What would it take for your social web to completely unravel? That's the question posed by NBC's miniseries The Slap, which premiered Thursday night.  It's based on an Australian show of the same name, both derived from the novel by Christos Tsiolkas.  As with the original pilot, the NBC series follows a man named Hector, a self-considered family man who's having an affair with his wife's teenage employee, on his 40th birthday. The entire extended family shows up for a birthday party — including his young paramour Connie (Makenzie Leigh) — but the celebration abruptly ends when his brother Harry (Zachary Quinto) slaps a misbehaving child...who isn't his own.  Hugo, the child, belongs to the artistically inclined Rosie (Melissa George), who is still breastfeeding the 5-year-old recipient of the slap, and Gary (Thomas Sadoski). The couple brings plans to bring charges against the rich, autodidactic businessman Harry. From there, the family's entire social structure begins crumbling.  Yes, those are a lot of names, and that's just a sliver of the overstuffed pilot.  For much of the pilot, the American script is identical to its Australian counterpart. But, much like with Hector's family, you can see the strained seams in Thursday's premiere episode just waiting to unravel. One of the simplest reasons is one of constraints. The Australian version spends a leisurely hour introducing its enormous cast and letting the action unfold naturally, while the American packs everything into a scant 43 minutes.  As it turns out, attempting to fit 60 minutes into 43 is as ill-advised as slapping someone else's child.  Not a single plot point was lost in tonight's pilot, but almost all of its character-building was. Never mind that any semblance of humor was stripped away with its running time or that our version sterilized the original in small, strange ways presumably meant to make the characters more likable — Hector's bump of cocaine is subbed for marijuana, for example. More important is the time not spent on finding out who these people are.  In the first episode of the Australian version, we spend an astounding amount of time with Hector's love of jazz, watching him root through his records and shower his adoring family with esoteric details from Miles Davis' life. It adds weight to the punch of Hugo tossing his uncle's records around like Frisbees later in the episode. Tonight's episode simply doesn't have the requisite space to do this. Instead, it's like a plot assembly line working over time.  Seventeen minutes might not seem like much time, but in this type of storytelling, it's an absolute luxury. The show is ostensibly a soap opera, and it operates like one. To be successful, it needs to traffic in more than stereotypes (see the wonderful and surprising Jane the Virgin). And make no mistake, The Slap as a whole offers stereotypes on a silver platter — Harry's the angry Greek immigrant, Hector's a good guy having a midlife crisis, etcetera.  Hugo (Dylan Schombing) is comforted by his mother (Melissa George) in the series premiere of 'The Slap.'  Sarsgaard does manage to find some heart in his Hector. The look on his face as Connie hands back The Death and Life of Great American Cities — sidenote: the fact that he gave this particular book to a teenager is proof enough that he should pursue women his own age, perhaps his wife — is a heartbreaking mixture of desire, confusion, and guilt. No one else, save for Quinto (who plays Harry with the subtly of a clattering jackhammer) has enough time to imbue their characters with backstory. As a result, great talents, such as Uma Thurman who plays Anouk, the older sister with a predilection for young, famous men, seem to be riding the bench. (E.g. Thurman's on screen for roughly five minutes of the entire pilot.)  Of course, American television exists in an entirely different stratosphere than Australian television and is dictated by different expectations. This is most evident in each series' second episode. In episode 2, Australia's Slapfollows Anouk as she struggles with a stressful television job, a boyfriend nearly twenty years her junior and the decision to potentially terminate an unexpected pregnancy. The slap itself occupies about five minutes of the hour-long episode.  Conversely, America's second episode, which will air next week, follows Harry — and his increasing need for anger management — as he attempts to keep Rosie and Gary from filing charges.  Where the former allows itself to purposefully meander, examining the characters affected by the central slap, the American one favors plot. In the end, whichever you prefer comes down to a simple question: Are you more interested in what the slap means or what the slap catalyzes?  Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
NBC's 'The Slap,' which premiered Thursday, comes up short when compared to the original Australian version. Our review.