Episode 4.8: “No Exit”
by Administrator on Aug.06, 2007, under Reviews
Written by Adam Levy
Directed by Tony Westman
Every season of every show has a substandard episode, though some productions manage to keep the low points to a minimum (while others can fall into an extended slump). When it comes to “The 4400”, such slip-ups are rare. There’s usually enough story and creativity in hand to keep the momentum flowing. But every so often, there’s an episode that fails to live up to expectation.
In this case, it’s all about predictability. From the very beginning of the episode, it’s not hard to figure out that the “players” are in some kind of dream-world, and that a powered individual brought them into that world. It was obvious that Jordan Collier and Tom Baldwin would end up squaring off against each other, with Kyle in the middle. By the time all the characters in the “game” were revealed, it was obvious which one of them was responsible. It was also predictable that he would end up a “victim” as well, forcing Jordan and Tom to work together towards a solution.
In other words, this was an episode full of familiar tropes, and quite often, an exercise in waiting out the story to see if anything new or unusual would happen. The writers stacked the deck against themselves by making this tired plot device the center of a “bottle show” as well, raising the stakes on character exploration. Bottle shows are designed to keep the budget low, and the inevitable consequence is that the writing must overcome the lack of variety in the locations and plot threads.
By the end of the episode, very little has been advanced. Tom and Megan are getting closer to a relationship, but that had already been waiting in the wings, so this is an incremental step forward. Somewhat more significant is the personal battle of wills that has developed between Jordan and Tom, but this was also just acknowledgement of what “Try the Pie” accomplished. The final conversation was a lot of fun, but it was a bit of a letdown after so much predictable storytelling.
Writing: 1/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 1/2
Style: 1/4
Final Rating: 5/10
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August 7th, 2007 on 12:56 am
Part of what made the show so disappointing to me was that by having PJ tell everyone what was happening in the middle of it all, it robbed Tom and Jordan’s mutual sacrifice almost meaningless because we knew that *they* knew it wasn’t “reality” and that it was pretty certain that they would wake up and be alive again.
When Meghan died, I thought that her death might be real – we’re invested enough in her to be affected by her death, but she’s not a linchpin of the show. When Shawn died, though, I knew it was some kind of alternate reality – killing Shawn off in such an anticlimactic way would make no sense at all. I think the story would have been a *lot* better – and it would have given Tom and Jordan’s mutual sacrifice more weight and created a stronger bond between them – if none of them had realized that it was an artificial reality until AFTER the dream-state had ended and they all woke up. Plus, had they done it that way, once everyone understood it had been caused by a 4400′s power, it would throw Tom and Jordan back into their conflicting positions as Tom would be obligated to take PJ in to NTAC and Jordan would want to bring him to Promise City – and the two would have to figure out how to resolve that with this new understanding that each of them is willing to give *everything* to save the greater good.