THE EVENT: The Next ‘Lost’ or the next ‘FlashForward’?

When FlashForward’s cancellation became a certainty, all eyes went to the next possible candidate to replace the vaunted ‘LOST’. ‘V’ survived to another season, but the similarities to the recently buried Island serial are superficial at best, and its chances at a 6 season run remain near nil. One show, ‘The Event’, promised (literally) to be NBC’s attempt at “event television”. Scripted event television, that is. Now that LOST was off the air, NBC executives must have reasoned that us rabid fans were itching for another show to make us theorize and debate. The pre-premiere promotion was vast. Guy on a plane? Flashbacks? Mysteries? September 28th came, and while the ratings were decent, the show is on the bubble. Will it succeed, and maybe be the next ‘Heroes’? Or will is sink into obscurity like the rest of the serialized mystery dramas that followed in LOST’s wake?

After LOST premiered in 2005, networks scrambled to put out their competitor to the ratings powerhouse that was LOST. From CBS, we got Treshold (13 Episodes) and Jericho (29 Episodes). From NBC, the initially successful Heroes (4 Seasons). ABC even attempted to capitalize on Lost with its own Invasion (22 episodes) and The Nine (13 episodes). All these stumbled, eventually fatally, while LOST remained the lone survivor of the Serial Mystery Drama explosion. It seems after 2006, people went back to watching celebrity dancing shows and Jersey Shore.

The Event has a chance to claim LOST’s audience, and maybe the audience of the late great 24, too, with its breakneck pace and government intrigue. But will it work?

Here are three qualities LOST had that made it great:

1) Intriguing Mystery
2) Interesting, sympathetic characters
3) A gripping central premise.


1. Intriguing Mystery


Possibly the most important for luring in initial viewers is the mystery. LOST did it quite simply, with a single question: Where were they? What kind of Island was this, with polar bears and monsters? The promos played up both the mysterious aspects of the ‘Pilot’, and they netted an impressive 18 million viewers that first week.

The Event tried a similar approach, only with firsthand knowledge of how Lost worked and how the fanbase ticks. They showed up at Comic-Con and screened the pilot, hoping to increase buzz. They released trailers and promos online, created twitter accounts for the characters, overall pushed the show, forcefully, onto the internetz. The promos promised mystery - who were the detainees? Where did they come from? What is going on with that guy, the cruise, his girlfriend, the flight - and how the hell did he get a gun on the plane? All interesting mysteries, some of which have been answered already. Did they make a mistake in showing their hand too early? Only time will tell.

The issue currently is that the mystery seems squarely placed in one aspect of the storyline. We, the audience, spend more the half the episode watching Sean try to find his girlfriend and fight the evil baddies that kidnapped her. It is removed - even distant - from the story of the President and his negotiations with the Detainees, supposedly the mystery that ties it all together. As a result, the mystery of the Detainees is sidenote to the story of Sean trying to find his girlfriend, and until they can satisfactorily tie the two disparate threads together somehow, one of the stories will continue to be subpar - for the past 5 episodes, it has been the Detainees’ story.

So The Event has a good mystery core, even if it doesn’t all work together most of the time. The mystery is what pulls viewers to the show, and, to an extent, keeps them watching deep into the show, and sticking around season to season.

But if mystery was the key element, people could just wait until the show ended and read a short synopsis of the show’s secrets, maybe summarized by a British guy with post-it notes.


So then what keeps people watching week-to-week?

2. Interesting and Sympathetic Characters


Without huge production budgets for effects and sets like movies do, TV and other episodic storytelling mediums have always had other ways to keep people watching, whether it be cliffhangers, new stories each week, or the classic “watching-a-train-wreck” reality schtick. Invariably, however, the shows that have had the most success are remembered for their characters. The classic shows (M*A*S*H, Seinfeld, even The X-Files) are remembered for the people that populated the world it created more than the world itself. People who never watched the X-Files might have no idea who the Cigarette Smoking Man was, but they know the names Mulder and Scully.

And so it was with LOST. Jack Shephard, John Locke, Kate Austen, Charlie Pace (or, the dude from Lord of the Rings to non-Losties) - even the Smoke Monster had a sad backstory. These were characters that kept people watching to see who would live, and who would die. At first, these characters were mysteries. How did Locke end up in a wheelchair? What did Kate do? What’s with Jack’s tattoos? (Yes, at one point people did seriously ask that).

And The Event? The fact that I had a hard time remembering Sean’s girlfriends name is a testament to her lack of interesting-ness. (When there’s a character that’s missing, we need to know their name - did Harold Perinneau screaming “WALT!” throughout Season 2 of LOST teach us anything?).


Here’s a quick test: Describe Sean, the main character, without mentioning what he looks like, what his occupation is, or his objective in the show. Not easy, is it?



3. Gripping Central Premise

It’s no secret that Hollywood is out of ideas. I mean, just look at this mind numbingly-long list of sequels and remakes in development. An original premise is tough to come by these days - even Inception, with it’s highly-vaunted originality, has inspiration and basis in other works. LOST is no different - the concept of a shipwreck on a deserted Island is nothing new. It’s fictional ancestor include “Robinson Crusoe” and “The Swiss Family Robinson”. It managed to be “new” by combining the deserted Island setting with the mystery of ‘The Twilight Zone’ or ‘Twin Peaks’. As the old Hollywood adage goes, “Give me something new - but exactly the same.”

Lost kept viewers interested initially because of the simple, yet horrifying premise of the plane crash. ABC sold the intense CGI of the crash from inside the plane and the opening sequence on the beach and was rewarded with a boatload of attentive viewers. A show that did admirably with the same strategy was FlashForward - the concept of that show is undoubtedly cool. People get a flash of their futures, but in a blackout, which kills millions at the same time. ABC started selling this months before the premiere, asking people “What did you see?” in commercials airing during LOST. It got a good number of viewers, and seemed primed to be ABC’s replacement.

What happened? The characters happened. With characters the audience could not relate to (or took to mocking - “Because I was Loaded, OKAY!?” anyone?) the viewership fell to its inevitable doom. The hook didn’t last long enough to capture the minds of the viewers like it did with Lost. Quite simply, Flashforward sold an intellectually stimulating premise, one that philosophers or physicists would debate about (like in the actual book Flashforward). LOST gave us an immediate emotional gut punch: A pregnant girl on the beach in the middle of the aftermath of a plane crash, a husband screaming for his wife, a father for his son. By putting the characters in danger in the first 2 minutes, the writers of LOST got us invested in them early. Still, both of them kept us interested, at least for a few episodes.

And The Event? Well, what is the premise exactly? What is The Event? The most anyone can say about either is that “it’s a mystery”. There’s some detainees, a man searching for his girlfriend - but what is the true story? LOST was about a plane crash. Flashforward was about people getting a glimpse of their future. The Event, so far, is based so far in mystery that it doesn’t have an identifiable premise. In 24, each season begins with a singular threat - assassination, nuclear bomb, terrorist attacks - and even if they broaden, there is always a simple entry point to the conspiracy madness.

The Event lacks that. However, in the last episodes, I have been given a little hope by the condensing of the storylines. Each of the plots have become more focused, even if the connection between the two remains hazy at best.

So, after five episodes, what can I say about The Event overall? It’s intriguing. And so far, it’s entertaining. It may not be the next LOST or 24, but I’m going to keep watching to see if it can become its own invention, and not have the elephant in the room of trying to compete with the legacy of the late great Island drama.

Follow me on Twitter!