Image Credit: Dean Hendler/NBCNBC execs today attempted to shoot down any skepticism over whether NBC’s new drama The Event will leave viewers more confused than satisfied. Considering what happened last year with high-concept shows like ABC’s short-lived drama FlashForward, “we are going to do everything in our power to guard against (what happened with) Flashforward,” NBC entertainment topper Angela Bromstad told TV journalists today in Beverly Hills. “That show had a great script, a really good pilot and we were afraid of it competitively. I understand it did disappoint the audience. We take those lessons really seriously. The audience and critics will be rightly skeptical.
“If we can get this show right, even though the risks are tremendous, the rewards are really great,” Bromstad continued.
The Event, which bows Sept. 20, stars Blair Underwood, Jason Ritter, and Laura Innes and has been described by executive producers Nick Wauters (The 4400) and Evan Katz (24) as a conspiracy thriller in the vein of 24. The pilot ends with a shock-and-awe moment that suggests the drama will feature some science-fiction elements. The serialized show kicks off with a government conspiracy, a kidnapping, and an assassination attempt.
NBC hopes to generate buzz for The Event by offering a walk-on role in the series via the network’s Fan It Campaign. Fans can sign up for the ongoing incentive program by going to www.NBC.com/fanit.
Read more:
The Event: Should NBC market it as TV's next (big) mythology?
FlashForward: Did advance planning do more harm than good for show?
Is The Event about people from one alternate reality who find themselves transported to “ours” (or, rather, one that mirrors ours)?
That’s the feeling I get after watching a trailer a few weeks ago based on Ritter looking for his gf and the President’s meeting with Innes.
God I hope not. I’m beyond sick of alternate reality story lines
On TV (at present) I can only think of Fringe as a TV show that deals with alternate realities.
Are there any others?
If this was a comic, I’d dismiss it if it dealt with alternate realities.
Lost
Lost didn’t do alternate realities, it did a single time line with flashbacks and flashforward and an afterllife (or holding pattern prior to the afterlife).
Lost was more about life and death than about alternate realities a la Fringe or Sliders.
This is one of the few new shows I”m looking forward to this year… there is a definitely a void now with Lost and 24 gone so I need another serialized mythology-based head trip to get into. Hopefully they mean it when they say they learned lessons from FF>
Flashforward suffered from more than just bad story execution. It also suffered with the characters & actors who shouldn’t be main leads. After the hiatus, the show managed to find the right balance & made some of the characters better but it was too late. Hopefully, the characters in the Event will be as awesome as the plot.
Loved FlashForward; hated ABCs treatment of it.
I agree. ABC’s tendencies are to cancels shows before giving them time to capture audiences. Thank God they kept Lost till its natural end. I’m on an online ABC advisory panel and I tell them that they shouldn’t limit viewer counts to Nielsen ratings. I thought the networks were going to take all forms of viewing into consideration per the writer’s strike. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m not going to spend much time on ABC come fall.
Still can’t believe they dropped Flashforward but kept V.
The ratings were horrible at the end of the season. I liked Flashfoward but even I would have made the decision to cancel it.
Why? The pilot was great, but the rest was all down hill with the poor writing and plotting and some seriously bad casting. I quit watching it after six episodes – and I almost never quit a sci-fi show. I discovered quite quickly that I disliked all of the leads (except for John Cho) and couldn’t care less waht happened to them. Plus, the whole plot was poor (for instance, apparently all of the scientists and all of the scientific equipment that was running at the time of the flashfoarward apparently ceased to exist). It wasn’t good. V isn’t great either, but the cast is fab and the story is more involving and has a LOT more potential.
I don’t understand what happened to FlashForward either — there were some weak episodes to be sure, but the overall show was very engaging. My wife and I were on the edge of our seats during the finale. I gave up on V about three eps. in after the hiatus when every episode was exactly the same. FF was a MUCH better show.
I loved FF too. The hiatus killed it.
NBC has treated Persons Unknown like crap so we should expect them to do the same with th Event!
But don’t you think Persons Unknown kinda had the additional problem of being Ungood?
I’m actually really enjoying Persons Unknown. I am (pleasantly) surprised that NBC hasn’t cancelled it. They moved it to Saturdays, but in the day of the DVR that doesn’t really affect my viewing at all. Of course, I wish I could watch it live to help ratings a little bit.
If you have OnDemand, give it another chance – it’s gotten really good!
I think it’s gone down hill. Loved it at first, but it feels like it’s stalling now.
Actually, Persons Unknown got treated like it deserved – it was low-cost, low-quality summer reality filler not expected to do much of anything. And they were right: bad show, bad everything.
Maybe if you don’t want it to be like FlashForward (which I personally enjoyed), you shouldn’t hire Lisa Zwerling…from FlashForward.
Flashforwards problem came from it’s lack of character development. High concept sci-fi shows only work when you are invested in the characters.
Just stop talking about Flashforward and put on a good show.
And as a backup plan, write another script that ties up the loose ends just in case NBC cancels it for more reality/variety TV programming.
FlashForward didn’t disappoint me; ABC did. I really liked it when it started, but the hiatus was so long I just couldn’t get back into it. And i had a bit of a hard time with Joseph Fiennes’s “American” accent. I’m going to try The Event; I hope NBC learned a lesson, and won’t pull it off the air for months just as people are getting interested.
I loved the concept of Flashforward, but I really hated Joseph Fiennes as a lead character.
Agreed. I liked Fiennes but they should not have centered on him as main character.
Casing unlikable people in badly written roles is always great for ensuring cancellation.
The Event is the show I’m most looking forward to. I think NBC is doing a good job of promoting it on their network as well as in print in EW. I keep trying to figure out what “The Event” (with that backwards 2nd ‘e’)is. I’m a scifi freak & my gut (or maybe my hope) is that it deals with ET’s (not like “V” – hated that). We all know the gov’t has been involved with UFO’s at least since Roswell. The CIA is involved in this show & they’re masters of ‘black-op projects’ & it would be fascinating especially if they’re tackling ET & UFO Disclosure issues and how they think the public is too stupid to handle the truth. The fact that the POTUS is kept in the dark is reinforcing the theories that there are multiple layers of power above the POTUS. If it is about ET disclosure, maybe this show will help the gov’t. come clean.
I hate all the hype. Last year I liked the new Terminator Series, and then it vanished. This year I got into watching V…They never brought it back…I guess it got cancelled. I thought The Event sounds like a TV Version of “District 9″.
V didn’t get cancelled. It was on the bubble but it was renewed for a second season. Also, I loved “District 9″! If the Event is at least as half as good as that I will be pleased.
Here are the problems I saw with FlashForward:
1. Too much focus on plot too early. Not enough focus on characters.
2. Storytelling was too scattered.
3. Didn’t explore its wonderful concept with great depth and realism. (If they had done this through a character focus then it would have been more successful, a la LOST.)
I agree on all those points. The show had an excellent concept which was badly executed. Too much plot & not enough character buildig. I was hooked on Lost’s characters immediately from it’s pilot.
This will undoubtably be another show for nutcases.
What does that mean?
Sorry, the title for that would be The Sarah Palin Show.
I knew Flashforward was in trouble from the first couple of episodes when one of the main story lines was whether or not the FBI’s wife was going to cheat on him with another man. Why not focus on the horrible deaths and devastation for a good half of the season before you start worrying about the relationships between the characters? It ruined the pacing and suspense of the show and I quickly tuned out.. which is rare since I tend to give a show a good season-long viewing before I decide whether or not it’s worth my time. Good thing I didn’t keep watching. Sounds like it got a lot worse.
If this show can avoid all of that, I have a feeling more people will catch on.