The Event Review: “Protect Them From the Truth”

It’s only the third episode of The Event, but my enthusiasm for the show is starting to wane slightly. I still think it’s interesting, but it’s less tight and smart than the first two episodes. I’m worried that in the 24-like quest to keep things exciting, the show might turn from intriguing to ridiculous rather quickly.

What do I mean by this? Well how about the opening, where a recently captured Sean is fortunate to be steamrolled by a camper van out of nowhere. It kills everyone on the scene but him and the female FBI agent, and they high tail it out of there in a State Trooper’s patrol car. Am I missing something, or was there actually zero explanation for where that camper came from? Are we really supposed to believe that the stars aligned and there was a perfect traffic accident and the perfect time that killed the perfect amount of people? Shady business, The Event, shady business.

Why thank you, random idiot driver.

Being the fugitive-in-training that he is, Sean’s first instinct is to go to a motel and handcuff the injured FBI agent there. He tries to use FBI facial recognition on her netbook to find kidnapper Vicky, but she informs him that he must be hooked into the hardline at headquarters for that to work.

But Sean is learning some tricks, and allows her to grab her phone and call for help when he’s out of the room. When her colleagues arrive, he stows away in her trunk, and waltzes into FBI headquarters where he IDs Vicky, who, as it turns out, has multiple aliases. He’s immediately caught again, which is what it seems he’s best at, but with his most recent discovery and the fact that the plane he’s been babbling about has just turned up on the news as having disappearing over the Amazon, ears around FBI headquarters begin to perk up.

Meanwhile, in the executive branch of government, the president issues a standing order to all inmate aliens that whoever comes forward and cooperates will be given full immunity and allowed to live free. One of them steps forward, and when any character in a show like this says something like, “I can tell you who they are, where to find them and what they’re up to,” you know he’s not going to last too long. And yes, by the end of the episode he’s murdered by his alien girlfriend who puts her species over her romance. Guess we need a plan B, as the president has already given his tired “we don’t torture,” speech we’ve heard a million times before in 24. Really? Not even aliens? I’m just saying it might be worth a try if the future of the human race is at stake.

“You better tell me what I need to know or I will GLARE AT YOU INTENSELY!”

After CIA honcho Sterling gives the president a speech featuring the eye rolling statement of “sometimes we need to HIDE things from the public to PROTECT them” like he’s explaining how government works to a six year old, he gets busy sorting through all the dead bodies from the plane. After finding the black box, he discovers the existence of Sean Walker, who was on the plane but not dead and recently captured by the FBI. He dispatches a team to get him transferred over to him pronto.

Unfortunately, the team that shows up is not the one he sent, and the douche neighbor from Dexter and his partner start shooting up the place once Sean’s new FBI friend realizes something is amiss. They’re actually a part of the group that’s kidnapped Leila, and Sean and his FBI chick manage to escape with their lives, unlike every single other person in the office.

I’m all for cover-ups and such, but this is getting a bit out of hand. It’s one thing when guerilla groups are kidnapping random girls, it’s another when they’re murdering dozens of FBI agents. How exactly is this going to stay quiet?

You can’t just DO this.

This brings us to the obvious question, who the hell are these people? I thought they could have been a CIA covert ops group, but then they would have been under Sterling’s jurisdiction and wouldn’t have needed to shoot up the office to get a hold of Sean. Then I thought they were the sleeper aliens, until I realized that they were the ones who blackmailed Michael Buchanan into trying to kill the president, an assassination attempt that was STOPPED by the sleeper aliens teleporting the plane elsewhere. So who could they possibly be?

My two theories currently are that they’re an underground anti-alien movement, with ex-government types capable of executing complex operations. Not sure what their motive could be. Or they could be a different faction of sleeper aliens, ones that are far less peaceful than their Clifton Collins Jr.-led counterparts.

But Collins Jr. errr, Thomas, wasn’t so kind when he seemingly killed all the people on the plane with magic helicopters last episode.This week’s big twist is that surprise! No one is actually dead! And one very confused soldier lives out Night of the Living Dead as the corpses come back to life around him. Why does this happen? The President speculates out loud it might be a display of power, but I suppose they could all now be infected with some sort of alien spyware or something. And what do you do with them now that you’re telling everyone their plane crashed in Brazil?

“Braaaaainnns!”

I’m still interested in the show, but I’m hoping it starts to be a bit more coherent, and lays off using the disjointed timelines as a plot device. You could show the last five minutes of ANY show at the beginning, and spend the whole episode trying to figure out how the characters got into that situation, but that’s not really a mystery, it’s kind of cheating. I hope the show has enough actual mysteries to keep me and its audience interested, but I’m starting to grow a bit skeptical.