Thursday, September 23, 2010

TV Scum: The Event

©NBC
The Event: I Haven't Told You Everything (S01E01)

Leading up to this season's new premieres, The Event had the distinction of being heavily pushed and marketed by NBC, even going so far as to show the pilot at this year's Comic Con. While the consensus so far seems to be mixed, you cannot deny that the establishing episode for the series is ambitious in its ambiguity but then again, a year ago the same was being said about FlashForward and that didn't turn out too well.

Whether intentional or not, I got heavy undertones that were "borrowed" from previous series like 24, Lost, Alias, Fringe and for a balanced act a bit of Sandra Bullock's mediocre film The Net. While it features a fairly large cast of veteran TV and "that guy" actors, Jason Ritter plays our lead Sean Walker who starts the episode embarking on a cruise with his soon-to-be fiancee and ends up brandishing a gun on a commercial airliner trying to stop an attempt to assassinate the president. At least, if things were shown in a straight-forward fashion that's what would have happened.

Taking a page from other non-linear stories, the episode jumps around to focus on different characters at different times leading up to the plot to crash a commercial airplane into the President's not-very-secure retreat. In certain instances, non-linear stories (particularly from director Chris Nolan) are done in a way to emphasize certain plot points or to mislead the audience. Here, the stories do not so much intersect as they crash together at random times, as if to try to build suspense that otherwise isn't there.

The baffling part is that with the various story lines going on, there should be no problem to create a compelling story. There is the mystery regarding 97 unlawfully detained prisoners at a remote Alaskan site, the President's desire to close the facility (such a fantastical plot line), Sean's disappearing girlfriend, and her father's unwitting involvement in the assassination attempt. Most interesting though is a group that manages to thwart the attempt by causing the airliner to literally vanish into thin air. Thus, if you have watched any of the shows mentioned above, you can see where some elements are (at times heavily) borrowed.

The cast is very strong with Blair Underwood as President Martinez, Laura Innes as Sophia, the leader of the group of detainees, and Scott Patterson as Sean's future father-in-law Michael Buchanan.

Just like with any TV series, the pilot is almost irrelevant to the quality of the rest of the series. Hopefully The Event does not fall victim to an overly complicated story and inability to throw the audience a bone now and then as some other failed shows have done. At the conclusion, I had the same thought that surely many had at the end of the first episode of 24 of how can such a premise survive over multiple episodes or even seasons. Only time will tell if this is the current year's Lost or FlashForward.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Reality (Show) Bites: Hoarders

Hoarders / A&E TV
Season 1; Episode 6: Jake / Shirley

There is much debate regarding the affliction of compulsive hoarding, the causes, the adjacent issues, and even the what constitutes hoarding. This can range from the unwillingness to disregard items of no discernible value to chronic disorganization with the potential to endanger the well-being of the hoarder or their family with a myriad of other subsets in between. A&E's Hoarders is a reality show that attempts to assist a chronic hoarder by identifying the problem and clearing away the objects of little value but through a psychological approach to prevent the affliction from returning.

Jake lives in a small, cramped apartment with his alcoholic father. In addition to his father stashing away thousands of empty wine and liquor bottles, Jake is hesitant to disgard anything, even empty beverage containers or clumps of hair from his shedding dog due to a sentimental attachment to anything he comes into contact with.

Meanwhile, Shirley and her husband reside in a modest house that is not only overtaken by trash and other materials the couple has acquired in their years, but as Shirley has become the self-appointed stray savior, she also has at least thirty cats living throughout her house.

The notion of hoarding has always interested me due to the fact that it is mostly contributed as a symptom of OCD, but I have a semi-close family member with the same tendencies that typical hoarders do. In addition to the refusal to trash meaningless items, some hoarders while some at thrift stores multiple times a week, purchasing items with no apparent usefulness because it was affordable or they foresee a possible use in the near future.

In Jake's case, being a gay 21-year-old living in constant clutter with a drunk, inattentive father, his contemplation suicide over the disarray in his life has lead to the intervention of a professional psychiatrist to help him realize the solution to his problems but without pushing him too hard that which may result in a mental breakdown. While Jake is undoubtedly a drama-king (or would that still be queen), it is painfully clear to see the undue pressure that he must endure, not only due to his own problems but also of his father's.

Shirley on the other hand starts the process as all but accepting the lifestyle she, her husband, and their dozens of animals live in. When her locality determines Shirley could be at risk of prosecution for animal cruelty, she is forced to clear the house to save just a fraction of the animals from the throes of animal control. While she is not unhappy to see the mounds of trash removed from the house, the removal of the animals, some alive and some long since deceased, is heartbreaking for the retiree who thought she was merely helping to save the lives of the cats.

In the end, both Jake and Shirley were able to come to grips with their disease. After deconstructing the irrational attachment to the trash and dog hair surrounding him, Jake is able to start over, clutter-free, seemingly on the right track to recover and avoiding relapse. Shirley though, while cleared of any charges on animal abuse, loses most of the cats she wanted due to other medical issues, resulting in grief and hopelessness. At the close of the show, both Jake and Shirley are reported to be undergoing counseling for their hoarding behaviors.