"The Event" and "Hawaii Five-O" Initial Impressions

I watched two of the new premieres last night, "The Event" and "Hawaii Fice-O," and I thought I'd share some early thoughts.

"The Event" was the weaker of the pair, because it's coming off as convoluted and impenetrable right off the bat. I immediately thought of "FlashForward," which was also about a single, mysterious cataclysm that affects multiple characters who seem to be unrelated. However, in the case of "The Event," we don't know what the cataclysm is yet. Something big and sinister and important happens in the premiere episode, but it's not clear what it was or whether it was the "event" in question.

The story is told in fragmented fashion, with each segment following a single character backwards and forwards in time and space. A key character who gets the bulk of the attention in the premiere is Sean Walker (Jason Ritter), a young man who we follow as he tries to stop an airplane from taking off, and also while he's on a tropical vacation with his girlfriend Leila Buchanan (Sarah Roemer) some time in the past. Another thread of the story follows Simon Lee (Ian Anthony Dale), who is described as a CIA operative. Through his POV we get another angle on the airplane incident, and in his past we get our first glimpse of a woman named Sophia Maguire (Laura Innes), a prisoner of some sort in a secret military installation on Mount Inostranka, Alaska. She shows up again later in the hour when we follow the US President, Elias Martinez (Blair Underwood), as he pushes to close down Mount Inostranka and free the ninety-some people being detained there. His Director of National Intelligence, Blake Sterling (Željko Ivanek), is adamantly against this, warning repeatedly "don't let them out."

There's a lot of intriguing bits and pieces here, but the trouble is that the emphasis is in all the wrong places. It's a neat trick to see how the puzzle pieces fit together as the various narratives collide at the end of the episode, but there's so much focus on the plot points and exposition that the characters get lost in the shuffle. The pair that get the most emphasis, Sean and Leila, are easily the least interesting of the bunch, and I couldn't wait for the scenes of them meandering in paradise to be over so we could get back to Simon or Sophia or Željko Ivanek's sinister politico. If they kids had been cut out entirely, I'd have liked the show about twice as much as I did. Instead, they represent the same weaknesses that many network sci-fi shows like "FlashForward" and "V" have, namely the inability of the creators to fully embrace the show's more cerebral ideas without resorting to a lot of cheap, pandering dramatics that may give the characters motivations but doesn't make them worth caring about.

"Hawaii Five-O" is a lot more straightforward and a lot more fun. Detectives Steve McGarrett (Alex O'Loughlin) and Danny "Danno" Williams (Scott Caan) play bickering partners chasing baddies for a new crime-fighting task force in Honolulu. Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, responsible for a slew of recent summer blockbusters, penned the premiere and CBS coughed up the money to pay for lots of fancy car crashes, bazookas, and a helicopter. As a result, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the first hour of the new "Hawaii-Five-O" is practically indistinguishable from most recent action films like "The Losers" and "The A-Team." The show's biggest accomplishment is establishing the leads as likable, engaging characters. Caan is great as the sarcastic, pineapple-hating Danno who has programmed a "Psycho" ringtone for incoming calls from his ex-wife. O'Louglin's American accent goes a little wonky at times - I swear he was trying to ape Nicholas Cage at one point - but he comes across credibly as the driven badass of the pair.

The Asian-American characters, Detective Chin Ho Kelly (Daniel Dae Kim) and Detective Kono Kalakaua (Grace Park) were mostly stuck being support crew for the episode, but I'm hopeful this will change as the season rolls on. The writers played up the exotic tropes, and I'm tempted to call this a Chinatown episode since there was a major subplot involving snakeheads and human trafficking from China. Adorable refugee girl in distress? Check. However, the difference here is that three of the four lead characters identify themselves as Hawaii natives, and the show establishes that this is going to be their home turf. In essence, they're never leaving Chinatown, so they may actually get past the cliches as the episode count goes up, and the Asian characters will have the chance to develop into more well-rounded heroes. Also, points to O'Louglin for his passable Mandarin.

A couple of little things. I barely remember the original show so I have no idea how much has changed, but I did like that they recreated the original theme music and much of the opening sequence. James Marsters was the terrorist villain, and I was sad to see him dispatched at the end of the hour. Will Yun Lee as the secondary baddie survived, though, and I hope he'll show up again. Also, Masi Oka of "Heroes" fame is supposed to play the coroner in upcoming episodes, so I'll be keeping an eye out for him too.

Both premieres had excellent production quality, full of expensive special effects and hardware. No series airing outside of HBO or Showtime manages to maintain that level of excitement for long, so it'll come down to how well the writing holds up. I expect "Hawaii Five-O" is going to settle into a nice action-comedy procedural like "Burn Notice" and "The Mentalist," while "The Event" has the inenviable job of trying to cough up an interesting protagonist to get us through its elaborate cat-and-mouse game. I'll give "The Event" another week or two, but it may be time to turn my attention to "Lone Star" and "Mike & Molly."