Bastard Reviews - Vanished

There's a couple of dozen new TV shows coming up in the next few months. I always liked reviewing stuff when I was with The Express. And I had the plan to get to Los Angeles at some point for the previews they gave reviewers in July. Most of them are pretty jaded about the entire experience, but I think it would be fun to do at least once.

Now, I'm not going to review every new show coming up this fall. I don't have the time or inclination. Some of the shows are so bad that you'd have to be an idiot to not see how much they're going to suck. I'll make a prediction in a few days on which show I think will be cancelled first in the new season. There's always some sad sack that dies a gruesome death after two shows and gets the mild infamy for being a new season's first casualty.

But right now I'm taking a look at Vanished, which is the first new show of the season. Fox has been jumping the gun on some of their shows because they lose all of October due to the baseball playoffs. The plan is to hook you now and hope you'll come back in November.

Vanished is also noteworthy because the actress who plays Sara Collins, the woman who disappears, is Joanne Kelly from Bay d'Espoir. Which is kind of cool.

Will the show last? Maybe, but I have my doubts. It's not that it's bad. It's just ehhhh. And really, you want more than that before committing to this kind of show.

The show is a season long mystery. What happened to Sara Collins, who disappears early in the pilot episode (thereby leading to the question of just how much we're going to see Kelly in this show). And that's hardly the only mystery in the show. Collins is the wife of a US senator, who has his share of political enemies. Their son is up to something, and so is their daughter. And Sara herself has more than her share of secrets.

Even the FBI agents involved in trying to solve the case have secrets and issues. There's no shortage of them in the show.

However, while there is a ton of possible subplots and the actors are fine in their parts, the show doesn't reach out and grab you. It's a season long mystery show. Which is an awfully big commitment. Normally, that kind of show has to do something very early in the pilot to grab your attention. Blowing up planes seem to work really well with both Lost and 24. So far there is curiosity about what happened, but I'm certainly not enthralled and dying to know what happens next. Good, but not gripping.

And you want gripping if you're going to commit to watching a show every Monday night for several months. I'll give the show another shot next week. But unless it gives me something amazing, I think I'll be giving this a pass.