Check out our first post from new contributor Nicole (@follow_nicole)! Leave her some love in the comments to welcome her on board!

I want to like this show so bad. Why do they make it so friggin hard?

I like the premise, and the casting.  What I don’t like is the trying too hard to be 24 meets LOST.  First off, the audience should be left to come to their own conclusion that it is 24 meets LOST without marketing campaigns browbeating them over the head with the hope that they view it that way.  Second, the writers shouldn’t blatantly copy so many elements from those shows that they’re trying to mimic that it’s viewed as uncreative and, for lack of a better word, corny.  Third, they shouldn’t lead the viewer down so many separate plotlines that we get lost in the process.  Fourth, you shouldn’t rely so much on flashbacks to tell your story that you lose the opportunity to let facts unravel naturally.   And, lastly, if your only suspenseful out of the box act break is always the very last image of the episode, it’s not insightful, just damn annoying.

Don’t get me wrong, THE EVENT has great actors, and is far better than many shows currently on the air.  It also provides a fresh take on the action drama.  The problem is that it’s just taking so long to hit its stride that I’m getting tired of waiting to understand what the hell it is all about.

In Monday night’s episode, we learned that the Vice President was working against the President and for Dempsey, who is powerful, and per the last scene, some kind of non-human.  We also learned that Vicky wants out of the mysterious group trying to catch Scott and Leila, and take down the President.   We also learned that Dempsey was behind Jarvis becoming the VP candidate and joining Martinez on the ticket, even though he’s a member of the opposition party.  I’d like to say I learned more, but, the episode was so full of flashbacks that there was no room to really move the story any further towards a real understand of the stakes and the players.

At some point, in the very near future, the writers are going to have to stick to what they’ve already told us, bring it together, and go from there.  No more new characters, secret conspiracies, or flashbacks (or at least tone down the flashbacks).  If the whole point is that I’m supposed to really want to know what the Event is, they are missing that point because I’m starting not to care.