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| Another TV show with endless cast (The 4400) by FABIO 10/02/2004, 2:08pm PDT | ||||
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| Show debuted a month or two ago with a half dozen episodes or so, maybe more to come.
Every person who was ever abducted by a UFO since 1947 (4400 in total) suddenly appears (after an embarrassing sequence where "global command" or something detects the UFO coming from hundreds of miles out in space and every nuclear country immediately launches ICBM's at it like they were space flight capable interceptors. This all happens in the span of about 5-10 minutes) in a flight of light off the coast of some isolated lake, all of them still the same age as when they disappeared and with no memory since. In what I can only take as an attempt to seem hip and up to date, the agency that gets put in charge of sortingthem all out is...the department of homeland security? Seattle branch? We get the vast interior of the homeland security office as a common setting, a giant complex that's always dark with giant monitors every showing strategic maps of north america like it was some kind of NORAD command center. We get introduced to DoHS personnel like the on edge director, the Mulder and Scully field team duo, etc. Why not the FBI? or the military? or INS? Hell even the DMV would seem less silly. Is there some important STATEMENT to made by having it be the DoHS? Is the government subsidizing them in an attempt to make this new, Orwellian sounding agency become more mainstream and accepted? Who knows. Anyways, some time is spent in quarentine and after it's determined that nothing valuable is to be learned from the 4400's blank memories, they're released back into the general population. Soon after, we begin learning that each of them has some sort of special power; one can cause violent tremors with his mind, another can heal, another can see the futue, etc. Right there they have the premise for an interesting show where every week one of the 4400 (an endless cast) has some weird power emerging and Mulder and Scully go check it out. They almost get it right, except for one thing. They completely RUIN the show by hitting us with endless "character development" you could care less about. One of the 4400 is a highschool student who had been missing for 3 years. He now must deal with going back to highschool after all his friends have graduated and all the then freshmen are now seniors. This would be bad enough, but then they have his younger brother (now his age)'s girlfriend fall for him which causes his brother to resent him and all the 4400. They spend FIVE episodes on this. It's no different from any other WB teen drama when they do so. Another grueling subplot is a black man from the 50's (back when there was RACISM), who was engaged to a white woman (gasp!), finds out that she went on and married and is now a grandmother. Bummer. BUT! Her hot grand daughter (who looks just like her) just HAPPENS to be one of the 4400 who was kidnapped in the 90's! Score! Turns out though she's undergone an immaculate conception and is now pregnant due to what we can only guess was some weird alien voodoo experiment while she was away. During the FIVE episodes about Dawson's Creek highschool, we get lots of loving shots of the couple as they make all sorts of plans for raising the baby. Here they are looking for apartments. Here they are decorating the nursery. Here I am wondering why anyone would find this interesting. You get a few minorly interesting plots going. You have the obviously ripped from the X-men element of the general population growing to view the 4400 as dangerous freaks. You have two such men carry out a unibomber campaign to kill 4400. Then you have a rich real estate developer, who is also one of the 4400, offer sanctuary to any of them in his gated community. The last episode hinted that he plans to raise a private army of the 4400 and their powers. I forget his name, so I just call him Magneto. I almost gave up on the show after the third "we can't be together I have to think about my brother" episode, and I would have if not for my nifty new digital recorder that allowed me to fast foward through all those parts. This season's run ended on the note that hopefully all the boring character development is over, and we'll get to focusing on interesting stuff exclusively next season. The kid ran away and is now shacking up with Magneto, so all the highschool drama is hopefully over. But the couple ran away to some mountain cottage to await the baby's birth, so there's probably still more sap as well. Oh well. Thanks Tivo! |
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