Jason Ritter and Sarah Roemer in The Event.

“The Event wants to be the next Lost,” is what people are going to say. We’ve been down this road before: The Nine, Jericho, Flashforward, Invasion, Life on Mars, Day Break, and countless others were all heralded, at one point or another, as “The Next Lost.” But I’m going to let you in on a little secret: There’s no such thing as “The Next Lost.” It’s a fantasy, a futile quest, a snipe hunt. Lost is one of the first sc-fi or fantasy shows that was actually successful in primetime—story and ratings wise. Because it’s the first, it has been celebrated as some sort of savior to television; a title it probably doesn’t quite deserve. Lost, as a television show, can’t compete with its own folklore. It’s become the Show To Which All Others Will Be Judged. I’m tired of this search. What we have now is not the next Lost, it’s the first The Event—whatever that means. So let’s get one thing straight: I refuse to compare The Event to Lost (unless totally necessary).The Event opens up—you guessed it!—during an event. It’s not the actual event the title teases us about, just some nameless event that takes place at 2:00 in the afternoon. The rest of the episode introduces a cast of characters before we wind up right back where we started: at the 2 p.m. event. In the second scene we’re introduced to Sean Walker (Jason Ritter), who seems to be hijacking an airplane. (Of course it starts on an airplane—you’re making it really hard not to compare to The Event to Lost, NBC.) The rest of the episode explains, in non-linear fashion, why Sean would do such a thing while we continue to meet the rest of the characters (it is the first episode, remember). So, to clear things up for everyone, let’s put some of the pieces back in order:

Thirteen months before the hijacking: Simon Lee (Ian Anthony Dale), who is some sort of government agent, meets with Sophia Maguire (Laura Innes) at a secret military base in Alaska. Sophia is the leader of a group of people imprisoned in Alaska for unknown reasons. The two speak cryptically (as though they don’t want to give away any important details) and The Event is mentioned for the first time.

Thirteen months before the hijacking: The President of the United States, Elias Martinez (Blair Underwood), is first told of the secret base in Alaska. He travels to the base and meets with Sophia Maguire.

Eleven days before the hijacking: Sean Walker and his girlfriend, Leila Buchanan (Sarah Roemer), are preparing for a cruise. Sean asks Leila’s father, an airline pilot named Michael Buchanan (Scott Patterson), for his blessing before Sean proposes to Leila.

Eight days before the hijacking: Sean and Leila are on a mainland day trip during their cruise. Sean is about to propose but is interrupted by screams for help. A woman is drowning and the woman’s boyfriend has a broken arm and can’t help, so Sean jumps in to rescue the woman. Later, Sean and Leila have drinks with the couple that they helped, which is when Leila receives a call from her father, Michael.

Eight days before the hijacking: After Michael’s phone call to his vacationing older daughter, his house is invaded by masked intruders. He’s attacked, and his wife, who is sitting next to him on the couch, is shot and, we assume, killed. Their seven-year-old daughter is kidnapped.

Seven days before the hijacking: Sean is snorkeling with the woman he rescued. Her boyfriend couldn’t go because of his broken arm and Sean’s girlfriend decided to stay in bed because she drank too much the night before. After Sean returns to the ship, his room key stops working and now there’s no record of his stay on the ship. His room is now registered to someone named Jason Olsen—Leila has gone missing.

The day of the hijacking: Government agent Simon Lee—who might moonlight as a Keanu Reeves impersonator—knows there is a terrorist on board the plane and tries, unsuccessfully, to stop the plane from taking off. The pilot of the plane is one Michael Buchanan, who requested to be rescheduled for this flight to Coral Cables, Florida, the location of President Martinez’s retreat, where he happens to be with his family at that very moment. Buchanan aims the plane straight at President Martinez’s retreat while Sean desperately tries to talk him out of crashing a plane into the president’s house.

Here’s what gives me pause about The Event: right before the flight crashes into Martinez’s retreat, the plane is engulfed in a strange white light and disappears. Sophia, who is inexplicably at the retreat, tells the president, “They saved us.” Pressured for a better explanation, she replies, “I haven’t told you everything.” The show that I refuse to compare to The Event, polar bears aside, waited quite a few episodes before it got totally bizarre; it let the viewer get to know the characters before getting all abnormal with the storylines. The Event, perhaps to its detriment, doesn’t have any hesitation about revealing its more, shall we call them, supernatural qualities.

So what to make of The Event? It’s hard to tell. Jason Ritter is solid and is arguably the best part of the show. But I need to know where this plane went— considering that two main characters were onboard—before passing any definitive judgment. Too many shows start out strong, then falter because a good pilot was made but there was no thought as to where the show would go next. For now, I’m still intrigued, which is the most a show like this can hope for from its viewers this early on. Hey, even a certain 2004 pilot about an island plane crash had to start somewhere ... before it became an event.