5 Things Wrong with NBC’s The Event
By Brad Pike
1. The characters are the most boring people you’ve ever met. It’s as if they filled a show with 9th grade history teachers, JC Penney models, and PTA members. The plot is filled with explosions, political intrigue, and Lost style mystery (the media touted it as the replacement for Lost), but I do not care about any of it because I don’t care about any of these people. Take Sophia, for example, the leader of the extraterrestrial terrorists. Why did they cast my high school librarian for this important role? I’m sorry, television, I don’t care whether my high school librarian lives or dies—okay, well, maybe a little, but not really. There’s a scene where she says something to the effect of, “Despite my reluctance, we’re going to have to kill all the humans,” and I thought, ‘That is the only way to fix this show.’ If they actually murdered all the humans on network TV, I would finally become engaged. That would certainly be an event. The subplot involving the young attractive couple who get separated and then reunited and then separated again might be the least interesting thing I have ever followed week to week (I have a high boredom threshold I guess). What do they have to do with anything? Why does the assassin trying to kill them look like a supermodel? Do supermodels often transition careers to mercenary? She seems like she spends an awful lot more time applying make-up and hairspray than, say, lifting weights and shooting targets. So even the assassins have to be boring supermodels on this show? The major “bad guy” is about as threatening as Ernest Borgnine—just this soft spoken old man hobbling around, occasionally shooting people, but mostly sitting in a well-furnished office, making phone calls.
2. This show is populated by a bunch of assholes. The Director of National Intelligence is a vicious old velociraptor whose first advice is nearly always ‘Kill them all, Mr. President’ (asshole), the President blew up three busloads of passengers fleeing for their lives (asshole), Sophia wants to wipe out the entire human race to make room for refugees from her dying world (asshole), and there’s a couple of soulless attractive nobodies running around doing stuff that has nothing to do with anything (boring assholes). On Lost, they had characters who did bad things like conning, murdering, shooting heroin, brainwashing, eating people alive (if you include the polar bear as a character and I do), but they were still likeable to the audience. On The Event, everyone’s just an asshole. The show tries to present both the president and Sophia as reasonable people who, through misunderstandings and confusion, end up trying to murder each other, but the execution of those misunderstandings makes the both of them look like a couple of slightly evil morons rather than rational political leaders. Whose side am I supposed to be on because right now I’m on the side of that random old man who commissioned a bunch of little girls to have their faces deformed to look like creepy old ladies for no reason—oh wait, he just shot himself, so I hate everything.
3. The extraterrestrials have no discernible physical or cultural differences from regular Americans. They speak English with no accent, they have the same values, eat the same foods, dress the same way and look the same even down to racial disparity among individuals. The only difference is that they age at a much slower rate—that’s about it. They are the most generic and nondescript aliens ever depicted. Why America felt the need to throw them all in a Gitmo style prison in Alaska I have no idea.
4. I’m watching the show right now, and I just realized how to drastically improve its quality. All my favorite shows have ducks—Darkwing Duck, Ducktales, Mighty Ducks: The Series. That’s what’s missing from this show I think, the reason I feel so detached from everything that happens—no ducks.
Okay, I’ve watched the episode from beginning to end, imagining all the characters as ducks, and I can conclusively say this show needs to be remade with ducks. Imagine a duck in a suit, saying very seriously, “They just destroyed the Washington Monument.” Imagine a duck in a dress, saying, “We need to find him and kill him or this will never end.” Imagine a duck in a gray hoodie, saying, “We’re going to be alright. We’re going to be okay. I love you so much and I’m going to do everything. Okay? I love you.” I would think it should be animated unless Jim Henson Studios can design masks capable of lifelike and subtle facial expressions which they can so they should.
5. Battlestar Galactica should be remade with ducks and called Battleduck Galactiquack.
6. Dexter should be called Duckster.
7. The Tonight Show with Jay Leno should be called The Tonight Show with A Duck.
8. The Office should be called Ducks in an Office.
9. What was I talking about?
10. What was it?
11. …