Round Two: The Event

The Event: Season 1, Episode 2 “To Keep Us Safe” (C+)

The second installment of a show that only really had a compelling “event” in its final two minutes the first time around offers pretty much the same dosage. I still don’t understand why Jason Ritter’s Sean Walker (any relation to Sarah?) is the protagonist of this series, since he doesn’t seem to be terribly bright and has no real knowledge of anything that’s going on at all. All of the flashbacks to his time spent with Sarah and her abduction aren’t all that informative, and just indicating that Sean was being framed for the murder of the boyfriend would have been enough. What’s mysterious to me is why the boyfriend needed to be killed at all – shouldn’t he just have been in on the evil plan? That would make too much sense, and it wouldn’t be shocking. Instead, the need to bring in D.B. Sweeney as a torturer extraordinaire (see “24” or “Jericho” for proof of his experience) is created, and that’s not something I’m going to argue with since I think he’s awesome. I’m baffled that Scott Patterson’s Michael Buchanan is dead since I had thought he was going to be a main character. The somewhat obvious revelation that Simon is in fact an alien was a good twist, and showing him rip that tube out of his arm was about as much proof as we were going to need. All the techno-babble about the “1% difference” was pretty ridiculous, and I think that this show still needs considerable improvement if it’s really going to work.