The Event is back for episode two, and it’s certainly pulling no punches when it comes to answers. Straight away we learn the fate of the hijacked aircraft, which crash landed in an Arizona desert, and we learn that Sophia’s people are aliens, who crash landed in Alaska in 1944. Wow.
This show is going to divide audiences. There’s no question about it. While a large section are already along for the ride, a certain section will be rolling their eyes and grabbing the remote at the mere mention of the ‘a’word. Or as they’re referred to in The Event, ‘not terrestrial’. I still believe it would’ve been better for NBC to air both the pilot and episode two on the same night. For one, it would’ve assured some of the more jaded viewers that we’d be getting lots of answers right off the bat. For two, the revelations of episode two are fundamentally a huge part of the show’s DNA — it changes things from sci-fi to alien sci-fi — which is a whole other ballgame.
Just like the pilot, I very much enjoyed Sean Walker’s storyline, as Leila’s father encourages him to flee the crash site and the oncoming helicopter fleet, and try to find his missing girlfriend. Sean’s frustration continues as he’s finally captured by the FBI and then they’re mere feet from seeing the downed plane but a cop roadblock turns them away; a sight which would’ve helped prove Sean’s innocence. So near, yet so far.
In a flashback, we learn that Vicky, the hard-partying girl from the pilot episode, was holding a gun to Leila’s head (I called it!), while a badass called Carter (D.B. Sweeney) convinced her father to kidnap the plane. Were they trying to kill the President, Sofia, or did they have some other motive? That’s one question I hope is answered soon.
In another flashback, we see how the President was informed about the alien arrival, and we learn that the detainees’DNA is 1% different from ours, which is a deceptively large amount. We also learn they age much slower than us. And in a final twist, Agent Lee, who is put in charge of finding a rogue group of the aliens that have been in hiding since 1944, is revealed as being an extra terrestrial. Or alien. Or meta-human. Whichever term you prefer.
One of those rogue aliens, Thomas (Clifton Collins, Jr.), admits to Agent Lee that he’d have rather let the fighter jets shoot down the hijacked plane, and that disappearing the plane drained their ‘resources’. Intriguing stuff. It sounds like either the aliens have some sort of power that requires all of them to work together, or they have some kind of futuristic technology.
And in a powerful cliffhanger moment, we see that all of the survivors from the plane that crash landed in the Arizona desert have been murdered. What the heck happened? Are they really dead? Is this the end for Leila’s father? Something tells me there’s a lot more twists to come.
Overall, I was thoroughly enthralled by episode two, and if anything it improved on the pilot episode, giving us more thrills, more intriguing answers, more exciting questions, and the characters are slowly becoming more fleshed out. I still feel like the writers are more interested in the mythology than giving the characters more dimensions, but this is still only episode two. There’s a long road ahead of us, and it promises to be an exciting ride. A.
Make sure to join us next week for 1.03 “Protect Them from the Truth”, and in the meantime why not join in the discussion in our The Event forum.
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