Four years ago, “Heroes” burst out of the gate with a solid first season that energized not only genre fans but also drew in casual viewers as well. For the first season, the show was a solid hit, regularly placing in the top twenty most watched programs of the week and seen by many as a solid drama that NBC could hope to rebuild its sagging ratings around.
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. The show faltered in its second season and each year more and more fans tuned out, leading to the show’s eventual cancellation.
Now, NBC is pinning their hopes to rebuild sagging ratings on another heavily serialized drama, “The Event.” Commercials this summer have been cryptic about the exact nature of the show. And we’ve heard rave reviews of the pilot from fans gathered at the recent San Diego Comic Con. (Critical reviews have been lukewarm, but they were also that way for “Heroes.”)
But what will the show be about when it premieres Monday, Sept. 20 at 9 p.m.? Creator Nick Wauters tells USA Today the show is a hybrid, part thriller, part political intrigue, part love story, with a dash of sci-fi, that centers on an atypical hero “who’s not Jack Bauer, just a regular guy.”
That hero is Sean Walker, played by Jason Ritter, who as the pilot opens is planning to propose to his girlfriend. Ritter says he sees Walker as an “unwitting bystander” along the lines of those played by Cary Grant and James Stewart in several Alfred Hitchcock films and that he’s taken a lot of notes from Harrison Ford’s work in the big-screen version of “The Fugitive.”
Everyone involved realizes they face a huge hurdle in getting audiences to commit to a serialized drama after being burned by other shows and networks the past several years.
Wauters concedes potential fans probably feel as if “they came out of a relationship and just got burnt,” so there’s “a little resistance” to the concept. “We definitely need to convince people they should invest an hour each week and watch the show.”
Wauters says he has carefully plotted every major element of the show and believes Ritter’s boyish charm enables him to handle action scenes and pack an emotional punch that gives the audience a rooting interest.
We’ll be tuning in for the pilot and, of course, we’re sure you’ll have a lot to tell us about the show on this week’s voice mail show.
Lukewarm….yep about sums up my thoughts for it. I’ll give it a shot, but not expecting too much.
Sounds interesting … one of the advantages of living in the UK though is we get to see if you Yanks like it first! 🙂 That way I know whether or not to commit my hard earned time. lol
I almost didn’t watch “Heroes” when it premiered. I was ticked off that NBC canceled “Surface” the previous season. But I have no problems watching this new series.
Honestly sound lame but I’m not really into earth based sci-fi. Just might DVR it and leave room to be wrong about the lameness.
There wasn’t much else new on TV this year that I thought was worth watching so I added this to our DVR schedule. I’m not sure what to expect so I guess it will be a surprise. Hope it’s a good one.
well here is a bone for all of you on this site and the tv shows.
If someone asks what the show is about please dont say “oh is new” its “a touch of scifi”
I understand that you want to keep it secret but come on if you hold on to a dogs chain to tight it will choke. Either give alittle and some background story or mark my words see this show fizzle out in a year like heros.
Well my wife and I watched The Event tonight. We found the jumping back and forth in time frames to set up the story a bit annoying after awhile, but it was interesting enough to watch the next episode. I hope they avoid the mistakes of Flash Forward though. Keep the story moving forward and give us at least a couple of characters that we can really care about.
“We found the jumping back and forth in time frames to set up the story a bit annoying after awhile.”
I watched the show last night and I didn’t really find the flashbacks all that annoying.
“If someone asks what the show is about please don’t say “oh its new”, its “a touch of scifi”.”
Okay, then. This show? Science fiction, definitely. But it’s not apparent until the end of the episode.
Pilot did not grab me. Reminds me of the hype leading up to the Segue. I almost thought I could hear the giggling writers saying “it’s not what you think hehehe” “ooh I wonder who that is? Don’t you wanna know?” Ummm not really but best of luck. Maybe a main line once the season is out.
It was entertaining enough for me to come back and watch it next week. That’s all it can ask for and that’s all I can give it at this point. I’m not singing praie for it because it had technical issues that were fairly jarring… BUT, they were no worse than MOST new series premiers. So, I’m in for now.
The advertisers were idiots. Billing this as the new LOST was a dumb selling point. Lost never billed itself as the new X-Files, so why connect it to something that it has absolutely no relation to?
Well, I know why… but it was fairly short-sighted.
either way, the last scene was enough to make me raise an eyebrow and come back for more. We’ll see how long that lasts.
I”ll give it 6 episodes like I did that craptacular series ‘Haven’. Hopefully it’ll be more interesting.
I watched it and i thought the acting was pretty decent which made the flashbacks easier to tolerate. The only reason i actualy watched the show was to see what THE EVENT is but since the first episode didnt explain it i guess i will watch the next one.