The Event, Pilot Episode, Aired One Big Conspiracy in the Making on NBC; It Starred Jason Ritter and Blair Underwood

The pilot episode of The Event aired Monday night on NBC, starring Jason Ritter and Blair Underwood. The hour-long show is cryptic, full of plot twists and flashbacks, meaning there is no straight narrative. The Event, Pilot Episode, is about some big time conspiracy that will apparently take weeks to find out about. Will NBC keep the viewer interest with this program, or is this premise going to get tiresome fast to where very few could care less?

The Pilot Episode of The Event Is Full of Flashbacks and Twists

To repeat, there's no straight narrative here, and the flashbacks go back minutes, days, hours, and months. In a nutshell, the show's main first scene opens with Sean Walker (Jason Ritter) getting on board a jet airplane. He's very anxious because a SUV is chasing the plane and men are in the concourse heading towards the gate. Nonetheless, the plane takes off and immediately Walker storms the front of the plane and pulls out a gun on the flight attendants so he can get into the cockpit. But the air marshal pulls a gun on him before he can talk to the pilots. Suddenly, the plane starts going out of control and heads towards the site of a Presidential news conference. It's flown by pilot Michael Buchanan (Scott Patterson), the father of Sean's girlfriend Leila (Sarah Roemer). The air marshal allows Sean to call Michael on the phone to plead with him to not attempt to kill the President, who Buchanan apparently blames for something happening to Leila. But before the crash, the plane is caught up in a mysterious bubble-like cloud, and viewers and the President are left wondering why.

Earlier, President Elias Martinez (Blair Underwood) is first shown about halfway through the pilot episode of The Event. His advisors tell him to not close a detention facility at Mt. Inostranka, Alaska, which has 97 high risk prisoners for mysterious reasons, including Sophia (Laura Innes). But the President refuses, because he feels those there have been treated wrongly long enough. Martinez has met the detainees there, well before the much anticipated news conference about freeing the prisoners.

The Event Pilot Episode Leaves Too Many Questions for an Obvious Reason

Only 11 days earlier, Sean and Leila were readying for a holiday cruise. During a shore excursion on a beautiful island, he is about to propose marriage when he's summoned by a man to rescue his drowning significant other Vicky (Taylor Cole) via jumping off a high cliff. Later, the two couples hang out together to "celebrate" their fateful meeting, the rescue, and new friendship. During the vacation, Leila's mother is shot down and her daughter is kidnapped right after Leila talks with her father Michael. After Sean and Vicky go snorkeling (Leila doesn't feel well), he goes back to his hotel room, but his key won't work and there's no record of the couple's stay nor of them being on the cruise and Leila is missing. Sean escapes the hands of the authorities, eventually getting on that fateful flight.

This pilot episode of The Event definitely leaves more questions than answers, obviously so viewers will keep watching. What is this "event"? Who are those detainees? How long will those answers take to find out?

Sources:

"Pilot", The Event, September 20, 2010, NBC