Nothing New Under the Sun: A Look at The Event 1.05 by Pearson Moore

“I need you to gather the able-bodied.”

Thomas and Sophia reprised the Inostranka Conference, as they had in Episode 1.03 and in Episode 1.02 before that. The Avias passengers suffered nosebleeds, as they had in Episode 1.04. Michael Buchanan demanded to know what was going on, as he had the episode before. Thomas, as usual, was on his mobile phone. He was disobeying Sophia, as usual.

There’s nothing new under the sun, and there was very little new on Inostranka. Sean and Leila reunited after an unlikely decision by Vicky, Blake Sterling presented his final solution to the Inostranka problem, President Martinez showed a dark side to his character, and Sophia revealed a humane outlook.

Last night’s episode was weak. Perhaps some episodes must serve to “put the pieces in place”. This is a nearly axiomatic truth in serial fiction, but even so, we cannot be faulted for some expectation of novel technique, nor can we be faulted for feeling some disappointment in worn and frayed execution.

There were bright spots, and I will delve into them. But tonight, while I was trying to watch, carpenters were busy at work behind me, sawing boards to two-metre lengths. “One hundred and seven, all the same height, enough for the detainees and the main characters. Pine boards, simple box, medium finish. Oughta have ‘em done in four weeks.” I’m hoping NBC will send the carpenters home.

The Final Solution



Carbon monoxide gas.

I thought this scene was done well. Zyklon B would have been over the top. As it was, my first reaction to Blake Sterling’s mention of carbon monoxide was to recall the Nazi genocide. I have to believe most viewers had the same reaction, but I consider that the scene was handled appropriately. The President was contemplating something barbaric, but his consideration of the option was in response to a barbaric threat. He was not planning genocide, but something more akin to a cold war stalemate.

Nevertheless, the scene was chilling. We knew that the President of the United States was willing to entertain the idea of a ruthless, inhumane response to terrorist acts. The question THE EVENT put before us is as old as war, and the response is always informed by the events of the day. I believe the question was best posed by George Orwell sixty years ago. In the exchange below, O’Brien is exploring Winston’s willingness to commit acts in support of a rebellion against the oppressive regime of Big Brother.

“You are prepared to commit murder?”
“Yes.”
“To commit acts of sabotage which may cause the death of hundreds of innocent people?”
“Yes.”
“If, for example, it would somehow serve our interests to throw sulfuric acid in a child’s face—are you prepared to do that?”
“Yes.”

The obvious question framed by the exchange: How would such a rebellion differ from the totalitarian hell imposed by Big Brother? If President Martinez were willing to commit unholy acts against people not proven to have perpetrated any crime, how could he maintain any pretense of civility?

In a generally bland episode, I found this scene thought provoking and well done.

Sulfuric Acid in a Child’s Face



Good fiction is fearless. George Orwell’s 1984 is on the top shelf of my office library, and Michael Radford’s brilliant screen adaptation of the classic science fiction novel is a cinematic masterpiece and the best motion picture I have ever experienced.

“Sometimes,” Darren Franich wrote in his review a few hours ago, “you have to shoot the baby.” Good fiction is bold. Not shooting the baby is weak. If a choice is made to save the baby, some other unthinkable act must trump the horror. Two pleading women in front of him, each claiming ownership, a Solomon-like figure holds a sword in one hand and dangles a baby by a single leg in the other. When he offers the only fair resolution to the dispute and the woman on the left cries out, “No! Don’t cut him in half! Let him live! Give him to her!” he complies, giving the baby to the woman who would have allowed the infant to die. The baby is in the hands of an evil woman, and the tension is escalated, not reduced.

Good fiction sustains tension. The original Solomon scene in the Tanakh (1 Kings 3:16-28) depicted the wise king giving the baby to the woman who pled for the infant’s life. The scene worked as story because it was part of a larger, tension-filled saga of the founding of a new monarchy. At the same time it served the even larger interest of the Tanakh in providing a template for human social life.

A recent twist on the Solomon story was depicted on a dark night in a young French woman’s tent. The “wise king”, Charles Widmore, had ordered the execution of a woman and her baby, and he dispatched young Benjamin Linus to commit the unthinkable deed. The baby he saved, of course, was Alexandra Rousseau, and he raised her as his own. The reason the scene worked is that he did not kill the mother. Ben escalated tension by allowing Danielle Rousseau to live the remainder of her life in a mother’s worst hell, not knowing whether her baby was alive or dead, suffering or flourishing, abused or loved. Worse, the baby was taken into the care of a man we already knew to have committed acts one character described as “nothing less than genocide”. A third tension-advancing element was provided in the fact that Ben was disobeying his superior officer. And the entire scene fed into the greater tension-filled question of Danielle’s and Claire’s relationship to the supreme villain of the show, the Man in Black. As a segment of serial fictional, the scene was powerful in at least four distinct dimensions.

