When charting the course of procedural hybrids—those tricky shows where one case of the week and a larger, ongoing narrative arc go hand in hand—it’s helpful to be able to point to shows like Paramount+ Evil (or CBS’s oldPerson of Interest, if that’s more your taste) as an example of how to do this properly.
Each individual episode must be satisfying while the larger storyline must advance. Ideally, neither will disrupt the other’s momentum, and ideally, one’s themes will influence and enhance the other’s themes.
ALERT: MISSING PERSONS
BOTTOM LINE You better not miss this.
air date : Special Sunday, Jan. 8 at 8pm; regular premiere, Monday, Jan. 9 at 9pm (Fox) throw: Scott Kahn , Dania Ramirez , Ryan Broussard, Adeola Rolle creator: John Eisendras, Jamie Foxx
It might also be helpful to be able to point out time and time again the show that illustrates how poorly mixed programs are executed – a cautionary template.
Then, thanks to Fox for the altruistic posting Alert
: Missing Persons Unit . The new show’s badness isn’t offensive, and it’s not necessarily outrageous. I am not angry. It’s just incompetent, and it’s hard for me to imagine the show would have aired had it not been for the presence of Jamie Foxx as a co-creator.
John Eisendrath, a veteran of Alias and The Blacklist who knows this type of What an excellent version of the show was like, Alert starring Scott Caan as Jason, a Philadelphia police officer turned military mercenary , whose son was kidnapped during Jason’s final stint in Afghanistan. He is sad. His wife Nikki (Dania Ramirez Dania Ramirez) is very sad. Six years later, Nikki is part of Philadelphia’s Missing Persons Unit.
Nikki lays the groundwork for Jason, one of those annoying TV husbands who just refuses to sign those damn human divorce papers.
“We’ve been separated for three years. Mike and I have been together for two years, okay? You and June run a private security company. You’ve been to at least three fertility clinics trying to Have a baby,” she said, basically making no sense.
It should be noted that when this is said, Mike ) has not yet appeared, June (Bre Blair) has not appeared, and will not appear in the pilot episode (although she Two episodes), and Jason was not seen doing anything in private security. In fact, in the two episodes sent to critics, he didn’t do an iota of personal security. She’s just telling Jason what he already knows, in case the audience happens to be listening. It’s one of several steamy expositions where the show’s first minutes got bogged down.
But don’t worry Nikki’s last part of the note dump is irrelevant. Jason and his trips to fertility clinics are extremely important to Alert. In fact, the best thing Alert does is stop the momentum of missing persons investigations to stop the nonsensical talk about sperm motility and whether men can fake orgasms.
Jason and Nikki’s son has been away for six years, but suddenly, in the middle of different child abduction cases at the Pilot Center, they get information that Keith (their son) may still be alive Jason was initially hopeful. Nikki poured her energy into helping others find their children, but initially she wasn’t optimistic. That didn’t stop them from getting on a plane, flying to Las Vegas, storming through the hotel room door, and flying back to Philadelphia in what seemed like an afternoon — well, in the middle of the week, even though the Philadelphia MPU department It looked like there were only five of them.
Just a note to the writers: If your case of the week is going to have a clock ticking – it’s not consistent here – but the character tasked with pursuing the case feels Too little they’re willing to shelve it for the urgency of temporarily impractical personal travel for audiences to think there’s a stake in it. It also doesn’t do much for the characters and their judgment.
Neither of the two episodes I’ve seen has the case this week – there’s a missing girl endangered by her father’s job, then a kidnapped drug dealer – even though it’s very The small investment is interesting enough, so it’s probably fitting that the show’s handling of the MPU is equally fragile. The team includes Mike — yes, Nikki’s aforementioned boyfriend Mike — who proposes in the middle of the missing persons section at noon on a weekday; Mori’s technical acumen is evidenced by photographs of Mori’s head; most annoying of all is Kemi (the Adeola character). This is not Role’s fault at all, but Kemi often walks around in the office, performs a purification ceremony, and talks about the celebrities she slept. Her skills are “any random things will transfer the case to the next scene” .
It’s such an unrealistic and unprofessional workplace, I could barely see my eyes in the first episode when Jason walks into the interrogation room with nothing to do and starts questioning suspects Blink handles the case, and the department doesn’t have the expertise to do it — and, despite the clear ethics violation, Nicki hires him an episode later.
So it’s two episodes with almost no cases and then an ongoing storyline about Jason and Nikki’s missing son, who isn’t that missing at all. or him? ! ? Difficult to take care of. The divided family also has a teenage daughter, played by Atypical favorite Fivel Stewart, after playing an adult in Netflix’s recent The Recruit Forced to fall back to high school here .
This might all be alleviated if Alert had any visual talent, But the first episode has an incoherent fight scene in an elevator and a ridiculous sequence of Nicky jumping off a balcony into a swimming pool and then shooting suspects because, you know, that’s what cops do. The second episode is totally forgettable.
Were Alert intended to be the same runaway crazy show as
*)911 franchise (maybe pool-jump is close), there will be no problem and everyone is laughing at random points. But when Nikki tells worried parents “we’ll get your baby back” and the desire to sing Chili’s song proves irresistible… I feel sad, but mostly because I don’t see more Feeling bad about something good.
Caan and Ramirez are good.
: Missing Persons Unit . The new show’s badness isn’t offensive, and it’s not necessarily outrageous. I am not angry. It’s just incompetent, and it’s hard for me to imagine the show would have aired had it not been for the presence of Jamie Foxx as a co-creator.
