Post by Forever Xena on Aug 28, 2005 6:23:35 GMT -6
'The 4400' Dwindles to One
(Thursday, August 25 09:36 AM)
By Kate O'Hare
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) After a successful six-episode first-season run in the summer of 2004, USA Network's "The 4400" closes out its second, 13-episode season on Sunday, Aug. 28, with "Mommy's Bosses."
It's essentially the conclusion of a two-part storyline that began last week with "The Fifth Page." That episode marked the return of season-one star Peter Coyote as Dennis Ryland, head of the National Threat Assessment Command, which monitors the 4,400 abductees, taken over the course of decades, who were returned -- without having aged, but with strange abilities -- on a lakeside in a ball of light.
In the Aug. 21 episode, many of the 4400 came down with a strange, debilitating disease. NTAC agents Tom Baldwin (Joel Gretsch) and Diana Skouris (Jacqueline McKenzie), who's also the adopted mother of clairvoyant 4400 child Maia Rutledge (Conchita Campbell), came to fear that government actions caused the malady.
According to executive producer Ira Steven Behr, who co-wrote the last two episodes with Craig Sweeney, this was only the beginning.
"We're going out with a bit of a bang," he says of "Mommy's Bosses." "There with be much smoking out of people's computers. We end this season with five different moments, that each alone would be enough to have people go, 'What the hell does that mean?'
"It's almost too much. We had to end it in act three of the second hour, because we needed the rest of the time to do the 'Holy mother...' kind of thing."
Before "The 4400," Behr was a writer and producer for "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," the second of the "Trek" sequels and the last one to air in syndication. Over its seven seasons, it also garnered the reputation as the most complex of the "Trek" series, weaving together themes of racism, religion, war and politics.
"As 'The 4400' goes on," Behr says, "and breathes and takes on an identity, the truth is, it's coming to resemble 'Deep Space Nine' more than I ever thought possible, which is going to be a good thing for some people and not such a good thing for other people.
"I'm not saying that it's a good or bad thing quality-wise, I'm just saying, like 'Deep Space Nine,' there's a lot going on. There's a lot of characters. It's very complicated, probably more complicated than any network or studio would want it to be.
"If it was on HBO, they'd be saying, 'Oh, it's like "Deadwood," man, you've got to really pay attention,' or 'The Sopranos.' Of course, we're not on a premium station. It's like, 'Why can't this be as simple as "Monk"?' So it's got a lot of stuff going on."
Of course, when you have a complicated show that forces viewers to pay attention, sometimes they pay too much attention. Behr discovered this when the characters of Richard and Lily (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali, Laura Allen), two of the 4400, were absent from certain episodes.
"Every time Richard and Lily aren't on the show," Behr says, "the fans come up with all these theories, when the simplest theory, which is the truth, is they had a 10 out of 13 commitment, so we had to lose them for three episodes. But they make it into such a big thing, trying to figure out why they're not there."
Since different episodes have focused on different abductees, the tone of the show also varies, from more comical to more serious. This is nothing new for Behr, but the reaction to it still frustrates him.
"The other thing that reminds me of 'Deep Space Nine,'" he says, "is I just don't understand why it's so [hard for fans to understand]. If you want a pacifier, you can get them for 99 cents at Sav-On drugs down the block. If you want to suck on something that's going to make you feel protected and warm and all cuddly, they have those things. They're made of rubber, and you stick them in your mouth.
"Television is supposed to be fun and adventurous, at least genre television allegedly is. It just seems that the shift in tone should not be so traumatic."
Since "The 4400" was originally announced as a six-episode limited series, Behr and his fellow producers were obliged to come up with some sort of a solution to the mystery to close out episode six. When the show became a hit and was renewed, that caused problems if its own.
"To this day," Behr says, "I think it was a mistake, but we've handled it well. We're going to continue to throw doubt on it as we go, but still, it's a big hill to climb, in terms of your mass audience. You can't get around the feeling that a significant number of people are going to have, that the big mystery's been told.
"No matter how you spin it, how you come up with interesting ways of continuing the story, there's still a feeling of, 'We know the big thing, and are you ever going to come up with a bigger thing?'
