The Event – S1 E01 – “I Haven’t Told You Everything”

Let’s recap chronologically: 13 months before the present Simon Lee (Ian Anthony Dale) meets with Sophia Maguire (Laura Innes) in some kind of prison in Alaska. Simon tells her there is a new president and he will try to get in touch with him so that maybe he can free her. Some time later he manages this and President Elias Martinez (Blair Underwood) tells his advisors that he wants to meet with the prisoners and he wants them released. The President then meets with Sophia, and we do not know what she tells him or who they are or why they are being kept there, only that there are 97 prisoners. Eleven days before the present, Sean Walker (Jason Ritter) and Leila Buchanan (Sarah Roemer) are leaving from her parents place to go on a cruise where Sean will ask her to marry him. A few days before the present, presumably Leila’s mother and sister are killed, while Leila goes missing and is stricken from the cruise record along with Sean. In the present, Michael Buchanan (Scott Patterson) is distraught and attempts to fly a plane into the President whom he blames for these events, and Sean is on the plane attempting to talk him down. Meanwhile, the President was about to give a speech to reporters outing the secret prison in Alaska. Right before the plane is going to crash into the house the President was in for the moment, it disappears into a blue-ish white light that reminds one of a black hole or some sort of warp drive. Then Sophia says the title of the episode to President Martinez.

I started this review with a plain summary probably because I really have little to say about the episode. Nothing really happened. That is a long paragraph above, but largely it does not mean anything. We do not know the characters and we do not know what happened. Nothing at all is told to us except that a prison facility exists, the people manipulating events have computer access (how they can remove Sean and Leila from the cruise ship records) and that we are dealing with technology that is more advanced than whatever mainstream technology the audience knows (and probably fictional). That still sounds like a lot of knowledge, but it does not feel like it watching the episode.

The problem I think is that there are not really any quiet moments. During the cruise, when Sean is about to propose to Leila, they hear a scream and he rescues a girl about to drown. That part, although indicative of Sean’s heroism, just felt rather unnecessary. Not unrealistic, since that could easily happen, but I did not really need tension in that part of the episode. We already know something crazy is going to happen since we are treated to people looking up and yelling and running around in the first 1 minute of the episode. There is too much urgency in this episode, and the urgency is not done properly. Everyone is agitated, but we do not know why they are agitated.

This show is already being compared to Lost and 24. I have seen Lost and I get the comparison because it has to do with planes and strange happenings and an overabundance of flashbacks. I have not seen 24 but I understand that the use of time is iconic, and from brief clips I have seen, the actions shots seem similarly shot as well. What I would like to invoke instead though is the first episode of Battlestar Galactica. Although some people had already seen the miniseries before this first episode and thus had an emotional attachment to the characters, even without the miniseries I think that episode does a better job of building tension because the audience knows what is going on. There is an enemy, they are going to kill you, and you cannot escape. And every time they try to kill you, you get a little more tired. The whole episode then is watching them get more and more fatigued and the tension builds naturally, not because of people shouting and yelling (although that occurs as well) but because you yourself can imagine exactly what they are going through just by understanding how they cannot let themselves sleep.

If we are comparing to Lost again, Lost built tension in different ways. Although the mysteries were often the focus of the show, tension was not built on mysteries but on inevitable clashes. The first season we are introduced to two of the big clashes, Jack and Sawyer and Jack and Locke. The first happens almost right away, while the second proves to be more divisive and builds more slowly. In either case, these are people that we get to know and people that clash. The monster is there in the first season as well, and we do await the inevitable clash with the monster, but my favorite episode of Lost is in the second season, “Man of Science, Man of Faith”, because it dealt with the Jack and Locke struggle so well, and because they clashed and nothing was resolved (as often happens in real life).

All this means is that the Event is not doing it for me. Maybe it will, and I will get interested in it along the way (as happened with Fringe). But to do that it means that at some point they will have to introduce character clashes, not just crazy physics happenings. As I have said in other reviews, this is just the pilot and is not indicative of the season as a whole, but I cannot say that anything in the episode really drew me in so I am not very hopeful.

Lone Star – S1 E01 – “Pilot”

The critical darling of the season, along with Boardwalk Empire, I have to say I was unimpressed. Perhaps I do not watch enough network shows, perhaps I am not its target audience, but the show did not really click with me.

Bob Allen (James Wolk) is a con man working with his father John (David Keith) in the long con to rob oil tycoon Clint Thatcher (Jon Voight). To accomplish this Bob married his daughter Cat (Adrianne Palicki) with whom he lives in Houston. He also has a girlfriend in Midland, Lindasy (Eloise Mumford), whom he marries at the end of the pilot. After having done door-to-door sales on a fake gas well for an indeterminate amount of time, Clint gives Bob a high executive job which presents Bob with a chance at leading a normal life since Bob no longer desires to be a con man. His dad is unhappy about this, and he is also worried about his son as they have robbed half of the town in Midland.

