Notes for Episode 11: The Event

Hannah here! I've another set of notes for all our paid subscribers, and given we had 22 episodes of material to work with, it's an extra long set this time. Enjoy a lot of insane snippets of dialogue and surprisingly few aesthetic observations - it was just that kind of show. As usual, I've included a PDF version if any of you prefer reading them like that. See you all next month!

PATREON NOTES: THE EVENT

• Plot / Structure Stuff:

  • I gotta say, I assumed the “we don’t even know what the Event is” schtick would be really grating, but it’s fun!

    • Like obviously the plane hijacking is to do with the Event, but it’s like, that plane hijacking is about to get way weirder

      • LIKE SO!! WOW!

        • Note: None of this ended up being the Event

  • With the nested flashbacks, this gets at a fundamental Lostalike hook: how did this person get here in their life?

  • They did a version of “he moved the Island” in the pilot

  • The “previously on” for episode 3, I mean, I can’t imagine it actually being helpful in laying out the plot for anyone

  • Do the aliens have alien names? Or is it like how Omniman from Invincible is just called Nolan by chance when all his buddies are called like Frarg

  • I love that Sean brought a gun onto a plane and pointed it at as many people as possible and that’s NOT what he’s being chased by the authorities for

  • Whenever this show introduces a new character I’m half-expecting someone to bust in and shoot them five times immediately

  • EBE’S ARE BACK. NEARLY A YEAR LATER, EBE’S ARE BEING DISCUSSED ON A LOSTALIKE. NOT A DRILL

  • I have to give this show props for its commitment to scenes where the audience has absolutely no way of understanding what’s going on

  • SHE WAS A DOMINICAN ALIEN

    • The very last reveal that this TV show ever gave us. Is that the First Lady of the United States is not Dominican. That’s how they left it off

• Character / Performance Stuff:

  • Jason Ritter is STRONG for a Lostalike male lead! Children naturally run toward him and away from Joe Fiennes

    • He has really good, like, Ethan Hawke’s dorky lil brother energy

  • Ian Anthony Dale returning for a third time. He’s some sort of agent this time. He’s always kinda an agent

  • Sean and Leila’s meet cute is genuinely super sweet. Jason has it

  • Agent Collier is so amazing, she finds a way to be snide about every situation

  • Ivanek is really good as like. The middle-manager of the alien prison. When he hears the water there tastes like piss and he’s like “well, I’ll look into that” 

  • Sophia is Great Value Julianne Moore

  • Clifton is the lowlight among the cast, all he does is make mean phone calls without the gravitas to pull it off

    • Here’s the thing. If you have two villains who mainly make scary phone calls, and one is Clifton and one is Hal Halbrook, how’s that gonna look

  • Leila, during her post-rescue aggressive period, was genuinely playing at an MVP level

  • It feels like they realized after the first few episodes that Cliff didn’t have the juice to be a scary phonecalls guy so they retooled his role in the show and made Hal be the scary phonecalls guy

    • Cliff’s first described by Sophia as a juggernaut of charisma and leader of men, and then by episode 8 she only talks about him as a gay weak child

  • Michael says he served in Korea, which is really funny to me. None of the other soldiers thought “damn dude why do you look 45”

  • Sophia is soooo Jewish mom coded in the back half……constantly bringing up that she sat in a cell for 66 years while everyone outside disappointed her

• Technical / Aesthetic Stuff: 

  • From the jump, this is shockingly 24. Same sense of network TV propulsiveness, same obsession with intense closeups of government guys whispering

  • Still early going as of the time of writing this but this is the first Lostalike to be in the proper genre neighborhood of the mothership that ISN’T immediately repulsive to look at and listen to

  • It’s so hard to assign any kind of continuity to setpieces in this show. Episode 4 begins with a chase scene of Sean and Agent Collier and it’s like, where were they last time we saw them? Was the chase already over, or were they trapped in a room? I don’t know

  • I love how this show will just not bother to name things. The President’s party. Your country. The banker. The group

• Notable Quotes:

  • “Not of… terrestrial origin…” You just gotta have a creepy character actor like Zeljko say that right in your alien show

  • “Vicky Roberts, that’s her name!” “Uh, yeah, ONE of them!”

  • “I don’t know anything! All I know is I’m bleeding out!”

  • “He read an article that I put on a site that I had. That was before they took away my site.”

  • “Don’t you see? Having your father fly his plane into the president was killing two birds with one stone.”

  • “She was scared… she was still normal.”

  • “You don’t care who I am? You don’t care that I’m not human?” This is how Hannah talks to me sometimes

  • Sean to Vicky: “I’m not here to kill you so don’t OVERREACT, because I WILL shoot you”

  • “We have the CDC announce the outbreak of a drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis. Convince people that the only way to stop a pandemic is through mandatory testing”

  • "You have to help me. I'm being held by the people who blew up the Washington Monument"

  • Vicky: “Lemme ask you a question, Sean. Why do YOU think I’m here.”

    • Sean: “Honestly, I have no idea. I don’t understand you.”

    • Vicky: “That’s right, you don’t.” 

  • “This compound is strange because as far as I know…..we don’t have the science to create it” 

  • [After four episodes of blindly doing Sophia’s bidding] “I’m not comfortable blindly doing your bidding”

  • “If we stay here, something will happen to all of us. We call it The Event. We’ll change, evolve, into something better. But your people won’t survive it.”

    • This hit!

  • “All the answers are hidden in that scroll” is maybe the funniest season 2 tease of all time. We have a scroll of answersl. Tune in next week for more answers from the scroll

• Cute Things We Said:

  • Show opens with a sign at an airport reading “It’s all happening in Miami.” Like, events?? Events are happening?

  • Driving an SUV is fundamentally not a cool thing to do. Like pick any other car. And yet, they have Simon desperately drive an SUV multiple times

  • After Sean saves Vicky from drowning in the opening, the guy with the broken arm should’ve looked at Leila and said, “now you and I will get married, and he and her will get married!”

  • Going back to basics in 2010, after Lost proper is over… let’s crash the plane, let’s make the hybrids two things

    • “No I’m pretty sure we had it right the first time. Lost is gonna be about hybrids, I can feel it”

  • World’s smallest 9/11… flying a plane into one specific person

  • I think the Fake Mandarin from Iron Man 3 would love this TV show

  • This has very powerful made for TV movie vibes

    • Made for TV EVENT movie… it falls into place

  • So much of the conflict / yelling on this show feels like “I NEED ANSWERS, DAMMIT: do you LIKE me?” So many of the characters’ gambits feel one step removed from holding their breath really long

  • We need a Kill Count for The Event

    • So much of this show is just like when I see an isolated NPC in Hitman on a run where I’m not doing SASO and I’m like might as well push you off a ledge, what does it cost me?

  • This show is reverse Surf Dracula. Reunion was anti Surf Dracula, this is Reverse Surf Dracula

  • “He’s the strongest man alive….he survived one scene in The Event”

  • “Sean I’m in a PlayStation… please… I haven’t seen any games for days”

  • White Alien Speaks Perfect Mandarin STUNS Random Man

  • There’s no way that a guy who looks like Zeljko is named Blake Sterling. That’s an Agent Argylle type guy