The Event: 4400 Lost Heroes?

I’m not sure that casting Zeljko Ivanek in his role on The Event was a good idea. It might have been obvious anyway that there are similarities with a key plot element on Heroes, but having the same actor playing such a similar role makes it seem that much less original. The ordinary human in a leadership position in a federal security organization seeks to deal with the threat from people who are genetically different in important ways from the rest of us, and are a threat “hidden in plain sight.” And so he gives orders to his colleague (who is secretly one of them) to hunt them down and round them up. Sound familiar? More importantly, does it sound too familiar?

At least, The Event does not seem to be seeking to mimic LOST by stringing us along with unanswered questions. But it may have some twists and turns involved. If these “others” are different from humans by only about 1%, it becomes doubtful that they are in fact an unrelated extraterrestrial species. And so perhaps, as in The 4400, it will turn out that these are not aliens but humans from the future?

In the mean time, the show has begun to explore issues of racism, human and animal rights, and wrongful imprisonment. How genetically similar or different does an entity have to be, before we accord it the full rights that we give to humans?