The Event

[Griffin]

Well that was interesting. Shows like these are difficult to pull off, imo, but if the pilot is any indication, this one might stick around. Good to see Laura Innes (ER) back on tv.

 

[Chaplin]

The writing was a little sporadic, mainly with all the time jumps, but otherwise it was definitely interesting.

 

[Russ Smith]

The writing was a little sporadic, mainly with all the time jumps, but otherwise it was definitely interesting.

That's what bothered me, all the 8 days earlier ,48 minutes earlier etc. It was the first episode so doing that was confusing because we didn't really know the characters etc.

I got into it by the end of the show, I'll watch again, but I did have trouble the first 30 minutes or so with the time jumps.

 

[AzStevenCal]

I'm going to give it a few more episodes but I do hope the time-line straightens out soon. It's starting to come across as a gimmick to save money on production costs the way they keep showing the scene again as it shifts time and locale. It kept my interest better than Flash Forward did in the first episode so I still have some hope for it.

Steve

 

[HoodieBets]

That's what bothered me, all the 8 days earlier ,48 minutes earlier etc. It was the first episode so doing that was confusing because we didn't really know the characters etc.

I got into it by the end of the show, I'll watch again, but I did have trouble the first 30 minutes or so with the time jumps.

I mentioned this is the New Shows thread but did anyone else get an unknown persons vibe from this show? Idk if it was the writing or the lack of character background but there is something about this show thats off. Ill give it another shot bc i need to fill that Lost void but this doesnt look like it.

 

[Gaddabout]

I mentioned this is the New Shows thread but did anyone else get an unknown persons vibe from this show? Idk if it was the writing or the lack of character background but there is something about this show thats off. Ill give it another shot bc i need to fill that Lost void but this doesnt look like it.

Do you care about any of the characters yet? That's usually what's either on or off about a show.

Back when I was studying layout and design, I put together what I thought was the perfect page. My instructor stared at it for a good long 5 minutes. As he started to tick off all the usual mistakes I had avoided, I was gaining confidence I had finally made the next step. Then he pointed out he had stared it for 5 minutes trying to figure out what the point of the page was, and noted I had failed the primary job of a designer and that was to draw someone in. I had no real feature art, nothing that stood out about the page. It was just aesthetically pleasing in a way only a designer would notice.

I see shows like TE I just sense they're going to miss the point of a drama by focusing on not making any major mistakes, like obvious plot holes or a lack of action or a lack of interesting dialogue or whatever. Everyone's afraid of making the same mistakes that failed the last drama. There's no real formula for a great drama other than people have to care about someone in the show. You can get ANYONE hooked on a soap opera given enough exposure because they work on that simple principle. I hope, for NBC's sake and the future of network dramas, they get this worked out. I'm not sure NBC is going to commit to anything else like this considering the colossal failure of Heroes and the money they've spent promoting TE.

BTW, I thought Life had it right. NBC just pissed on it because it wasn't the demographic they wanted and they were overly committed to Heroes. Put Life on Monday night in that same slot, commit to it there for a full year, and I bet it becomes the quirky drama hit it should have been.

 

[HoodieBets]

Do you care about any of the characters yet? That's usually what's either on or off about a show.

Back when I was studying layout and design, I put together what I thought was the perfect page. My instructor stared at it for a good long 5 minutes. As he started to tick off all the usual mistakes I had avoided, I was gaining confidence I had finally made the next step. Then he pointed out he had stared it for 5 minutes trying to figure out what the point of the page was, and noted I had failed the primary job of a designer and that was to draw someone in. I had no real feature art, nothing that stood out about the page. It was just aesthetically pleasing in a way only a designer would notice.

I see shows like TE I just sense they're going to miss the point of a drama by focusing on not making any major mistakes, like obvious plot holes or a lack of action or a lack of interesting dialogue or whatever. Everyone's afraid of making the same mistakes that failed the last drama. There's no real formula for a great drama other than people have to care about someone in the show. You can get ANYONE hooked on a soap opera given enough exposure because they work on that simple principle. I hope, for NBC's sake and the future of network dramas, they get this worked out. I'm not sure NBC is going to commit to anything else like this considering the colossal failure of Heroes and the money they've spent promoting TE.

BTW, I thought Life had it right. NBC just pissed on it because it wasn't the demographic they wanted and they were overly committed to Heroes. Put Life on Monday night in that same slot, commit to it there for a full year, and I bet it becomes the quirky drama hit it should have been.

