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Persons Unknown
Who? What? Where? When? No, better yet...WHY?
A Techtite
Review
Imagine a little boy attempting the same old trick:
holding his hand in a fist, and then looking "into" the fist, as if he holds
a really cool
secret inside. He promises to show it to you if you sit with him and
listen to him for awhile. SO you sit and 13 hours later he finally revels, heh-heh; the hand is empty, though hey; you had fun
anticipating him revealing the "big secret," right?
Such was the case with Persons Unknown;
yet another craptacular mishap of summer television where the only
reward for watching it was how misery loves company. Oh; you fell for
NBC's trick too, eh? You're ticked off as much as I am, huh? Well, grab
a seat, friend. Let's nitpick this war crime of television
together!
The idea of this series was simple: take the mysteries
of the hit TV series Lost, and try to rip them off...miserably.
Remember how cool the first season of Lost was, as we met the survivors
of a plane crash, one by one? Well, here we have seven kidnapped people
in a seemingly long abandoned town, where the only other inhabitants are
chefs of a Chinese restaurant. Okay, yeah; odd people in a crazy little town. Sounds
intriguing, right? Sure it does. In fact; you can't wait to see what
happens in the next episode. Then the next episode begins, and...
...nothing! You see; that is the problem with anyone
who tries to rip off Lost. People, please: have a point
to your story. Do not expect the viewers to use their imaginations to
pretend that your story
is interesting. Seven people dying of boredom in an abandoned town is not
an interesting story! Seeing them being watched by someone behind a
video camera does not make the story more interesting. Oh look; someone
is actually watching a bunch of nobodies doing
nothing. I wonder who is stupid enough to waste their time like that?
Oh, darn! It's me! Nooooo!!!!
Okay; enough sarcasm. Here's the more complete story.
We begin with one of the abductees, Janet Cooper (Daisy Betts), who is
in a park with her daughter when she is suddenly kidnapped. She
wakes up in a strange bed in a strange hotel room. She soon leaves the
hotel room to see that six other people share the same fate, including:
a former priest, a former soldier, a former tycoon, a seeming "nobody,"
a rich socialite's spoiled daughter, and the obligatory escaped mental
patient. Do not worry; I will not make any jokes about how the escaped
mental patient probably was this series' scriptwriter. That joke is wayyyy too easy.
What happens next? Not much! One episode reveals that the town is
surrounded by a laser beam that burns anyone who tries to escape. The
next episode reveals that even if you escape the
town by a stolen mini-van (don't ask), you will simply drive into a
bright white light and pop right back into the town (huh...?).
Oh, and for some reason the only restaurant in town is a Chinese
restaurant, because, yeah, see; folks in small little towns love Chinese
food (...NOT!). Each episode is like that. Nothing is answered
though you soon learn worthless information
you didn't want to know anyway. Wow! The escaped mental patient is
actually nuts. Wow! What were the odds of that?
What is going on here? Well, that is the rub,
isn't it? NBC made it clear from the start that this series would be,
more than likely, a one season wonder. Not to worry, because as
every single episode promised until the very final episode: "By the end
of summer, all will be revealed!" Oh sure; no worries, huh? We only have to watch a baker's dozen
of episodes, and "all will be revealed," right?
As you probably already guessed: wrong. Though let us
be clear here. Nobody wanted every answer explained. We just wanted to
know why a bunch of knuckleheads would kidnap bigger knuckleheads and
drop them into an abandoned town. Fanboys of horrible television are
insisting that "the answers are there" if you look hard enough, and with
all due respect to these fanboys I have to say (in the most polite and
affectionate way I can manage): Shine it on, honey! Nothing was
revealed. Period.
Spoilers kept to a sarcastic minimum, here is the big
reveal as the series finale tells it: these people were kidnapped by a
mysterious group of people for a mysterious purpose. This is the big
reveal? Hellloooooooo? We already knew this in the premiere,
you nitwits!!! Why
were they kidnapped? Why
were these specific people kidnapped?
Why would these specific people lead to whatever
"goal" the kidnappers are looking for?
Why is Janet not only the focal point of
the series, though of the kidnappers as well? What; does a hot young
MILF somehow fit "better" in their "big plans" than a soldier
and a millionaire? HUH?!?
Memories surface yet again of my favorite Daffy Duck
cartoon, "The Scarlet Pumpernickel." For the n00bs to my web site who do
not get the comparison: Daffy Duck was supposedly sick of comedy so he
wanted to sell a dramatic script of his very own to Warner Brothers. He
never thought he would keep their attention until the ending, so he never
wrote one. So suddenly he's at the end of his story, with no ending, and
his bosses demand he finish the story. So he starts rambling.
Oh, uh, uh: the volcano erupted, yeah yeah yeah, and then the dam burst
and flooded the whole town, and um, huh, um, the hero dies, okay?
Clearly: Daffy Duck had no idea how to end a story. The problem is: he
has an excuse, because he is a cartoon character, and isn't real. Yet
how many actual movies and TV shows end the exact same way? Think about
it.
However, I digress. The point is: this was a series
whose whole worth was a mystery that the promos insisted would be
revealed by the end of the story. Was it? NO. It's that simple. Imagine
an old episode of Scooby Doo, if instead of solving the mystery,
Scooby-Doo just piddled on a fire hydrant and went to sleep. That's what
happened here, except nobody piddled on a fire hydrant. They decided to
piddle on the script, instead...
---Techtite
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