When a show gets canceled before its time, it can go out gracefully or it can go out like an oily smack on the trousers. Unfortunately for The Event, we got the full smackage.


But I will give the series this: It stayed true to itself, with an ending that made no sense, yet was nevertheless packed with revelations that were both banal and irritatingly incomplete. We did get to find out what "the event" actually was, though. All I can say is WTF. Let us take this moment to say goodbye to a show we never wanted, and never liked, but will nevertheless sort of miss in a masochistic way.

The last moment of blabla between Sawn and Lala

But soft! What light through yonder contamination chamber plastic breaks? It is the flu, and Lala is acting like a cinnamon bun!


I am so happy that these star-crossed lovers will never have another exchange like this one:

Lala: [looking completely normal, and not covered in pustules or vomit goo like any of the other flu victimes] I know what this flu does. It's too late.

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Sawn: It's not too late! Simon said his people are immune! You have it within you to fight this!

Lala: No I can't.

Sawn: Yes you can!

At that moment, a special secret CDC specialist arrives on the downlow, wearing a nifty hazmat suit and carrying one of those secret CDC suitcase things - you know the ones I mean. They have special anti-contamination pingers and tons of plastic tubing and whatever it was they used on ET to make him feel really sad. Seriously, who had the idea that there's a "secret CDC unit" anyway?

They take Lala back to their secret CDC facility, which we find out later is sort of attached to a hospital, except you have to go through those doors that the MST3K guys always went through in the intro to every show.


Now everybody can see your space crack

Meanwhile, Sophia is bouncing along in a car, masterminding the end of flu apocalypse. She and her pals are targeting a food production plant, a money mint, and an airport with their tupperwares of doom. And then, just as she and her disposable alien buddy are nearing the airport, a windy, shiny earthquakey thing happens! Hair is blown everywhere! Somebody falls off a bicycle! Elsewhere in the world, things catch on fire!

"The portal is creating a door in the fabric of space and we just cracked it open," Sophia intones. "Our people are arriving soon."


Disposable alien buddy mutters something about "misgivings about the native population," but who cares because the camera zooms up into CGI land and we see the Earth flanked by a giant blue shiny portal thing! Might as well blow the whole special effects budget because this is our last episode!

The VP is still totally evil and deluded, and the president has stubble

I always loved the super ridiculous politicking in this show. Everybody is always spilling their evil plans right out in the open, or making phone calls in which they say things like, "Oh my god, now that I'm a murderer, how do I cover my tracks? Team up with the aliens? Oh, good idea. Let me make sure I stand right in front of the surveillance devices in my White House office while I discuss my conspiracy plot."


And that's just what the VP does, when he argues with the still-tottering president about how nobody will believe Martinez that the VP poisoned him and made a deal with Sophia. Doesn't he think that Martinez might have a freakin' MP3 device on him recording every word?

When Martinez doesn't buy the VP's whole "I negotiated a peace with Sophia" line, the VP runs away and jumps right onto the phone with Sophia to whiningly ask her whether she's about to infect the planet with death. Sophia gives the same line she's given in (I think) at least five episodes in a row: "There will be a new world order with your guiding hand."


Wait, uh, I didn't quite get that. Is there some point that the writers are trying to make here? Some reference to "new world order" that resonates beyond this show? I'm really unclear on it. I hope that Sophia will repeat it again so I get the idea. BUT NO SHE NEVER WILL BECAUSE THIS IS THE LAST EPISODE EVER! MWAHAHAAHAHA!

A whole bunch of people shoot people

One of the things this series is good at is making shoot-outs completely boring. Sean, Vicky, Sterling, and Simon get their secret CDC sharp shooters to gun down everybody bringing viruses into the food facility and the mint. Now they just have to get to the airport where Sophia is delivering the virus!


Meanwhile, we have plenty of time for a really long scene of Sophia getting the scanner and wand at the airport, and hyperventilating while her product placement mobile device rings. At this point, I'm totally excited that the aliens will arrive soon and kill everybody and replace all product placement mobile devices with human slaves whose brains have be rewired to be compliant with cellular networks.

A gripping scene of the Cabinet examining the President's medical records

As the shootouts go down, the President and the VP are duking it out at the Cabinet meeting where everybody will decide if Martinez can take over as Full On President again by examining paragraph 3 section 2 of his medical records.


The President decides to lay all his cards on the table, and accuses the VP of trying to kill him, and allowing Sophia to dump viruses in his space crack or whatever. And the VP gets all upset and jumps up and down, but it's too bad because for once somebody actually was engaging in surveillance on this show. The Prez whips out his MP3 player and we hear the VP saying, "They'll never believe that I tried to kill you - so now excuse me while I call Sophia to find out more about this whole new world order."

Then the President says a bunch of stuff about how this was all "a tragedy born of insecurity and hubris" and that the VP was "so hungry for power that he would sell his soul and the soul of his country." I love how The Event always brings in these weird portentous speeches with words like hubris and phrases like "selling the soul of this country." It's like 24 meets Xena meets the Spider-Man musical meets paint drying. You know what I mean.


Sean uses logic

So the President sends his CDC antiterror squad to the airport where Sophia is trying to set off the virus in a closet, but her plan is foiled and Sean talks her down with this gem of logic: "You just wanted to help, but it didn't work. Now there will be no benefit to your people - it will just be murder." Um, wouldn't it be murder to release the virus anyway, even if it did benefit her people?

Meanwhile, Lala discovers she's pregnant and Sean does the dangle-jaw with her in CDC lockup while saying things like, "You'll get better. It will be fine."


And now . . . the moment you've been waiting for but probably already saw in the video at the top of this post . . . here is what "the event" really is OMGWTFBBQCDC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Simon and Sean are chatting in the airport after Sophia has been arrested and Simon says (and I paraphrase):

This isn't over yet. As far as I know Sophia is still bringing our people here. You should know that our people were here before. We were here first. This place was our home before it was yours. But my people believed that if we stayed here something would happen. We call it the event. It's a rebirth — a new step. We'll change, we'll evolve, but your poeple won't survive it.


That's right — the event is the alien singularity. And in true The Event style, it's completely meaningless.

Totally confused, Sean asks Simon why humans won't survive, and I know you'll be shocked to discover that Simon says, "All the answers are hidden in that scroll - everything about where we come from and how it all ends." I bet everybody in the writing room was laughing evilly and saying things like, "We're never going to have to explain what's in that scroll! Cackle cackle!" And indeed, that's the end of "the event." We never hear about it again.


Here comes the portal!

So basically the show ends with Sophia telling everybody that 2.5 billion of her people will be arriving, and the aliens will have to resort to "less humane" means than a flu pandemic to make room for themselves on Earth.

There are several scenes of the President and his cabinet looking anxiously at pictures of earthquakes and "anomalous electro-radiation," and saying, "What does that mean?" or "But what does THAT mean?"


And at some point, Vicky hugs Sean and says, ""Because of you kidnaping me and threatening my kid I'm no longer ashamed to face my family." Glad that all turned out well.

Then the portal opens up the space crack and there's like a giant brown swirly thing inside - then there's a planet with lots of lava on it! And then we can see the lava planet in the sky over Earth! It's Earth! It's Lava Planet! Whoa what is happening!!!! Is Earth next to the other planet? Has the other planet teleported next to Earth? Are they just using Cosmic Skype to talk to each other? Hello?


Everybody runs outside, including Martinez and his wife, and they're all looking into the sky. "What is it?" Martinez' kid asks his mom. "It's home," she says. Hey, she really was an alien!

And that's the end. Admit it - you're going to miss finding out about the scary brown-and-red thing in the space crack just a little bit.