Comic Con: NBC's The Event Looks Like A Keeper

I had the opportunity to preview the pilot episode of NBC’s upcoming series The Event here at Comic Con and if the series premiere is any indication of what we can expect from this show, we’re in for a very exciting, suspenseful series.

The Event stars Jason Ritter, who plays Sean Walker, a man who is on the brink of having it all as he’s about to propose to his girlfriend of seven years, only to have her disappear without a trace while on a cruise. Leila’s disappearance is somehow tied into a mysterious organization and an “event” that is set to take place, which could be catastrophic. The story bounces between Sean and Leila, the mystery-organization that knows something about what’s to come, and the President, who ends up becoming directly involved in the situation.

The pilot episode jumps around a lot, with frequent flashbacks as we see different “thens,” all of which play a role in a very suspenseful “now” situation, which involves a hijacked plane. At around the second or third flashback, I found myself wondering if this was a show people were going to be able to follow. Time jumps can be confusing, especially as we’re just getting to know the characters and this is already a series that’s shrouded in mystery. I wondered if adding on the extra effort of having to keep track of what-happened-when would be too much, when factoring in everything else we still don’t know.

My doubts about the format dissolved and vanished by the end of the episode. I really didn’t have any trouble following the sequence of events, nor did the time-jumps interfere with the introduction to the story. If anything, they enhanced it and served to heighten the suspense as we slowly learned some of what happened that led to the situation, while also getting a sense of who the main characters are and how they fit into the story.

The Event looks like it could be one of the most exciting, talked about series this fall as it takes the suspense-thriller genre and mixes in a few supernatural/sci-fi twists, one of which you’ll see at the end of the series premiere. This could be the kind of series that fans will watch on the edge of their seats, and spend the days between each new episode theorizing and debating the mysteries.

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