Your right i really didnt care for any of the characters, who am i supposed to like or feel for, who is supposed to be the vilan. There is not one cahracter i really liked or waited to come back on the screen. I just have a feeling that the plane disapperance is going to be so complex and drawn out i will lose intrest because of the characters. I just dont want it to be a movie that was made into a tv show and really has no purpose in the middle.

 

[Louis]

Who in their right mind would go snorkeling with that chick and leave their ill girlfriend back on the ship?

For now I'll let the first episode go, it seemed like they were more intent on introducing key players (without much background) but wanting the episode to create a WTF moment so that people would tune in tonight.

It was a little Vantage Point-ish from all the constant replays, but each scene was layered with more than one perspective and we needed to see that there is an elaborate plan to whatever is going on.

 

[Gaddabout]

Here's how I imagine this show being created:

NBC executive room circa 2009:

NBC Suit #1: We're getting killed by serial dramas. We need a drama that's an event, something that people talk about all week and can't miss.

Suit #2: We could get JJ Abrams.

#1: Can't afford him. NBC's only committed to drama if we can do it on the cheap. I mean we'll still end up spending 10 times what we budgeted, but we don't want to show a commitment to it upfront. That's just bad business. Besides, we don't need to actually start with a lot of story development. Let's just create a show with a tortured mythology and pimp the crap out of the fact it's a mythology show. The writers can just untangle whatever mistakes we make as they show develops. That always work out best.

#2: We still have a treatment we bought a few years ago called Area 52, where the government is secretly keeping alien abductees from reentering the populace, letting people think they just disappeared into thin air.

#1: Oh great. Another X-Files. Doesn't Fox already do that with Fringe?

#2: We could change it. Instead of casting the government as one big bad guy, we'll redo the story so there's a good guy president who's untainted by politics and is out to seek justice for the real bad guys in government. People will buy that. They'll get behind that. We all love our president regardless of the political environment, including this one in an election year. And we won't tell people who these detainees are, why they're kept there, or what the place is. Totally non-committal. Again the writers can fix that.

#1: Whatever. We could just cop the presidential storyline from 24, where he's totally pure but apparently has no clue what's going on in his own cabinet. Just make sure the pilot involves a plane. Lost sure milked that one for years. People must just love planes, or plane crashes, or something.

#2: Right. And people love confusion. They love not understanding a damn thing. That's what was so popular about Lost -- total confusion.

#1: OK. Make sure we write a bunch of smug characters who speak in riddles and get to keep their gov't jobs while constantly telling the president a bunch of half-truths.

#2. Oh we could totally steal that revelation scene from Independence Day when the president learns about Area 51 from his National Security Advisor on Air Force One! I could re-write that!

#1. Fine. And hire that editor from Heroes, the one who specialized in making sure the edits come at you so fast that it's a challenge to keep track of the 45 storylines we're going to throw at the wall to see which stick. That was a real winner right there.

#2. Got it. So what are we going to call this event show?

#1.[Wide, knowing smile and evil laugh...]

 

[Louis]

So is Blair Underwood supposed to be Cuban or something?

 

[Cardinals.Ken]

Suit #2: We could get JJ Abrams.

#1: Can't afford him.

Do you mean afford him again? Isn't Undercovers his show on the same network?

So is Blair Underwood supposed to be Cuban or something?

That was my take on it. I guess since we already have a black President in real life, they've got to go to the next logical step of having a Latino president.

 

[Chaplin]

Do you mean afford him again? Isn't Undercovers his show on the same network?

Network doesn't matter. The Event is a Universal show and Undercovers is a Warner Bros. show.

 

[Cardinals.Ken]

Network doesn't matter. The Event is a Universal show and Undercovers is a Warner Bros. show.

Gotcha.

Just out of curiosity, how does that work?

Does Universal make a pilot, and pitch it? Or, do they pitch the idea, and NBC pays for the pilot and any subsequent episodes?

 

[Chaplin]

Gotcha.

Just out of curiosity, how does that work?

Does Universal make a pilot, and pitch it? Or, do they pitch the idea, and NBC pays for the pilot and any subsequent episodes?

I believe that pretty much sums it up. It's like WB coming to all the networks and saying, "hey, we have a spy pilot produced by JJ Abrams. What's your bid for it?" And it goes to the highest bidder, in this case, NBC.

Abrams' production company probably originated the pilot, so what they do is take it to different studios and ask if they are interested in producing it. WB jumped at the chance to work with JJ, so they produced the pilot, then the show gets sold to NBC for distribution. Basically the same procedure independent films follow--a production company makes the movie than a separate company distributes it to theaters.

