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Sunday, 12 August 2007 |
By John Keegan
Visit Critical Myth for an archive of John's TV Review archives, with more than 1100 entries.
Every season of every show has a substandard episode, though some productions manage to keep the low points to a minimum (while others can fall into an extended slump). When it comes to “The 4400”, such slip-ups are rare. There’s usually enough story and creativity in hand to keep the momentum flowing. But every so often, there’s an episode that fails to live up to expectation.
In this case, it’s all about predictability. From the very beginning of the episode, it’s not hard to figure out that the “players” are in some kind of dream-world, and that a powered individual brought them into that world. It was obvious that Jordan Collier and Tom Baldwin would end up squaring off against each other, with Kyle in the middle. By the time all the characters in the “game” were revealed, it was obvious which one of them was responsible. It was also predictable that he would end up a “victim” as well, forcing Jordan and Tom to work together towards a solution.
In other words, this was an episode full of familiar tropes, and quite often, an exercise in waiting out the story to see if anything new or unusual would happen. The writers stacked the deck against themselves by making this tired plot device the center of a “bottle show” as well, raising the stakes on character exploration. Bottle shows are designed to keep the budget low, and the inevitable consequence is that the writing must overcome the lack of variety in the locations and plot threads.
By the end of the episode, very little has been advanced. Tom and Megan are getting closer to a relationship, but that had already been waiting in the wings, so this is an incremental step forward. Somewhat more significant is the personal battle of wills that has developed between Jordan and Tom, but this was also just acknowledgement of what “Try the Pie” accomplished. The final conversation was a lot of fun, but it was a bit of a letdown after so much predictable storytelling. |
