According to NBC The Event wikipedia page : “The Event follows Sean Walker (Jason Ritter), a man who, while investigating the mysterious disappearance of his fiancée, ends up unraveling the biggest cover-up in U.S. history; a coverup which shapes the very core of mankind as a whole, whose implications are lifechanging.”

So what is the NBC The Event that will change television history?

There is an event in the first episode, apparently an attack upon the President by forces unknown, but that is not the event, which remains a closely guarded trade secret.

According to Blair Underwood, who plays President Elias Martinez, the true nature of the event will be apparent to the audience by the second episode, but the answer to that question will only engender many more questions which will be progressively answered as the series continues. And that statement itself is a clue.

On closer look at NBC The Event :

The clues to the plot are readily decoded by anyone who has studied the UFO phenomenon and, more to the point, the development and implementation of United States public information policy on the issue over the last six decades, as the behavior of the characters in the trailers mirror that of their real life counterparts.

The series revolves around the problem of how — and what would force you — to tell a society that the reality they actually live in includes non-human intelligent life — some of which has been visiting Earth before mankind as it thinks it knows itself was created. And the series is itself part of a novel solution to that vexing social problem.

The Event facing the President of the United States is the disclosure to the American public of the reality of alien life operating on Earth.

And he is facing a deadline for disclosure that is forcing his hand. The clock is ticking. Think ’24′ meets the X-Files.