It's April 7, 2013. A plane with 191 people leaves Jamaica for New York City. They go through a sudden unexpected storm and recover. Upon landing on the ground, they are shocked to be told that it's November 4, 2018. They have come back changed with a mysterious new power. Secret government forces look to experiment and control them. The Stone family was coming home but split up to take different planes. Ben Stone, his sister Michaela Stone, and his son Cal Stone are onboard the missing plane. His wife Grace and Cal's twin sister Olive were forced to mourn their lost family until they are reunited five years later.
It's an intriguing premise. It starts like a police procedural but it quickly leans hard into the supernatural genre. It gets convoluted at times. Ben Stone gets more and more whiny over the years. It struggles to maintain a big bad as the seasons continue. It loses narrative direction from time to time. The show feels like a dog chasing its tail. The promising start fades but the show does last three seasons. It's probably one year too many. I do like the Noah's Ark idea but it needs to move faster. It needs to develop and it needs a villain. Without a target, the aim of the show drifts and meanders. It needs to figure out an ultimate goal. The show seems to be trying to figure out the question after telling the audience the answer.
ADD: Netflix picked up the show after it was canceled by NBC. They made a 20 episode fourth and final season. The ending is definitely one of the big possibilities and it has good poetry to it. They finally developed a big bad in Angelina Meyer and that's good. They also made the government and society in general as the other big bad. That one is less good and feels very derivative and simplistically written. I wish they put all that attention into Angelina instead. She should divide the group in half earlier as the cult leader that she is. In the end, it's not enough to push it to a seven, but I do like most of the fourth season... mostly.
It's an intriguing premise. It starts like a police procedural but it quickly leans hard into the supernatural genre. It gets convoluted at times. Ben Stone gets more and more whiny over the years. It struggles to maintain a big bad as the seasons continue. It loses narrative direction from time to time. The show feels like a dog chasing its tail. The promising start fades but the show does last three seasons. It's probably one year too many. I do like the Noah's Ark idea but it needs to move faster. It needs to develop and it needs a villain. Without a target, the aim of the show drifts and meanders. It needs to figure out an ultimate goal. The show seems to be trying to figure out the question after telling the audience the answer.
ADD: Netflix picked up the show after it was canceled by NBC. They made a 20 episode fourth and final season. The ending is definitely one of the big possibilities and it has good poetry to it. They finally developed a big bad in Angelina Meyer and that's good. They also made the government and society in general as the other big bad. That one is less good and feels very derivative and simplistically written. I wish they put all that attention into Angelina instead. She should divide the group in half earlier as the cult leader that she is. In the end, it's not enough to push it to a seven, but I do like most of the fourth season... mostly.