My Take on The Event and Chase

Last night, after checking out some of the performances on Dancing With The Stars, I clicked over to NBC and watched the series premiere of The Event. I think NBC will finally ascend out of its ratings doldrums this year and reclaim Monday nights. This is a good thing as the one well-received show NBC has on that night, Chuck, was never anything to write home about.

The Event, which takes the time slot vacated by Heroes when it spectacularly crashed and burned last year, is a promising new series. The Event is widely considered to be NBC's answer to the recently cancelled series, Lost. I never watched that show but I do know that the show's non-chronological story-telling and elliptical dialogue will make viewers ask the type of questions that guarantee that they continue to turn in to the series.

What I could make out of the plot is as follows: A man, Sean Walker (Jason Ritter), on a romantic cruise with his soon-to-be-fiance gets caught up in an international conspiracy when she is abducted from the cruise liner. (I love the way the writers tap into the existential horror of not having a record of your very existence logged somewhere in some computer system.) The also conspiracy involves Sean's fiancee's father in some way; we find this out when Sean tries to hijack a plane that his fiancee's father is piloting--with a gun.

Key players in the conspiracy work in the top levels of government; however, the conspiracy doesn't include the President of The United States (Blair Underwood), who left up to his own devices, discovers evidence of it and demands explanations. Another conspirator (Laura Innes) is sprung from a prison in an ice-covered no-man's-land.

This intriguing premise--as well as the out-of-left-field ending of the pilot episode--guarantee that I will get religious about this show.

That's not to say I didn't find flaws in the series. Despite the now-de rigeur black president (who's also Latino), a mysterious Euro-Asian, and a few Hispanics, the cast of The Event is mostly white and get almost all the screen time in the pilot--not exactly a ringing endorsement of the new "post-racial" America.

And some of the plot holes had me rolling my eyes. Exactly how does Sean get on a plane with a gun? And is there a reason why the staffers at the President's personal residence continue to try to keep the food and centerpieces on the table when a jumbo jet is flying right at them?

Anyway, I'll tune in next week.

I probably won't tune in regularly to Chase, though. Although the feminist in me enjoys the fact that the plot centers on a strong female character, Chase is bogged down by too many police procedural cliches--high energy chases, simplistic psychological profiles, clunky expository dialogue, and a male-female team of cops. And why is that cops always magically know how to reassure frightened children on these show?

I was even more disappointed when the villain they were chasing got caught in the last two minutes.  Given how prominently this character was placed in the promos, I thought that I would be watching a multi-episode (or perhaps multi-season) story arc in which the team pursues a cunning criminal who always manages to stay two steps ahead--much like "Jack" of Profiler fame. Alas, episodes of Chase will always end with our heroine getting her man.

Television Shows I've Never Watched

I recently overheard two neo-yuppie types on the Manhattan-bound 4 train waxing poetic over the latest Sex and The City Movies. Even if I had wanted to follow the conversation (and trust me, I didn't), I couldn't have anyway because I've never seen either movie. I skipped both the films because--dun, dun, DUN!--I've never watched a single episode of the series which inspired it .

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I'm one of only, like, twelve women in the universe who's never seen SJP practice her craft on the small screen. (I'm one of millions who haven't seen on the big screen, either, but I digress.) I was living with my parents when the show debuted in 1998 and they didn't have cable. By the time I got cable access, I'd heard all the feminist commentary that slammed the show's raunchy subject matter, heterosexism, consumerism/elitism, and unrealistic lack of racial diversity in the cast. It turned me off from a show that I most likely wouldn't have become religious about anyway.

After I got off the train, I began to think about all the other "it" shows I never checked out. Maybe I'm past the point in my life where I don't feel the need to keep up with conversations revolving around tv shows; maybe I've just been too busy. Or, perhaps, I just got too attached to Heroes, Law And Order, 30 Rock, and My Name Is Earl to venture away from NBC.

All of the shows on this list below (1) aired or debuted sometime during the last ten years and (2) never could boast of my viewership.

1. 24
2. Lost
3. Survivor
4. Desperate Housewives
5. Curb Your Enthusiasm
6. Mad Men
7. Entourage
8. The Apprentice
9. The Bachelor/The Bachelorette
10. Grey's Anatomy   (Ok, Ok, I've watched a few episodes once it went into syndication)
11. Ugly Betty
12. How I Met Your Mother
13. Chuck
14. Anything in the CSI   franchise
15. Nip/Tuck
16. True Blood
17. Dexter
18. Weeds
19. Arrested Development
20. The Sopranos (My mom tricked me into watching the episode where Summer or Hunter or whatever-the-hell-her-name-is trashed her grandma's house. However, I lost all respect for Tony Soprano--a mafioso who can't discipline a teenager?-- and decided never to watch again)

 

 

 

Is there anyone else out there who hasn't seen a single episode of an "it" show? Please tell me in the comments section.