Last weekend, I took advantage of the marathon of The 4400 episodes to give this USA Networks SF series a try. I watched the entire "miniseries" in one day, an interesting way of tackling anything. Really, though, it wasn’t a miniseries but an extended pilot. It did not strive to tell a story, it strove to start one. It ended not with resolution, but with revelation.
The titular group is people who have been abducted from the Earth over the past half century or so, and have all been returned at once, unaged and with superpowers. It’s that last part that makes the series far less interesting for me (and I say that as a person with a love for superhero fiction.) Whereas the story could be about people trying to reintegrate themselves into society and the challenges they face, it is instead a Monster Of The Week show, Smallville without the interesting challenge of Lex Luthor. And once the revelation is made as to why this happened, it doesn’t make much sense (to try to explain without giving much away: it seems so inefficient). It seems merely an excuse to set up a Monster Of The Week show, and it’s done in such a way that it makes the challenges of facing that monster seem unimportant.
A shame, because there is some good production here, some good cast, a few interesting characters (although mostly their the sort of broad Good or Evil folks that pepper Stephen King’s more epic work, which don’t even consistantly work in the able King’s hands.)
Five down, 4395 to go
