Let's talk about LOST for a second. (I have to, since I didn't review The Event's pilot on account of not having this blog yet, so I haven't made the blatantly obvious comparisons yet.) LOST's narrative structure worked on a fundamental level because, while the events depicted were usually in two separate time periods, demarcated by the now-infamous WOOSH sound and a visual indicator in the current shot, these separate stories were usually grounded in an emotional core theme. The show was about a great many things, but it handled them one at a time, through the lenses of the characters. And while the flashbacks (or flashforwards, or flash-sideways, or whatever the hell we were doing in Season Five) were tied thematically to the Island story, they didn't always have to progress the on-going plot of the survivors of Oceanic 815.
The Event is structured similarly to LOST in that it has flashbacks, and these flashbacks are related to the overall story of the show. Where The Event differs from LOST is that The Event's flashbacks have actual weight to the present-day stories. Each act is structured so that the time jumps can be consumed without losing the thread of the story.
That's all well and good, but "To Keep Us Safe" loses a key element that gave the pilot so much promise: the emotional core. "I Haven't Told You Everything" was messy, sure, but it had to be in order to introduce some of the key relationships that would impact the plot of the show when moving into the series proper. And while Jason Ritter's character flashbacks continue to deliver this sentiment (even if he is basically Jack Shepard without the many years of medical school and overbearing daddy issues), the rest of the episode is purely mechanical, without any significant emotional contribution to the show as a singular unit.
After seeing this episode, most people are willing to cry "aliens" about the survivors of the ship crash-landing during World War II. Admittedly, Agent Li being one of those survivors who has been "turned" into a human by their moral structures and such just smacks of ABC's V, albeit with less heart -- again, lacking any emotional scenes in this episode, I just have to ask why I should care that he's one of them beyond the obvious intellectual implications. But given the discussion of genetics during the President's briefing, I'm more inclined to believe that the show writers are leaning closer to Heroes, whose first season dealt with the issue of humanity versus superhumanity in a somewhat positive manner. Here, though, the concept feels too forced. Mohinder was at least a convincing geneticist capable of explaining his studies in a way that was relevant to the show's themes. In The Event, all I get is that these guys just really want a reason to discriminate -- a one-note piece of character writing meant only to leverage President Martinez as a like-able guy, someone you could connect to because, dammit, he's all about human rights!
On the other hand, I do appreciate the idea of parallel, simultaneous narratives. As the pilot showed us, it can be messy, but by doing what LOST did and emphasizing one or two characters over the rest, and by continuing to maintain the idea (illusion) that all of these mini-events are somehow related, this episode is proof positive that chaos can sometimes be good for a while, if you've got an endgame in mind.
Ultimately, I'm not ready to give up on The Event just yet. The execution here is much better than previous "post-LOST serialized drama" Flashforward (Jason Ritter is infinitely more enjoyable here, as is his character, who's a little goofy but still very noble) and while V is unfortunately beholden to its strict sector of genre television, The Event has the same capacity as LOST or Fringe to make the sci-fi elements of the show work in tandem with the drama and characters, emphasizing everyone's plights without feeling like we've seen this-or-that trick before. The basic plot of each episode can reach Jack Bauer levels of insanity, but if the characters are developed more in the vein of Sean Walker and less in the vein of Agent Li, then there might still be an emotional core buried inside the complicated (if intellectually fascinating) structure.
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