Last year when Alert:
Missing Persons Unit debuted on Fox I was not incredibly impressed by it.
My problem was not the formula for the series; I thought it was a decent model
and that the performances of Scott Caan and Damia Ramirez as the two leads was
generally well done. My bigger issue was the storyline that formed the backbone
of Season 1.
In the show Jason Grant (Caan) and Nikki Batista (Ramirez)
were a couple whose marriage had broken up because their son Keith had disappeared
six years ago. They had just started to working together when Keith showed up
on their doorstep. It was clear from the moment Keith showed up that he was
lying to them; their daughter could tell it instantly but these two parents –
who were supposedly experts in spotting deception and criminals – were so naïve they spent much of the season
ignoring what was obvious to everyone else – including the viewer. In my original
review, I thought this storyline was so terrible that it completely overwhelmed
what was a capable formula show and as a result I stopped watching it halfway
through the season.
By the end of the season, however, the Keith storyline had
been resolved (Keith had been dead and someone had been impersonating him) and
I decided to give the show another chance now that this ridiculous storyline
was gone. I’ve been watching the first three episodes, and free from the
baggage of a terrible backstory, Alert is actually starting to realize
its potential.
In the months between Nikki and Jason finally seem to be
moving forward with their lives, professionally and personally. Their daughter
has moved on to college. Jason has accepted that his marriage with Nikki is
finally over and Nikki is about to marry Mike Sherman (Ryan Broussard. Nikki
has been promoted to captain and the unit has moved into new headquarters. The
show is shifting in its dynamics and as a result Jason and Mike have become
partners. You wouldn’t normally say it was an improvement for a series to
become more formulaic, but after such a wretched storyline that started the
first season it really needed to do so in order to improve. And at the start,
it has.
Now in a position with more authority Nikki is trying to
negotiate her relationship with the new commissioner (I’ve missed Gil Bellows)
and that means she now has to work harder than usual to reign in Jason’s
cutting corners approach, because now it reflects badly on her and the unit.
She was clearly hoping her fiancée could reign him in, but it’s becoming
increasingly clear that Mike is beginning to wonder if Nikki is punishing him.
That said, there are signs of the two men managing to move away from alpha male
rivals to a genuine bond. In an amusing scene in last night’s episode when the
two of them were in a gym, they had a debate as to whether Apollo or Creed was
the better boxer, which is the kind of thing two partners argue about when they’re
killing time.
The cases have taken on a more interesting level, keeping
with the Philadelphia setting. The second episode dealt with the disappearance
of a Benjamin Franklin impersonator who had never broken character for 20 years.
He was reported missing by a Jefferson and Washington impersonator and
Washington didn’t break character. It was also funny that Franklin listed his
real name as Richard Saunders, which as one of the characters explained was the
name Franklin wrote Poor Richard’s Almanac under. But it took on a serious
aspect when we learned the man in question was part of the Irish mob and that
he had been involved in a contract killing 20 years ago. He had been hiding
ever since but he had not been able to leave the daughter he had abandoned
behind – and who only knew him as Franklin.
The backstories are adding elements that were mostly wasted
in the previous season. We learn about an old friend that Jason had when he was
serving in Afghanistan named Landry – but when he brings her to the unit, he
not only neglected to tell Nikki Landry was a convicted hacker but also a woman.
Landry has said that there was nothing going on between her and Jason, but
because of her nature we don’t trust anything she says. We also learn that in her
early days in homicide Nikki had a connection with a minor Irish player and
that she used him as a CI in order to make busts and advance her career. The
parallels to Whitey Bulger are clear, except this time there are more layers
because Nikki was a woman of color when she made the busts – and now she is
beginning to deeply regret the choices she’s made. When it was clear of the two’s
backstory, she was willing to hold him in order to find the missing person –
and she’s now all too aware of the darker aspects of his past. I actually hope
this storyline becomes prominent in future episodes.
The major element that seems to be the backstory of Season 2
involves the season premiere. A bus was hijacked and held hostage with the
conditions that unless a mobster serving life in prison was released. The unit
spent the episode trying to find the missing bus ahead of it but in order to
buy time the killer was let go. The moment after they found the passengers,
however, the car that he and his attorney were in blew up.
The case was handed to homicide but Jason, who has a habit
of not being able to let things go, has been pestering the bosses for the police
report. The commissioner hounded him about in last night’s episode and while Jason
was resistant, when it became clear that the commissioner knew about Landry’s
presence, he actually backed off even though there was a missing woman at
stake. That night, however, Landry got the report – but the moment she opened
it, a virus activated it prevented him from reading it.
I have complained about meaningless backstories on other
procedurals over the past year but this one is more in keeping with a general pattern
of a larger crime that other shows tend to handle well: Will Trent actually
did a good job with it and The Irrational managed to handle its
backstory case better than I thought. It also doesn’t hurt that the case is
professional, not ridiculously personal, the way the one last season was.
I don’t know how much longer I’ll keep watching Alert –
it was actually meant to be a time filler for me while Will Trent has
been on hiatus the last two weeks. But it’s clearly improved immensely in
quality from last season and might actually be worth some time. It’ll never be
one of the great series on network television but as a model for a well-done
procedural, it’s clearly getting a lot closer than it was last year.
My score: 3.5 stars.
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