For A Series About The Missing, This Series Has Too Much Baggage: Alert Missing Person Review

 

 

As network television has leaned more and more towards procedurals, I am less and less drawn to them. I have no use for anything in Dick Wolf’s universe, whether it be set in Chicago or New York, I wasn’t overjoyed when CSI returned when no one asked for it to come back, and while I initially found both versions of 9-1-1 appealing, its becoming increasingly hard to enjoy either. Thus when Alert: Missing Person Unit debuted last Sunday, I wasn’t inclined to give it much attention, despite the involvement of Jamie Foxx and the early decent reviews. But there was nothing on last Sunday, so I ended up watching it and the two episodes that have followed. And while there are some intriguing parts to it, I’m not entirely sure my involvement with this series will go much beyond March when the second season of HBO’s Perry Mason finally debuts. Oddly enough, my major problem with Alert is not really that it’s formulaic – it’s the way the series seems to be trying to have a larger issue that is troubling me.

The series begins by telling us the story of Jason Grant (Scott Caan) and Nikki Parker (Damia Ramirez). Jason is in the process of coming home from Afghanistan when Nikki calls him and tells them their son has disappeared. Six years later, the two are as amicably divorced as possible, but neither has gotten over the loss of their son, still missing but who neither is willing to believe is dead. Their other child, Sydney, has been trying to move on but is troubled. Both Jason and Nikki have moved on to other people – in the pilot, Nikki is in the middle of being proposed to by her co-worker Mike, and it doesn’t help that’s the moment Jason shows up. The two used to work together for the Missing Persons Unit in the Philly PD, but Jason left to go into private security. In the opening episode, they finally get a sign that their son is alive, and in the midst of this they begin working together in the missing persons unit. Through a series of events that tend to humiliate Jason the most (his long-term lover who worked with him in private security has learned in the worst possible way that he is not interested in having a child with him), Jason ends up going back to work at the Missing Persons Unit.

I’m not sure what it means for a series when the formula is the best part of the show: the first three cases have been very compelling in their own way: the second episode dealt with a woman abducting a man who she believed sold the fentanyl that caused her son to overdose and the most recent involved a college student whose disappearance has led many to believe she is involved in something far worse than she expected. The detectives who work in this unit are characters that have more depth that you honestly hope the series would go into deeper: the character of Kemi, (a spiritualist who gives her religion as zombie and her sexual orientation as basically anything) would honestly be worthy of a series of her own. Every time she mentions her past love affairs (she claimed to have at least one lover over a century) she burns bones or mentions the history behind the science she is doing, you honestly wonder why every series on TV couldn’t have someone like this character. And many of the other background characters have interesting elements: Mike mentions that he had a long affair with a married woman before starting his relationship with Nikki, and there’s a facial recognition expert in the building I wish we’d see more of because I genuinely like everything we learn about him (including his relationship with his sister).

And whenever we see Jason or Nikki work various facets of their investigations, singularly or together, you get a sense of how good they are at their jobs. Caan in particular is superb, both when we see the characters he has to deal with to get the information he needs (to get information into the bank records, he talks to a trash man who tells him his dad is dying to get money from him, and when that doesn’t work tries to invite him to the memorial.) Caan also shows far better what it is like to be a parent, in a scene with a father after he learns that he unknowingly introduces his daughter to a sexual predator, there’s a wonderful scene where the two man talk about how they failed at their jobs and the darkness that follows them. It’s emotional and it’s real in a way that most procedurals don’t even try for.

The problem is that these days no series, not even a procedural, can be just about the crime of the week. There has to be something bigger at the center, something that can lead to a larger story. The fact that there is almost no history of any of these stories being rewarded when they play out (I’m thinking of so many of the serial killers at the center of the CSI franchises over the years) doesn’t stop network TV from putting them in anyway.

So at the end of the pilot, Jason and Nikki end up being reunited with their son Keith after six years. Even this would not be a bad story in itself, if the series wanted to deal with the emotional trauma of a kidnapped child being reunited with his parents after such an extended period. But Alert doesn’t have the emotional depth to deal with this. So obviously, it becomes clear at the end of the pilot that there’s something wrong with Keith, and that of course his parents, who can spot liars and frauds for a living are utterly blind to the discrepancies in their child. This in particular does a lot of damage to Ramirez’s character whose utter refusal to have her missing son even go through a casual discussion of what happened to her seems like the most blatant stupidity. The fact that she spends much of the next two episodes, ignoring her own daughter’s certainty that Keith is a fraud – despite the evidence she presents her with – makes you truly wonder why there isn’t a single mother in law enforcement who can never separate the two jobs when her child is involved. (I call this Dana Scully syndrome.) The fact that it’s now noticeably clear Keith is an imposter and that Nikki is beginning to think so doesn’t change the fact that this is the worst possible storyline any show can give, because honestly why someone would put an imposter child back into the lives of their parents after six years is not a question I want answered because there’s no really resolution that I can see that I would like. Do we really need to see an evil child (and the writing really isn’t subtle when it comes to Keith talking to his sister), whatever explanation is given, and another search for the ‘real’ Keith assuming he’s still alive? Mythology shows are usually bad enough on their own; we don’t need them taking over what could be a passable, even above average formula show.

I’m not sure what the future of Alert will be, and I find it hard to care. Which is maddening. This is the first draft of the kind of solid series that could run for five or so years with a decent audience, and with a few tweaks here and there possibly be a good one. There’s an irony that the key missing person in this series is the thing that’s too much for it.

My score: 2 stars.