Adam’s reprieve from Vicky’s bullet did not sustain tension. We already knew the youngster was alive and well and living with Vicky’s mother. Saving the baby was the lesser of two evils after Vicky and her accomplices massacred the remainder of the family, and therefore further reduced tension. Brief tension was realised in Vicky’s disobedience, but this was attenuated by hiding the baby and fabricating a simple deception. The tension in Ben’s similar act, on the other hand, was magnified by his bold confrontation with the Leader, demonstrating a fearless disobedience that could have gotten him immediately killed. In comparison, little was on the line for Vicky.

An Orderly Rescue



Vicky’s crime scene conversion at the police station made no sense to me. If she was psychotic, we had no earlier indication of any such malady. If mowing down all of her accomplices was meant to demonstrate a mother’s love or evince some advanced form of humanity, I didn’t get the point. A more likely response: Vicky gathers everyone on the roof of the precinct station, they all load the highest-calibre weapons available (surely a police station—in George Bush’s Texas—is going to have higher octane than a few .45-calibre side arms) and turn Sean’s black SUV into metallic Swiss cheese.

Vicky knew Sean had little help, if any, beyond Agent Collier. Therefore killing him would not have constituted a high-probability risk to Adam. Is killing a room full of co-workers easier on the conscience than killing two enemies in the SUV outside?

I may be missing a few plot points here. It remains possible, as I conjectured last week, that Vicky does not seek Sean’s death. This possibility was reduced last night with Carter’s pronouncement that he could kill both Sean and the FBI agent from his rooftop perch. Frankly, the finer plot points seemed to have gone missing in this episode, and I didn’t find Vicky’s strange assassination of her former co-workers to advance the story or advance tension in any useful or meaningful way.

The entire episode consisted of two main plot points: Leila’s rescue and Thomas’ demand. Leila’s rescue, except for the zero-tension move by Vicky, was by the book, and could have served as half of a 43-minute episode of Law and Order. Or maybe the re-vamped but still formulaic Hawaii Five-O. The comparison is not entirely fair, I suppose. Agent Collier didn’t say, “Book ‘im, Sean-oh,” when they caught Carter.

Holding On By a Single Thread



I liked the image of inmate Sophia looking high in the sky at the bright sun. She had never seen the sun so high above the horizon, not since she left whatever world she came from, anyway. The shot reminded me of Robert Stroud’s transfer at the end of “The Birdman of Alcatraz”. A passenger jet flies overhead, and even though Stroud was incarcerated before the invention of airplanes, he knows all about the plane. “Boing 707, weighs 247,000 pounds, carries a payload of 22,000 pounds, each engine has a thrust of 13,000 pounds, cruises at 595 miles per hour. Just because a man’s in prison doesn’t mean he’s a boob.”

Sophia’s appreciation of the Maryland sun was a sign of hope. Hers was the only plot thread advanced during this episode. Perhaps NBC will try to make something of this series. Perhaps they will hire writers and directors. They need to act quickly, though. A dozen men, shovels over their shoulders, confer near a large, open field. Not far away, several dozen orderly mounds of fresh earth are arranged in precise rows, each bearing a simple red granite marker.

One of the men leans on his shovel, points to the graves. “Them’s the Heroes markers, ain’t it?”
“Naw,” the other grave digger says. “We buried ‘em three years ‘go, remember? They jus’ ain’t figured it out ‘til now. Them there’s the FlashForward graves, what we dug four months ‘go.”
“Oh, yeah.” He shakes his head. “Hard t’ keep ‘em all straight.”
The digger chuckles. “That’s for damn sure.”
“How many this time?”
“They sayin’ 107—‘nuff for all the main actors and the ‘dee-TAIN-ees’ from ‘Laska.”
The digger shakes his head and frowns. “Damn shame.”
“Yeah.” His friend smiles. “Keepin’ us busy, tho.”

Perhaps NBC will issue those twelve men a stop-work order. Let’s hope they issue it soon. A tension-killing calm is settling on Mount Inostranka. NBC needs to create a blizzard.

PM