Non-Event

I still watch The Event, though I don't respect myself for it.  I guess the problem will cure itself if (really when--the show was canceled last week, though there's some hope it'll be picked up elsewhere) the season finale ends it all.  But last week's episode, though fun, was the usual bizarre collection of bad choices.

By the way, plenty of spoilers, but that's the point.

We've been following our hero, Sean Walker, who's teamed up with rogue CIA agent turned good again, Vicky Roberts.  They've been jetting around the world, moving from the U.S. to France to Siberia back to the U.S. in no time at all. Tricky under the best circumstances, but since they're fugitives who attempted to assassinate the Vice President, you think they'd be getting a little more heat.  The show has apparently forgotten all about that.

And the Vice President is now the acting President after the actual President had a stroke--brought on by the Vice President, who poisoned him.  Now let's remember that earlier this season the Vice President was caught committing crimes against the administration.  It's weird enough they let him serve out his term, but okay, it saves face.  But to let him into meetings, where they discuss national policy during a crisis that threatens the world?  Close enough to drop things into the President's coffee?

We'll even let that go, but now that the President has recovered somewhat (thanks to help from the former head of national intelligence, Blake Sterling--he's the former head because he stupidly accused the Vice President of poisoning the President, thus losing the only trump card he had which was the Veep didn't know he knew), he bravely tells the doctor he's got to get back to the White House.  Why?  Is there some magic power-up button in the White House?  Call your cabinet to the hospital and immediately explain the Veep has tried to kill you. The longer you keep this a secret, the more pointless danger you're in.

He confronts the Veep in the Oval office.  The Veep notes "I'm still President until you're declared okay to serve again." This is actually a fascinating legal point.  We've had Veeps take over while the President is incapacitated, but what happens if the Veep doesn't want to give up power and says the Prez isn't ready to serve?

Anyway, there are bigger fish to fry, which is why it was weird to see everyone waste time.  Sophia, the head alien (if that's the word--they let it slip they were here before us) is plotting to kill almost all humans to make room for her people to come to Earth. (There ain't enough room on the planet for the both of us.) You might figure they have some sophisticated alien technology to do this, like they have for everything else, but no, they dug up some old, frozen corpse with a particularly virulent strain of Spanish Flu which kills humans but not aliens.  So virulent, in fact, that it kills too quickly and won't spread.  So the aliens' solution?  Infect Leila (Sean's half-alien girlfriend) so she'll create a mutant strain which will kill, but not so quickly.  Maybe I'm not up on the latest in alien biology, but even if this bizarre plans works, doesn't it create a chance the new strain will kill aliens as well?

So anyway, time is of the essence, since Sophia has the virus and only has to release it into the wide world to set her unstoppable plan in motion.  Meanwhile, Sean, Vicky, Blake and Simon (an alien and former counteragent who's back with the humans--people change sides a lot on this show) meet each other on the same trail and team up--a decent plot twist. While they're gathering evidence, the revived Prez calls his Blake.  Does the security advisor say drop everything or 6 billion people will be dead by the end of the week?  Does he say time to order the entire military of the world on this case?  No, he let's it slide.  Once his crew figure out the location of Sophia's hideout, they drive to the spot (which, luckily, isn't too far away--could have been anywhere in the world) to take her group out.  The whole world hangs in the balance, and we get four people to save us.

Sean finds his love Leila there, but they can't touch because she's infected.  The other three take out the skeleton crew (everyone else has left to hatch the plan) and try to use Sophia's computer to figure out how she'll carry out her scheme.  Sean's greatest talent is computer hacking, so why isn't he helping?  Leila has a few more hours, humanity doesn't.

My guess is in the finale they'll stop the spread of the flu (they've got to, don't they, unless they're planning to remake The Stand), but won't be able to stop a bunch of new aliens from coming to the Earth via their fancypants technology.  This will create plenty of new confrontations in the nonexistent second season.

And we still don't know what the "event" is.  Speak now or forever hold your peace.