BLOGS
Given the success rate of serialized horror/mystery TV shows in this country, it's cute that a show still wants to be the next Lost. But you have to try, right? If you don't try, you may never hit on that magic combination that results in a hit. So I'm certainly rooting for the new NBC show Persons Unknown, which follows seven strangers abducted and placed in an empty hotel on an empty street in the middle of nowhere. Besides Lost, many are comparing it to The Prisoner, or an episode of The Twilight Zone, or an installment in the Saw horror movie franchise (the first episode is bloodless, but shots are fired starting next week). But they're also comparing it to last summer's 13-episode mystery Harper's Island -- not to mention this spring's already-cancelled Happy Town -- and I'm hoping it doesn't get a similar treatment, either by the network or the writers.
For starters, I'm hoping they don't kill somebody in every episode, like they did with Harper's Island. It was hard to become invested in Harper's characters because you weren't sure who to trust, and you weren't sure who would be dead by next week. And did I mention there were a lot of them? Like 30? Unlike Harper's, Unknown show has a small and manageable cast, and I'd like to get to know them all while they're trapped in this town, which has a classy new hotel, a clueless front desk clerk (who seems to be in a similar if voluntary boat), a working (and delicious) Chinese restaurant and a main street that's about 500 feet long. Knowing that somebody might get shot next week already has me less interested in getting to know the characters (because why bother?), and without that, I don't know if I can invest myself in the whodunit.
That said, there are some characters I'm already annoyed with. The soldier who comes out of his hotel room choking people, not knowing what side they're on. The car salesman who ignores screams of help to go get a shotgun, and later leers at women who are checking their legs for remote-controlled sedative-releasing implants. Even the stubbly mystery man who won't tell anyone about his job or background irks me in a ruggedly handsome way. But I want to learn more about the single mom whose husband went missing long before she did, and who is possibly more afraid of her abusive mother than she is her abductors. And I want to see more of crazy Alan Ruck as a wealthy man prone to emotional outbursts. (Cameron Frye 4-EVA!) I want to know what's up with the blonde party girl who seems to be perpetually hungover. And I want to know how much you have to pay a team of apparently world-class Chinese cooks to come to a prison camp and cook for people who point shotguns and scream threats in lieu of leaving tips.
Like Harper's Island, Persons may turn out to be a story that could have been told in a two-hour movie, but by virtue of its 10-hour length was able to develop its characters beyond being cardboard cutouts, thereby making each of their introductions, revelations and even deaths more resonant. But hopefully they'll emulate Lost and keep their main characters alive for as long as possible -- at least a season or two.
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I wasn't impressed at all. You're right on the money about the negatives of the characters, but I found Janet to be obnoxious from the start, and I don't think that Charlie is a character worthwhile of Cameron. It's possible it will get better, but I'm not holding my breath. I also don't think it will make it even through the first season, and definitely not to a second.
I was kind of interested. I'll probably watch it for a couple of episodes. And I actually like the rugged mystery guy more than the mom.
Wine makes everything better, so this wasn't such a bad pilot. I need summer DVR fodder, so I'll keep watching. The mom is hawt.
The idea of having only GREAT chinese food available all day and night and no work might make me happy to live in this town.
I'm interested for sure.
I'm thinking both the desk clerk and the hotel workers have suffered through similar takings and lived their lives just the way these folks have. (the desk clerk seemed to indicate such...)
Suspending disbelief has been interesting... Could they all be personalities in one person's head? All of them dead in some kind of purgatory? Who know? But I want to find out... :)
the show is only supposed to be a 13 episode mini series
Well played Texas, well played, All this hype for nothing and you get everything you want.
DVR most half the season, or the whole season and watch through and through makes it easier to connect with the show. Dragging it out makes it boring. At least that is what I did, made the show much easier to watch when you can watch one after the other for the first 6 episodes.
What Happened to the show? All of a sudden it is off the air...My Mondays have not been the same since? WHY
I personally love the show, I am interested to see what the next episode will bring. I am very intrigued as to how Janet and Joe's relationship will play out now that he has suffered from a 'man-made' amnesia? I hope they explain to the characters that being touched makes him violent, but that would ruin the fun. I am interested to see where this goes, but I definitely couldn't see it being a full-time show- the plot/ story line would be very hard to work with, but look what they did with Ghost Whisperer.
Why? The cast of 'bad guys' in this one are too boring to keep interested. This is missing a script writer! Too many shots of slow movement without real dialog or purpose. Why? Some good guys casting that have potential, in ANOTHER SHOW! Start over with better writing!
stumbled across "persons" s01e01 a month ago. just watched e01 today and acquired e02 to e11. nice show.
After suspending ALL disbelief as one must with typical sci-fi, i am still bothered by a trend that i see with shows like V, fringe, Event, FlashForward, the cape, et cetra. The major premise of these shows are fine, except each week one is left wanting as the s01 unfolds ever so slowly. contrast with SG Universe derivative and it's ancestors, also star trek, where one gets, most times, a full dose of excitement within the open-middle-end of the weekly show. each epi being a full,exciting story with the same old char. doing what we expect them to do to solve the weekly problem. The other forementioned shows do not deliver a weekly punch. As an earlier commenter said, persons and other series that "unfold" can best be watched when one can watch epi after epi until drunk. Thus, i think shows that "unfold" would be best delivered in at least 2 hours per episode so character development is unimpeded while the writers can frame a "dilima" that pulls us to the edge of the seat, delivers a solid dose of excitement with in the make believe world and at the end a solution given that leaves the watcher satisfied and happy to wait till next Thur, let's say, to re-enter the "world" of the show. i just watched e01 to e06 in one sitting. i am now drunk with the show and will finish another day, in one sitting. good plot , good cast. btw, i feel caprica died from being a "
unfolding" story with the odd half season format, ugh. Yet it was a great mini story that could have went longer.
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