The TV season has begun as Fox gets out of the box first with the new serial drama Vanished.  It’s a little bit CSI, with a pinch of Without a Trace and a dash of 24.  The gist of the Monday night show revolves around the disappearance of the second wife of a prominent Georgia Senator who turns out not to be who she’s pretending to be.  The pilot purposely gives out clues that seem to implicate everyone who is close to the beautiful woman named Sara, including the Senator, his kids, and even the ex-wife, who has yet to be revealed on screen.  

The stock characters include an angst-ridden FBI agent named Kelton, played by Gale Harold (Deadwood), who is trying to cope with a past botched kidnapping retrieval situation that caused the death of a young boy.  His reliable partner Lin Mei, the always-sharp Ming-Na (ER), is leaded with the task of keeping Kelton grounded.  Near the end of the pilot episode it’s revealed that Kelton had written a memo to his bosses that he was against the tactic used in the attempted retrieval of the kidnapped boy that ended in tragedy.  In a cheesy bit of dialogue, the Senator, who unleashes this information, tells the agent that he doesn’t want him to write any memos, just do what he thinks will find his wife.

Vanished was created by a veteran of CSI, Josh Berman, and partially executive-produced by feature director Mimi Leder (The Peacemaker, Deep Impact), who also directed the pilot and seems to try too hard to grab the audience with clichéd plot introductions instead of building with interesting characters we haven’t seen before.  Shows become hits when the audience becomes enamored by the characters and invites them into their homes week after week, such as with other Fox dramas like the already mentioned 24, House, and the surprise hit Prison Break, which proceeds Vanished on Fox’s primetime schedule.  

Not to poo poo on the casting director, but none of the actors stand out, at least not yet.  The most intriguing character is the kidnapped victim herself, played by Joanne Kelly, in a quietly subdued but compelling performance.  The only problem is Sara vanishes during the first half-hour of the pilot and only reappears in flashbacks or snippets of imagery.  It is my hope that in subsequent episodes, she isn’t relegated to a ghost character, much like Laura Palmer, the victim at the central core of the bizarre, early 90s, David Lynch series Twin Peaks.  She needs to be front and center and a key figure in the dramatic action.

Plot wise, they have concocted enough twists to rival the real-life JonBenet Ramsey murder case.  Whether they can sustain this form of storytelling without becoming maudlin, trite, or repetitive, like ABC’s Lost has successfully done over the last two seasons, is yet to be determined.  They were successful in keeping my attention for the full hour and making me want to return next week to see how the case is moving, though Twin Peaks was able to string out Who Killed Laura Palmer for a whole season (but the weirdness factor wore off by season two and the show died a slow, ugly death).  I also hope the producers and Fox execs aren’t just trying to duplicate 24’s success by trying to force us to fall in love with the FBI agent character, à la Jack Bauer, so that we will continue year after year to tune into his out-of-the-box ways of finding missing persons.  I call it the MacGyver Factor, where you love a character no matter how convoluted the situations are that they get themselves mixed up in.  It has been critical to hit shows of the past such as The Fugitive, The X Files, and of course, the namesake MacGyver, always getting himself out of trouble with a stick of gum and a paperclip.  

Vanished is well-written, well-produced, and warrants at least a sampling for a few episodes.  You’ll either get bored quickly or the show will draw you in each week with anticipation.  Given that it takes 24’s timeslot for the fall, what do you have to lose as you’re already used to watching something at this time anyway?  So take a chance on Vanished until Jack is back in January.

Vanished, Mondays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Fox (check local listings).

Rich Burlingham