhile, Secret Service hurries to get the President and his family away from the scene. President Martinez wants to know what happened to the plane more than he wants to know why it was headed his way. The government is already working on covering it up from the public. A burst of radiation was picked up where the plane disappeared, and they're trying to figure out how it could've been done. Blake Sterling may have the answer. In the 1940s, a plane crashed with 97 survivors (the detainees), who were determined to be "not of terrestrial origin." Though they look human, they age slowly and their DNA is different. They're being held because they're not saying why they're there.

What Happened to Leila?

Sean is now walking through the desert, but he collapses because of the heat. Flasback to the cruise: Leila's not feeling well. Vicky shows up and the two girls convince him to go snorkeling. Greg shows up with a hangover cure for Leila. He hits on her, but she tells him to leave. Security is waiting at the door, but the guard stabs Greg and Leila is taken. Sean wakes up in a hospital in Arizona, and he wants to talk to the police. When the nurse calls the police, the officer looks Sean up in the database and it turns out he's wanted for Greg's murder. The nurse tells Sean the police are on the way for his statement, but he can tell she's hiding something. When he sees the police show up, he runs. The nurse tells him of the murder suspicion and points the police in his direction. Flashback to five years earlier and Sean's swimming in Boston. He meets Leila and teaches her how to float. Sean is caught by the FBI by the exit. Sean tries to explain everything to the FBI agents, but they don't believe him. He says they're coming up to near where the plane landed but the road is blocked off for a chemical spill.

Interviewing Sophia

Flashback to when Sophia's plane landed: Sophia says she'll stay with the wounded while the others leave because not everyone can be caught. President Martinez enters Sophia's cell to question her. He's going to take responsibility and wants Sophia to do so as well. She says that they "mean...no harm" and saved his life, but can't say anything else. Sterling assigns Lee to head the operation into finding the others of Sophia's people. Flashback to Lee getting blood taken. He's applied to "Clandestine Services" in the CIA. He goes into the bathroom and pulls a tube out of his arm--is he one of these "aliens?" It's certainly looking like that could be the case. He meets with Thomas and says they had to take the plane, but wants to know where they are. Thomas says they're using the passengers.

The Event S1E1: I Haven't Told You Everything

Sean Walker's girlfriend Leila goes missing during their romantic St. Lucia vacation. President Martinez plans a press conference to tell the world about the closure of a mysterious prison camp, and to introduce one of its prisoners, Sophia.

The Event S1E1

What is "The Event" on NBC? That has been the question that has been on everyone's mind since the previews for this new series hit earlier this summer. Tonight, the series premiere for "The Event" finally hit the network, and things start with explosively with a couple heading off on a trip, but there is a time jump where the man that was going on a trip is now hijacking a plane. A man from some secret organization tries to stop the plane from taking off in Miami, but he is unsuccessful. The airport's radar even goes dark!

The Event Time Jumps Through Time

This is where we go for another time jump with him on a cruise and proposing to his fiancee just ass a woman starts to drown. He jumps in to saves her. The time jumps in this series in the first twenty minutes are enough to give anyone a headache! This earlier time is on a cruise, and everything looks to be perfect for the young couple in love. What changes between that day and the time on the plane in Miami? From their we go back to the plane where a marshal is trying to arrest the man trying to hijack the plane. He is very intent on getting into the cockpit. It looks to be too late though! Halfway through the episode and there is still no clue to what the big event is.

Whatever the big event is, it is known by those in Washington, but the President of the United States had no clue about it. There are ninety-seven prisoners being kept, and the CIA is in control of the project. Here in this world, the president is played by Blair Underwood, and he takes charge. He wants to meet these people being held. Once he meets them, he decides to go public and takes the leader of those captive for a press conference. Will this finally tell all what the event is? Not yet! There is an attack coming for the president, and it is the plane that was taken from Miami. It is crashing towards the location of the president. Someone doesn't want this information revealed!

Family Connections And Disappearances

Another time jump takes us back to eight days before the plane hijacking where the focus is on the family of the female half of the couple. There is trouble though as her father is too tense. He won't talk to his daughter, and his wife picks up on it just as people with guns come in and break into the house. This episode has so many twists. It is hard to keep up. We learn that the pilot of the plane is the father of the daughter Sean Walker is set to marry. Another twist! Has there been enough of those in this premiere? Could this series have too many twists to keep up with? The pilot locks everyone out of the cockpit, and then there is a time jump back to the cruise and the happy couple. Sean has joined their new friends on a watching trip. When he returns to the hotel, he is locked out of his hotel room. Turns out, he is no longer signed into that room. His girlfriend is supposedly still there, but when security takes him to the room, she is gone. There is no record of him or the girlfriend even being on board.

He calls her family, but there is a lot of blood and no answer. What is going on? Still no idea what the event is! The air force wants to take down the plane, and it is still on course to crash. Sean tries to reason with Michael, but he doesn't seem to get through to him. Whatever the event is, it is huge! The plane blows up or is somehow disintegrated. There is no debris from the destruction. What in the world just happened? Who saved them? Who is them? Another alien series? Is this possible? No idea yet, but hopefully all find that out soon. An okay start with a lot of twists. Will you keep watching to find out what "The Event" is?

Shows We'll Be Following: The Event

The Event is an emotional, high-octane conspiracy thriller that follows Sean Walker (Jason Ritter, "The Class"), an everyman who investigates the mysterious disappearance of his would-be fiancée Leila (Sarah Roemer, "Disturbia"), and unwittingly begins to expose the biggest cover-up in U.S. history.

Sean's quest will send ripples through the lives of an eclectic band of strangers, including newly elected U.S. President Elias Martinez (Golden Globe nominee Blair Underwood, "In Treatment"); Sophia Maguire (Emmy Award nominee Laura Innes, "ER"), who is the leader of a mysterious group of detainees; and Leila's shadowy father (Scott Patterson, "Gilmore Girls"). Their futures are on a collision course in a global conspiracy that could ultimately change the fate of mankind.