The 4400 - Season Three

Current TV shows will be back in a couple of weeks but until then I'm working on this bad boy. Only one season of The 4400 left after this one!

When we left off at the end of last season, baby Isabelle had inexplicably grown into an adult overnight. Her character arc then proceeded to unfold almost like that of Anakin Skywalker on his journey to becoming Darth Vader. I won't go into detailed comparisons, but I'm sure you could see the similarities yourself if you watched the show. I was fascinated as she went from cute and innocent in episode one to downright psychopathic and highly dangerous in the season finale. Her character brought some of the best storylines in a season that had weak points - like the whole arc about Diana stealing her sister's boyfriend: totally boring to me. I actually found it more entertaining when she was with Marco, or in the episode "Blink" where she spent half of it arguing with an ex (which was great only because the writers introduced a unique way to give us some of Tom's and Diana's back stories). I also felt that the promicin stuff was growing stale around the second half of the season, but it was nice to see Jeffrey Combs and Summer Glau return as Kevin and Tess, and even nicer to see Collier, who I'd previously disliked, finally show up again to own the episode and hand out a verbal smackdown to Isabelle. I was hoping there would be an epic battle between those two in the finale, but they went a different route and instead the season ended with pretty much a ripoff of that shot on The Simpsons (which was probably parodying something else) where Dr. Hibbert says he can't figure out who shot Mr. Burns and then turns to the camera and says "can you?" I guess maybe they were trying to make the viewer think, or feel involved, or at least say "Whoa!", but I only laughed because it was so corny and did not belong in a show where nobody ever acknowledges the camera.

Best Episode: "Gone", which is actually two episodes in two parts, but screw it, I'm counting them together. Like last season's "Life Interrupted", this was another of those cool episodes where we almost take a break from the main storyline to investigate some weird parallel scenario where Maia and other 4400 children are kidnapped and then seemingly erased from the minds and lives of everyone who knew them. A close second would maybe be "The Gospel According to Collier", but only for Billy Campbell's performance.