Friday, Jul 4, 2008
"Without a Trace" (Thursday 10 p.m. on CBS, premieres Sept. 26)
The shrinking man's "CSI." Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, "Without a Trace" follows a special FBI Missing Persons task force dedicated to tracking down missing persons using only advanced psychological profiling techniques. You know, like the missing girl has a picture of a man on her desk ... Let's bring him in! Anthony LaPaglia plays gruff (but aren't they all) senior agent Jack Malone, who spearheads a group of ace observers of human nature.
The CBS Web site describes agent Samantha Spade (Poppy Montgomery) as a crime fighter "who doesn't let her good looks get in the way of being tough," which is important. Vivian Johnson (Marianne Saint-Baptiste) is "a no-nonsense investigator." (Why is the black woman always the no-nonsense one on cop shows? How come she never gets to be the hothead or the rookie or the maverick or "the one who doesn't let her good looks get in the way of being tough?" Just wondering.) Danny Taylor (Enrique Murciano) plays "an intense and private agent" and Martin Fitzgerald (Eric Close) is, yes, the rookie.
Agent Malone has such great intuitive gifts that he can literally see the missing person after taking a quick look at his or her natural habitat. The missing person haunts each episode, appearing and disappearing as clues appear and vanish. The last 24 hours before each victim's disappearance is reconstructed, thanks to phone records, photographs and highlighted passages in dog-eared books. It makes you wonder what would happen if you disappeared and someone found your ninth-grade copy of "Catcher in the Rye." It also makes you wonder if FBI agents can say things like, "If he's the last person she called, then he's the first person we need to talk to," to their colleagues without being laughed out of the room.
"Without a Trace" adopts the requisite cop-show clipped pace and poker-faced acting, but the procedural approach is catchy. There's something irresistible about a forensic drama that hooks you with hints at the ending and works backward from there. This one's for the more squeamish sleuth.
"Hack" (Friday 9 p.m. on CBS, premieres Sept. 27)
A Philadelphia cop, Mike Olshansky (David Morse), gets kicked off the force after helping himself to some cash during a drug bust (he considers it hazard pay), and winds up behind the wheel of a cab. But a fare is never just a fare to Mike, as it turns out, because no sooner can he say "Where to?" than he is handed a case to solve, freelance-style. You can take the Polish Catholic boy from Philly out of the precinct, but you can't take the precinct out of the cab driver, or something like that.
It's an absurd premise, but at least it's original. The same thing can't be said for the first episode's story lines, however. Mike single-handedly rescues a cocky yuppie from a gang of roving thugs, and then helps a distraught father track down his abducted teenage daughter to the unkempt abode of an online pedophile. (Is it just me, or are the networks obsessed with child molestation?)
Morse is sympathetic as a morose desperado who has lost it all -- his career, his wife, his son, his gun license. At least he still has his best friend and drinking buddy, Father Tom "Grizz" Grzelak (George Dzundza) to keep him in morality lessons.
"That Was Then" (Friday 9 p.m. on ABC, premieres Sept. 27)
This season's other show about what it would be like to return to the '80s and relive high school after you have screwed up your life. In the hourlong ABC "dramedy" version (the half-hour sitcom, "Do Over," premiered on the WB last week), a 30-year-old door salesman named Travis Glass (James Bulliard) gets a high-voltage shock to the head and wakes up 16 again. (In "Do Over," a 34-year-old paper salesman gets a high-voltage shock and wakes up 16 again.)
The similarities don't stop there. Both characters return to high school on the day of their big speech to the student body -- a speech they will flub, thereby ruining the rest of their lives. Both seize the opportunity to change the speech into a lesson in seizing the day. ("Do Over" at least acknowledges the "Dead Poets Society" rip-off.) On both shows, Dad (here played by the sublime Jeffrey Tambor) is an insensitive boor, Mom (Bess Armstrong) is cheerfully dissatisfied and one sibling is a waste of space. Each also features a best friend (here Tyler Labine, in full Jack Black impersonation) who believes that our hero has just come back from the future. Curiously, both shows have so far refrained from mentioning the seminal '80s film franchise that started it all, despite being awash in '80s pop-culture references.
If this is a contest -- and it sure looks like one -- then "That Was Then" wins by a narrow margin. The hourlong, single-camera format doesn't preclude comedy, but the hokey half-hour sitcom format rules out any possibility for reflection. Not that "That Was Then" shows much promise in this area, but there's always hope. Ultimately, "That Was Then" suffers from the same disease that affects most television: The idea almost always overshadows the execution.
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