4400

I've watched many, many alien abduction movies, but none is more exciting and interesting as The 4400. I first heard about this movie when I was in America last year. The trailers were good and the ideas and concepts behind the storyline were interesting.

The first season only comprises of 5 episodes, call it a trial season if you wish to test the waters. Sometimes, if they think that the cast and props and whatever else will become too expensive to make into a full-blown 24 episode season, they

test the show on a network and let the viewers decide if the show is good. Basically to see if the show would survive the wolves. If they get good ratings, then the second season will probably consist of more episodes.

The 4400 starts off by showing you how throughout the course of history, people get abducted by this bright light. Flash to present day, a comet is on a direct course for the Earth, which worries everyone when it starts fo change course towards a huge lake in Seattle, where 4400 people who were abducted are returned exactly the way they look from when they were taken. For example, an 8 year old girl taken in the 1950s returns exactly the way she was and not the older woman she should have grown up to be. It's like time never changed for any of them. And surprise! Each of them returns with a special gift. They've been slightly altered for a greater purpose. And as you follow the course of the episodes, there's a reason behind this higher purpose that gets revealed in the season finale.

My favourite episode is Becoming, which is the third episode in the season. It centres around how an MO (Modus Operandi) used in a present day homicide is the same MO used by a serial killer who vanished 25 years ago. In the course of the episode, they try to link the killer, who's a returnee from the 4400, but can't seem to pin the murders on him because he has used his new gift with a new results.

The most interesting theme is the ripple effect and how it affects everyone. It's like throwing a stone into a calm lake and watching the ripples radiate out from the centre. This show has exactly the same effect. The 4400's return was the stone in the lake and the people who were returned are the ripples that affect everyone else's lives, some in a good way, some in a bad and others in ways we haven't seen yet. Well, they have 4400 possibilites to tell the story from.

Overall, the show is almost like X-files meets X-men on a tone-down level not overly bombastic for viewers to appreciate good story-telling. It is also completely different from how Steven Spielberg series Taken was told, which was a generational story and it was complicated to understand.

I highly recommend this show to anyone who loves to watch a good movie and has been hoping that X-files was something more than it should have been and should not have ended the way it did! The show doesn't insult your intelligence as a viewer and leaves you wanting more after the season finale. I really don't know when and if the show will come to this country, but if it doesn't, go out there and purchase it online, trust me, you won't regret it!

The 4400 gets 9 out of 10 from me.

P/S: I gave up trying to figure out why the paragraphs do not come out when I publish the Blog in some sections, although they were perfectly fine when I was composing the post. UGH!

P/P/S: I've solved the problem with the paragraphing. All I've to do is to add a "br /" enclosed in a pair of <> to the end of the paragraphs in under the HTML edit, let's hope it doesn't have to be done on all ocassions!