At last, the horrific truth can be told: the Vanished Sara Collins has been deprived of adequate food, water and foundation garments. What's more, her abductors are shooting her up, Dr. Bones McCoy-style, with drugs that disorient her, make her susceptible to inane Brainwashing 101 suggestions, and have her talking as if she is wearing orthodontic headgear. Speaking of Sara's captors, this week's episode put a new face on the mysterious-in-a-TV-serial-kind-of-way group, in the form of a rather Anglo preppie. What is their next tactic, to threaten to make Sara shop last season's Lacoste styles? The inhumanity.Speaking of Chad/Biff-the-Masonic-kidnapper, the casting is so obvious in its "Let's go against the grain" thinking that it's distracting and thus rendered ineffective. Hmm, do we go with an older, perhaps scarred, furled-brow gent of non-descript foreign origins? Nah, let's shake things up with a J. Crew model! If I was Sara, I'd be all, "Listen, your threats didn't work with D...
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For those sad, mean souls who don't read my Today's News column, Vanished will air on Fridays at 8 pm/ET when it returns from the baseball hiatus.
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I have to think that the folks who toil away at the real FBI and such crime-solving organizations laugh, and hard, at the lightning-fast technological wizardry performed on such shows as Vanished and, say, 24. I mean, can a weather map from a precise day and time be called up and overlaid, rather instantaneously, onto a plotting of cell-phone towers? It's like, "Oh, and now drop in the pitch locations from Gary Sheffield's at-bat against Tim Wakefield... and then overlay the approach plan for the invasion of Normandy. Perfect!"But I digress.Some new things we learned on this week's episode of Fox's Vanished:- The live video feed of Sara's imprisonment was being ping-ponged all over god's creation by a series of cell-phone towers, meaning that the signal would never reach the blocks surrounding my house in New Jersey, or inside the local CVS.- The Nicky Johnson connection is so super important and hush-hush that even if you play a role in covering it up, you will be hush-hushed —...
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Best episode of the season to date? I'd be willing to cast my vote for that. And mainly because Fox's Vanished is now starting to get me into that 24 state of mind, what with the lawyers who really aren't lawyers, and doors in the floor, and key players shot dead just when we need them most. Heck, we even have Penelope Ann Miller as a photocopy-negative version of Sherry Palmer, weaseling her way back into her ex's life and then immediately starting to pull political strings. (Alas, Ms. Miller, who I am sure is a lovely person, is still ringing hollow in the hellion role. But time will tell.)Another Achilles' heel of the series to date is, I have to say, the son. Marcy's a tart with pathetic judgment, we know that. But Max, up until last night's episode, was but a cipher of an offspring. Now he's a mopey cipher -- albeit one, we are warned, who could "slip" at any moment. Uh-huh. And the whole Masonic-alphabet thing is a bit goofy, if you ask me... so desperately trying to evoke The...
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So... the daughter, not missing Sara, is pregnant. A lot of you called that one from Day 1, so good job. But who could have known that Marcy once canoodled with married Supreme Court nominee Judge Rainer? Trés tawdry twist. But Heath Ledger Lite, aka Ben, saved her from that mess. Only to ultimately drag her into a bigger one. It's funny if not telling that the characters on Vanished raise so many questions and ask them aloud. It's almost as if they are reading the viewers' minds. "Why put a new coffin in an old cemetery?" Indeed. I love serialized thrillers as much as the next guy, but let's start answering some of these questions and soon, OK? As I said last week, if you want us to care about Sara (who, we learned this week, was actually a not-so-evil stepmom, make us care about those who purportedly miss her. Or at least the FBI agents involved. I "get" that Sara's abductor has something to do with Kelton, but to what end? And stemming from what? Take this whole "Nathan" thi...
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