The “Vanished” premiere -OR- 45-minutes never to be seen again
The fall season started last night on FOX (who is trying to give their new seasons a foothold before playoff baseball starts) with Prison Break and their new show about a kidnapped senator’s wife called Vanished. Being the second kidnapping tale I’ve seen in the past two weeks (NBC’s cleverly titled Kidnapped being the other), there are obvious comparisons to be made. While Kidnapped was occasionally interesting when the characters weren’t talking and has the better cast, Vanished is just really really bad.
Here’s where the show went astray: 1) It was crazy, but not “crazy.” Prison Break is “crazy,” which is why I can respect that show despite giving up watching it last fall. “Crazy” is good. It means you have a sense of humor about what you’re doing. You understand that television stories need twists and turns to keep the viewer interested and you understand how that is contrary to how actual life works. But vanished is just crazy. Crazy is bad. Crazy is trying to convince yourself that the characters on screen are real people and yet having them do things that no real person would ever do. Of course, neither of these descriptions are as good as Crazy, the song of the summer.
2) After watching a show like The Wire (and spending two hours in my local police precinct last fall), I’ve begun to hate any depiction of the FBI (or any law enforcement agency) as being “super high tech.” Real police have lousy technology, and its usually yellowed by fluorescent lights, not shiny and metal. Sure, this is nitpicky. Sure, this is a something that is entirely common in Hollywood cops and robber stories, but Vanished is all ready awful. This is only adding salt to the wound.
3) Was it me or did the show introduce a bunch of new characters in the last two minutes? Talk about a low-rent cliffhanger.
So did anyone else watch this?
Tags: FOX, Kidnapped, Prison Break, The Wire, Vanished
August 23rd, 2006 at 4:06 pm
I’ll be giving the show my attention for the next month; not because I think it’ll get better, but because I have a friend showing up in the September 11th episode. Hopefully it’ll last that long.
But it was a lot of been there, done that with various characters or plot situations, and I think they wasted Ming-Wa in the FBI sidekick role. And I know Gale Harold can do so much more, but it feels as though they’re holding him back with the script.
We’ll see……
August 26th, 2006 at 11:52 pm
I saw part of it. The guy from Queer is Folk who plays the FBI agent was a little cliche doing the “I’m-cranky-just-to-be-cranky” thing. Leave that for Hugh Laurie– he does it better.