"And, of course, we can."
(Thursday, August 25 09:36 AM)
By Kate O'Hare
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) After a successful six-episode first-season run in the summer of 2004, USA Network's "The 4400" closes out its second, 13-episode season on Sunday, Aug. 28, with "Mommy's Bosses."
It's essentially the conclusion of a two-part storyline that began last week with "The Fifth Page." That episode marked the return of season-one star Peter Coyote as Dennis Ryland, head of the National Threat Assessment Command, which monitors the 4,400 abductees, taken over the course of decades, who were returned -- without having aged, but with strange abilities -- on a lakeside in a ball of light.
In the Aug. 21 episode, many of the 4400 came down with a strange, debilitating disease. NTAC agents Tom Baldwin (Joel Gretsch) and Diana Skouris (Jacqueline McKenzie), who's also the adopted mother of clairvoyant 4400 child Maia Rutledge (Conchita Campbell), came to fear that government actions caused the malady.
According to executive producer Ira Steven Behr, who co-wrote the last two episodes with Craig Sweeney, this was only the beginning.
"We're going out with a bit of a bang," he says of "Mommy's Bosses." "There with be much smoking out of people's computers. We end this season with five different moments, that each alone would be enough to have people go, 'What the hell does that mean?'
"It's almost too much. We had to end it in act three of the second hour, because we needed the rest of the time to do the 'Holy mother...' kind of thing."
Before "The 4400," Behr was a writer and producer for "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," the second of the "Trek" sequels and the last one to air in syndication. Over its seven seasons, it also garnered the reputation as the most complex of the "Trek" series, weaving together themes of racism, religion, war and politics.
"As 'The 4400' goes on," Behr says, "and breathes and takes on an identity, the truth is, it's coming to resemble 'Deep Space Nine' more than I ever thought possible, which is going to be a good thing for some people and not such a good thing for other people.
"I'm not saying that it's a good or bad thing quality-wise, I'm just saying, like 'Deep Space Nine,' there's a lot going on. There's a lot of characters. It's very complicated, probably more complicated than any network or studio would want it to be.
"If it was on HBO, they'd be saying, 'Oh, it's like "Deadwood," man, you've got to really pay attention,' or 'The Sopranos.' Of course, we're not on a premium station. It's like, 'Why can't this be as simple as "Monk"?' So it's got a lot of stuff going on."
Of course, when you have a complicated show that forces viewers to pay attention, sometimes they pay too much attention. Behr discovered this when the characters of Richard and Lily (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali, Laura Allen), two of the 4400, were absent from certain episodes.
"Every time Richard and Lily aren't on the show," Behr says, "the fans come up with all these theories, when the simplest theory, which is the truth, is they had a 10 out of 13 commitment, so we had to lose them for three episodes. But they make it into such a big thing, trying to figure out why they're not there."
Since different episodes have focused on different abductees, the tone of the show also varies, from more comical to more serious. This is nothing new for Behr, but the reaction to it still frustrates him.
"The other thing that reminds me of 'Deep Space Nine,'" he says, "is I just don't understand why it's so [hard for fans to understand]. If you want a pacifier, you can get them for 99 cents at Sav-On drugs down the block. If you want to suck on something that's going to make you feel protected and warm and all cuddly, they have those things. They're made of rubber, and you stick them in your mouth.
"Television is supposed to be fun and adventurous, at least genre television allegedly is. It just seems that the shift in tone should not be so traumatic."
Since "The 4400" was originally announced as a six-episode limited series, Behr and his fellow producers were obliged to come up with some sort of a solution to the mystery to close out episode six. When the show became a hit and was renewed, that caused problems if its own.
"To this day," Behr says, "I think it was a mistake, but we've handled it well. We're going to continue to throw doubt on it as we go, but still, it's a big hill to climb, in terms of your mass audience. You can't get around the feeling that a significant number of people are going to have, that the big mystery's been told.
"No matter how you spin it, how you come up with interesting ways of continuing the story, there's still a feeling of, 'We know the big thing, and are you ever going to come up with a bigger thing?'
"And, of course, we can."