The premise for the show isn’t bad. Working two angles, leading two lives, leads to a lot of possibilities. Breaking Bad, another critic darling, works on the same idea, and there are countless others that I could name that do too. The problem I have with this show is that the main character is too likeable and we are introduced to him in too good of a state. Other reviews and comments I have read talk about how much of a horrible person he is for ripping off these people, but I do not get the same vibe from the show. I am meant to like this guy. He has a winning smile, he is charming, and he is faithful to both of his women (as evidenced by a scene where he is propositioned by a woman at a hotel). He has two of them, which to some people might automatically put him in a negative light, but he is faithful to both of them and he loves them both. I would not call him husband of the year but I cannot find myself to dislike him just because of that; it’s not like he abuses them.

Then there is the stealing portion of his persona. Thieves in movies and TV shows, when they are not drug addicts or starving families, are often portrayed as charming rogues (Ocean’s Eleven, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, etc.). Because I really only know his perspective on these events, I cannot really turn against him right away. I have taken his viewpoint. I just cannot force myself to dislike him just because the acts he commits are morally inconsistent with my worldview.

And that is the problem. I like him, but not enough to hero worship as he has not done anything particularly spectacular, and I do not dislike him enough to find him fascinatingly disgusting. He is just uninteresting to me. Perhaps this will change in the coming episodes and he will either do something spectacular (unlikely), or access a darker side to his personality. The latter seems inconsistent with the tone of the show, but it is not impossible, so I am not writing off the show yet. Still, I am not hopeful. A great premise does not a great show make, and though the show is well acted and decently scripted, it does not yet seem to have the depth that will sustain it over many seasons. Comparing to another show that came out this week, Boardwalk Empire, I can say that though Lone Star was a smoother ride, with less awkward dialogue and exposition, Boardwalk Empire promises to satiate over a longer period of time. Lone Star from the pilot just seems to thin to sustain.

Boardwalk Empire - S1 E01 – “Boardwalk Empire”

I think most reviews of the show are probably going to start with the time and place, so why not: Atlantic City, 1920. If you need a brief introduction to the plot, Enoch “Nucky” Thompson (Steve Buscemi) is the gangster in charge of Atlantic City politically and his brother Eli (Shea Whigham) runs the police. Prohibition has just started and these men are getting into the illegal liquor business in a big way. Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt) is recently back from overseas in the Great War, used to go to Princeton, and wants to be a bigger part of the business, but Nucky has relegated him to chauffeur for the moment. Two big things happen in this episode plot-wise. First, Nucky meets Margaret Schroeder (Kelly Macdonald) a pregnant woman with an abusive husband and two kids. Her husband is a drunk, beats her and kills her baby, so Nucky has him killed. In the other part of the episode, we are introduced to some big real-life players during this time with Arnold Rothstein, Lucky Luciano, Al Capone, and Big Jim Colosimo. Jimmy Darmody and Capone rob Nucky’s shipment for Rothstein, at the same as the Feds try to crack down on one of Nucky’s liquor operations. They found out about the operation through Jimmy.

My first impression is that the pilot was weak, but most pilots are weak. There is a lot of exposition, stock characters that ask the right questions so we know both what is going on and what is going to happen. My thought throughout most of the episode was “no surprises here”. That is not necessarily a bad thing as it is beautifully crafted, from the music to the visuals, listening to a stand-up comedian of the era, the Model-Ts, etc. The acting is superb as well, especially considering the weakness of the script in places. I have never been a big fan of Steve Buscemi, not because I do not appreciate his skill, but because his acting ticks do not appeal much to me. He frequently talks too much in movies without seeming like he has a lot to say. Yet, I found him very charming in the role of Nucky. For once he did not talk much, and when he did it was always with a point. Truthfully, he probably spoke the most out of anyone this episode, as he is the main character, but his words always seemed well crafted, as a politician’s should be. He is not the gangster of Tony Soprano’s age. He is more an Al Swearengen type, and hopefully we will get to see a political side to the show as well.

Really, all of my hopes for this show lie with Steve and what he is able to do with Nucky. There are many different ways that they could take this show. After all, shows about the Prohibition Era are not that common. There is a lot of room for depth here, but they can only focus on so many things. The gangster part is obviously going to be important, but I am honestly less interested in that. The Feds were probably the least interesting aspect of the episode. But again, this is just the pilot. We’ll get a much better feel for the show within the next two to three episodes. Hopefully by then the characters will have more substance and the story will be more nuanced. For right now, even with its weaknesses, I am enjoying the introduction to the Roaring Twenties.