The Event Convolution Alert: Once More Into the Breach

An interesting thing about The Event is that sometimes the arc of the episode contributes so little to the overall plot that we might consider it a sort of hybrid-procedural-conspiracy show. "For the Good of the Country" was one of those cases. We basically ended up right where we left off: Still scratching our heads, trying to figure out how it got a full-season order. Regardless, let's pull back another layer of this ramshackle conspiracy.

(Wait just a second...it's gotta dry first. Ohh!)

1. Vice President Jarvis was the one to phone Dempsey (last week's wizened sage), indicating that the attack on the president would be a go. Martinez and Sterling string this together after speaking to Michael Buchanan, who has absolutely no value to the plot at this point. In the Arbitrary Flashback of the Week, we learn that Jarvis teamed up with Dempsey, who lined him up for the vice presidency after Jarvis lost an unidentified party nomination. There's some meandering back-and-forth before Jarvis decides to turn himself in and tell Martinez that Dempsey was behind everything. But, of course, he's preempted when Dempsey blows up a nearby car, proving once and for all that he is the baddest villain that was introduced last week. Oh, and his face morphs.

Convolution level: ELEVATED. This is what I mean about the story not really serving the show's plot: We start the episode and Jarvis is basically a blank slate. We end the episode, and the now charred vice president has been a traitor all along and Martinez is no closer to discovering who's behind his attack. But at least, in the interest of preserving brain function, the compartmentalization reduces convolution?

(There's a suggestion here, as Dempsey predicts that Martinez will win the presidency, that he and whatever group he belongs to rig all elections. I have no words for this.)

2. In perhaps the most frustrating subplot in The Event's abbreviated history, Sean is shot by one of Dempsey's goons, and in response, Leila kidnaps an ER doctor while approximately five million people groan in outrage. After a pharmacy run during which Leila presses her gun into the doctor's back in exactly the same way I would expect Betty Draper to press a gun into someone's back (like somewhere, underneath all her stubborness, she's guiltily aware of her own stupidity), the doctor is prepared for parking lot surgery. Leila shoves a saline pump into Sean's leg, which is actually pretty gruesome, the doctor stitches him up, pats him on the shoulder, and delivers these parting words: "Any fever, any dizziness, you get him to an ER or abduct another doctor. I don't care."

Convolution level: GUARDED. Again, I'm struck by the irrelevance of this all. Sean got shot, sure, but the plot remains arrested. Unless, I guess, you count the lifelong friendship the couple made with that doctor. Because all he wants now is for them to do whatever it takes to keep Sean alive. He doesn't care.

Final analysis: GUARDED. The convolution meter through this episode tracks pretty consistently at elevated, though I suppose that Dempsey having now been incorporated into both the Martinez plot and the Leila/Sean plot is a step in the right direction.

Questions: Am I wrong about Jarvis' prior to this episode? Was I the only one who was just barely aware of him?