 

[AzStevenCal]

So is Blair Underwood supposed to be Cuban or something?

I might have missed something but I didn't take it that way. I thought he was referring to his wife for some reason.

Steve

 

[Chaplin]

I might have missed something but I didn't take it that way. I thought he was referring to his wife for some reason.

Steve

Really? I thought for sure he was supposed to be Cuban and not African-American since his wife and kid were Cuban and his home state appeared to be Florida. Not that it matters.

 

[AzStevenCal]

Really? I thought for sure he was supposed to be Cuban and not African-American since his wife and kid were Cuban and his home state appeared to be Florida. Not that it matters.

Hey, it wouldn't be the first time I misunderstood something. Maybe not even the second time. There was just something about the way he talked about having a personal connection that led me down the "wife" path. Or maybe it was the fact that shortly after his comments we hear her accent that led me to the wrong conclusion.

Steve

 

[Cardinals.Ken]

I might have missed something but I didn't take it that way. I thought he was referring to his wife for some reason.

Steve

The two things that cinched things in my mind that he is of Cuban decent:

1. His last name is Martinez.
2. His personal retreat is in Miami, Florida.

Of the many disjointed plot elements of the pilot episode, this was not one of them, in my opinion at least.

 

[AzStevenCal]

The two things that cinched things in my mind that he is of Cuban decent:

1. His last name is Martinez.
2. His personal retreat is in Miami, Florida.

Of the many disjointed plot elements of the pilot episode, this was not one of them, in my opinion at least.

My mind was going in different directions, fortunately I've caught up to it now. If you're just talking heritage, he's definitely of Cuban Descent. I was locked into the tie-in they mentioned regarding treatment of the prisoners and it led me to believe that his wife is actually Cuban and not just descended from.

Steve

 

[Cardinals.Ken]

My mind was going in different directions, fortunately I've caught up to it now. If you're just talking heritage, he's definitely of Cuban Descent. I was locked into the tie-in they mentioned regarding treatment of the prisoners and it led me to believe that his wife is actually Cuban and not just descended from.

Steve

Ah...I didn't think about that angle. that just might be the case.

Any whoo, back to the show itself.

I really hope that they drop the whole back-and-forth chronology premise. It worked great in Pulp Fiction because it was fresh, it worked great in Lost because it usually focused on a single character and spoke specifically to the decision making process of the featured character.

After the first episode I came away from it feeling like this is just The 4400 with different shoes. But I'll give it a 4 episode mulligan to make sense, and grab my long-term attention...like I do any new show now.

 

[AzStevenCal]

Ah...I didn't think about that angle. that just might be the case.

Any whoo, back to the show itself.

I really hope that they drop the whole back-and-forth chronology premise. It worked great in Pulp Fiction because it was fresh, it worked great in Lost because it usually focused on a single character and spoke specifically to the decision making process of the featured character.

After the first episode I came away from it feeling like this is just The 4400 with different shoes. But I'll give it a 4 episode mulligan to make sense, and grab my long-term attention...like I do any new show now.

I agree, find a timeline and stick with it. It was necessary in Lost to tell the backstory and it was sheer genius in Pulp Fiction (because it allowed viewers to leave with a light and happy mood that wouldn't have occurred otherwise) but it's a nuisance in most cases. And, so far, it definitely seems to be a nuisance in this show.

Steve

 

[Gaddabout]

Do you mean afford him again? Isn't Undercovers his show on the same network?

If Abrams had produced The Event, NBC would not have been able to buy it. Though someone over there is getting in gear, because they just beat ABC in a bidding war on a new Abrams pilot that will star Locke and Ben from Lost.

 

[Cardinals.Ken]

If Abrams had produced The Event, NBC would not have been able to buy it. Though someone over there is getting in gear, because they just beat ABC in a bidding war on a new Abrams pilot that will star Locke and Ben from Lost.

But they did buy Undercovers, a JJ Abrams project.

 

[Chaplin]

But they did buy Undercovers, a JJ Abrams project.

Regardless of JJ's involvement, I can pretty much guarantee that Undercovers was much cheaper to acquire than the Terry O'Quinn/Michael Emerson pilot. Probably by A LOT.

Which is strange, because both JJ's big shows were both ABC/Disney productions (Alias and Lost).

 

[Gaddabout]

Regardless of JJ's involvement, I can pretty much guarantee that Undercovers was much cheaper to acquire than the Terry O'Quinn/Michael Emerson pilot. Probably by A LOT.

More than a lot. Originally we were told Undercovers was going the cable route.