Episode 1: The Wrath of Graham
W00t! I honestly didn't think I was going to be able to finish this series, but thanks to the wonderful librarians at Dora Library (one of the member libraries of the Coos County Library Service District).
It's 3 months after the end of season 3, coincidentally the length that the show was on Summer break. Literally nothing has changed at the beginning of the episode until we meet the new head of NTAC who is conveniently an attractive blonde roughly Agent Tom's age. Everyone who was going to go do something has come back, and Tess runs off because she's off her meds and not dealing well with Schizophrenia at all.
We finally get to see what Jordan Collier's power is, though it's already implied that he's immortal. It turns out that he has the ability to take the powers away from people who were not 4400s but had injected with promicon.
I'm excited because it was terribly melodramatic, focused on 3 stories and used lots of extras. You can tell how well a network it backing a show by how many extras they use for crowd scenes. The crowds in this episode actually looked like crowds.
Episode 2: Fear Itself
The show is still using the double opening format. You would think by their fourth season that they wouldn't need to explain the premise at the start of each episode. The start is the same as the previous three seasons, and now I understand why they chose not to focus on any of the characters during the credits rolling sequence - they can keep using it year after year.
This episode is very interesting. The main story is about an autistic child who has had promicon administered to him by his father in an attempt to combat the autism, or so the father claims. The kid survived the shot and develops a power that induces primal fear in people when he is feeling threatened. The dilemma is what to do about the kid who is not consciously doing this.
We also get the lowdown on Kyle's ability - that's right, he took the promicon during the break. Hey, I hear all the kids were doing it. I knew from the first episode that there was something different about the girl he met. I assumed she was a ghost, but in this episode she said she is his ability as it was being verified that only he could see her. I'm still holding out for her being a ghost, perhaps she is kind of his spirit guide, which would feed into the story arch they've spun for him for this season.
Episode 3: Audrey Parkers Comen and Gone
One of the things I like about this show is that not all of the 4400 or the people who took the promicon injections are young and pretty. Actually, so far this season has largely been about the people who took promicon. This episode is about an elderly woman with debilitating arthritis that developed the ability to project her astral form to anywhere she wanted. She uses this to do good, and when she is murdered later, uses it to tell the NTAC crew who the killer is. She and Diane bond as Diane sees the life that could have been.
They are keeping their focus with three stories an episode, two of them always closely intertwined. I might be making it sound a bit formulaic, but I am not speaking to what happens in the stories, just that they are continuing to use a narrower focus, that stylistically is a much more effective manner of telling their stories. We get enough time with each story to care about what is going on. Fortunately we've been spared the melodrama so far, but that is likely due to the absence of Laura Allen as much as anything. Actually, most of the regular 4400s are gone, just Sean and Jordan. Diana's daughter, Maya, was in the episode where she comes back, but only a very minor bit and not in this one. Having the use of a 4400 ability be illegal has allowed them to shuffle up the cast.
Episode 4: The Truth and Nothing but the Truth
Diane has come back to search for her sister, April. So far, all we knew is what we saw at the end of the last season when she had gotten the promicon. Now she pops up and she obviously survived and has the ability to make people tell the truth. So, of course she uses it to find out the dirt on people so that she and her boyfriend can blackmail them. As you would guess if you had watched the show from the start, April is going to find a way to screw things up. Which she does. But, Diane fixes it.
This episode kept it's focus, but wrapped up the Diane/April arch, pretty much writing April out of the show, though leaving it open for the occasional visit. We got some melodrama in the Kyle storyline and I predict more because he is now pitted against his dad, well sort of. There are going to be lots of arguments about Kyle taking promicon which Tom now knows about and Kyle has to convince Tom to take promicon based on the book he and Isabelle have been translating. It might go okay, but it might go totally South. I know that the show didn't get picked up for a fifth season and I guess you really can never know why a show falls out of favor, but I think you can guess. I think they dropped Laura Allen because people were not happy with her character and storyline. They made other changes that really brought the show around. It will be a shame if slipping back into the old ways is what got them cancelled, but will also be a valuable lesson to anyone trying to write a show for broadcast television. If you want to write something more complicated, with more characters, you need more time because if you rush it, it will end up that the audience doesn't care about any of them.
The 4400 at IMDb
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