Sadly, ‘Chuck’ wasn’t on last week. (It won’t be on tonight either.) I guess this means that it’s time to catch up on some other shows that I continue to watch, even if I don’t necessarily recap them here in the blog all that regularly. We’ll start with ‘The Event’, which had one of its most eventful episodes so far last week.

As ‘Face Off’ begins, rogue alien Thomas has managed to gather most of his people (including mother Sophia) for a town hall meeting of sorts to announce the content of the message he received from their homeworld. Things aren’t looking so good there. Their sun is going supernova, and the planet has only weeks left. The aliens on Earth have no choice but to expedite plans to transport all of their people here en masse. All of them – an entire planet’s worth. This will be problematic for the human race already living here.

As Thomas is making this announcement, President Martinez (Blair Underwood) has tracked the alien group to the building where they’re holding this meeting. The military surrounds the place. Martinez is tired of being pushed around, and has decided that it’s time to be a total hardass. He wants the aliens stopped at all costs.

When the aliens spot the military closing in, they call their people at the portal array hidden in the Himalayas. Unfortunately, the uranium rods they stole from a nuclear power plant haven’t been loaded yet, and the portal doesn’t have enough power to transport anyone out of the city. It does, however, have just enough power to cause a disruption that will get the President’s attention.

Sophia calls up Martinez and demands that he back down or else bad things will happen. He thinks she’s bluffing. Sophia then begrudgingly orders the portal people to shake the Washington Monument off its foundation, destroying the building and killing 70 people. This is actually a pretty impressive visual effects sequence (by TV standards), but the surprise of it was totally undermined by the fact that the network already showed it countless times in promos since the beginning of March.

Sophia warns Martinez that he has no idea what she’s capable of. She wants three buses to transport all of her people to a waiting cargo plane, or else she’ll destroy the rest of Washington, D.C. Martinez angrily acquiesces.

As the buses arrive, Director Sterling (Željko Ivanek) finally figures out that CIA agent Simon is an alien mole. Sterling intercepts phone calls between Simon and Sophia, and cracks their encryption while the aliens are en route to the airport. The President listens in and hears Sophia tell Simon that she was bluffing about being able to attack again. Martinez immediately orders a military helicopter to take out all three buses. The chopper blows up one bus, killing everyone inside. Sophia and Thomas call the portal people again. They’ve charged up just enough power to transport one of the remaining buses to safety, but not both. Thomas sacrifices himself (as well as girlfriend Isabel and a bunch of other aliens) to save his mother by swerving his bus in the way to take the helicopter’s next missile. Sophia (along with Leila and her father Michael) are portaled out before the helicopter can strike again.

In the meantime, annoying Sean (Jason Ritter) is on the hunt for evil old man Jarvis (Hal Holbrook). Via blackmail, he’s enlisted the reluctant help of super-hot assassin Vicky, who arranges for them to fly to France. Jarvis is digging around in some archaeological site in the Jura Mountains, where he finds ancient cave drawings of what he describes as “guardian angels.” This implies that the aliens have been visiting Earth for much longer than just Sophia’s expedition. Also, Jarvis has a tattoo on his arm that matches a symbol in one of the drawings, which suggests that Jarvis himself may be a really ancient alien who’s been here a very, very long time. At least, that’s what I make of it.

So, with all of this going on, has ‘The Event’ finally risen to the level of “must see” TV? Not especially, but this was a pretty decent episode – despite my continued annoyance with both Sean and Leila. I suppose that I’m interested enough to see it through. I’ve come this far, haven’t I?

[Banner image screen cap from THEtvEVENTwiki.]