The 4400: No Exit

One of my biggest annoyances with serial fiction after a show’s first season is the palpable lack of danger – especially when it comes to the principal players. This is why the first season of most shows are usually the best. The writers and producers have no guarantee that the show will even be back for additional seasons, so there is a general willingness to push the characters harder, even to the point of death. For a good example of this, watch the first season of Heroes.

As a show enters it’s second year and beyond, it seems that all real danger is saved for newly introduced characters – “Red Shirts” who are brought into play for only a few episodes, and who take the dramatic weight of death and permanent injury off of the main cast. I suppose this is to keep the feeling of threat alive in a series, but seriously, if I don’t know or care about the character to begin with, I wind up not really caring about their fate. Shows that have suffered this recently are Lost and Battlestar Galactica.

The 4400 seems to be mired in this right now.

For the second time this season, we’re presented with what seems to be gutsy moves on the part of the creatives behind the show. A couple of weeks ago, it looked like Tom had been injected, against his will, with Promicin, but he wasn’t – it was just sleepy-night-night juice. And tonight, it looked like both Meghan Doyle (NTAC’s new director) and Shawn were dead…completely dead. But, no, they’re not really dead. It’s all part of some Promicin induced LARP scenario created by one of the Nerd Herd down in the school’s Audio/Visual club NTAC’s computer room.

Long story short – Those with abilities and NTAC’s principal players all learn that they can get along, and we wait for something real to happen next week.

Doesn’t sound much like I like this show, much less this episode, does it?

Well, I did like this episode, and I do like this show. I just tend to be harder on and demand more from shows that I care about. And in a strange way, I kind of want to see The 4400 faced with cancellation. Not because I want the show to go away, but because I want to see real things happen to characters I’ve come to care about. I mean, with 4400 potential central characters (and more, now that Promicin is readily available to anyone), it seems that the writers shouldn’t have to be bound up so much in the same three for four figures that have played so prominently from the beginning.

Because of this, I’m expecting some great television from the final seasons of Lost and Galactica. I’m also sort of dreading the second season of Heroes – but have high hopes that Bryan Fuller, Tim Kring, Jeph Loeb (and the other 14 producers) have the ability to keep upping the ante to keep me engaged.

Lisa will be back next week with her regular updates.

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