09-06-2010, 09:20 PM
By Tom Conroy
Oct 6, 2009
Oct 6, 2009
Another attempt to put a new spin on the crime-procedural genre, “The Forgotten” fails because the show’s premise raises more questions than the crimes themselves. In each episode of the series (airing on ABC on Tuesdays at 10 p.m.), the members of the Chicago branch of the fictional Forgotten Network try to help the police identify the remains of an unknown person. The Forgotten Network is based on actual volunteer groups that perform this worthy service.
The Chicago team is led by Alex Donovan (Christian Slater), a former cop who left the force after his own daughter was kidnapped; she is still missing. The other volunteers are a mixed bunch. Among them are Candace (Michelle Borth), an office worker who seems to have joined the group because she was bored; Lindsey (Heather Stephens), whose husband apparently committed a high-profile crime while deceiving her about his true nature; and Walter (Bob Stephenson), a telephone lineman who joined to provide lame comic relief.
In the pilot, after Alex learns that the police have stopped trying to identify a young woman found dead near a highway, he assembles the team via a text-message blast. It’s unclear whether the shots of the ordinary citizens reading the messages are meant to be a parody of those scenes of superheroes in their secret identities receiving a call to action. Thanks to a tactless minor character, we learn early on that Alex suffered “a little bit of a meltdown” before leaving the force. Nonetheless, a former colleague, Grace Russell (Rochelle Aytes), lets him examine crime scenes and participate in interrogations and arrests.
More implausibly, the unidentified bodies in the first two episodes turn out to be those of young, pretty, Caucasian, middle-class women who were murdered. As the cases develop, it also turns out that both knew several people who had the means, motive and opportunity to kill them.
Nonetheless, the unarmed civilian investigators stroll right up to the potentially murderous suspects and start asking them leading questions. Evidently, this show isn’t meant to be a documentary-style dramatization of the real-life volunteer groups’ work.
Many other aspects of the show prove distracting. Chief among them is the casting of Christian Slater, whose first attempt at series TV, the dual-identity 2008 action series “My Own Worst Enemy,” lasted only nine episodes.
Unlike that series, “The Forgotten” isn’t a Slater vehicle. Playing a generic TV-drama part—the troubled head of a dedicated team—he muffles the sarcastic arrogance he usually brings to the screen. With his star power dialed down, Slater brings no more to the role than many TV standbys could have brought. It’s no wonder that ABC’s promotional campaigns barely mention him.
Like most of the dramas produced by the prolific Jerry Bruckheimer, “The Forgotten” boasts good production values. The establishing shots of the Chicago skyline are beautiful, and nearly every scene is shot in a golden blur of sunlight. When we see the victims in flashback, the lighting is even blurrier, so we barely see them at all.
The dialogue is either flat or overwrought, especially when the Forgotten Network volunteers talk about the importance of their work. After reminding her fellow team members that you’re given a name when you enter the world, Candace says, “You should have it when you leave.”
Perhaps so viewers will empathize with the victims, each one delivers posthumous narration, delivered from a presumably eternal perspective: “I’m not waiting to be saved,” says one. “It’s too late for that. I’m waiting to be found.”
By the second episode, the premise was established, so the writers had more time to develop the mystery, and the story built to a decently suspenseful end. But in a network-TV world that’s become an alphabet soup of crime drama— with various versions of “CSI,” “NCIS” and “L&O”—a new procedural has to offer more than that.
The Chicago team is led by Alex Donovan (Christian Slater), a former cop who left the force after his own daughter was kidnapped; she is still missing. The other volunteers are a mixed bunch. Among them are Candace (Michelle Borth), an office worker who seems to have joined the group because she was bored; Lindsey (Heather Stephens), whose husband apparently committed a high-profile crime while deceiving her about his true nature; and Walter (Bob Stephenson), a telephone lineman who joined to provide lame comic relief.
In the pilot, after Alex learns that the police have stopped trying to identify a young woman found dead near a highway, he assembles the team via a text-message blast. It’s unclear whether the shots of the ordinary citizens reading the messages are meant to be a parody of those scenes of superheroes in their secret identities receiving a call to action. Thanks to a tactless minor character, we learn early on that Alex suffered “a little bit of a meltdown” before leaving the force. Nonetheless, a former colleague, Grace Russell (Rochelle Aytes), lets him examine crime scenes and participate in interrogations and arrests.
More implausibly, the unidentified bodies in the first two episodes turn out to be those of young, pretty, Caucasian, middle-class women who were murdered. As the cases develop, it also turns out that both knew several people who had the means, motive and opportunity to kill them.
Nonetheless, the unarmed civilian investigators stroll right up to the potentially murderous suspects and start asking them leading questions. Evidently, this show isn’t meant to be a documentary-style dramatization of the real-life volunteer groups’ work.
Many other aspects of the show prove distracting. Chief among them is the casting of Christian Slater, whose first attempt at series TV, the dual-identity 2008 action series “My Own Worst Enemy,” lasted only nine episodes.
Unlike that series, “The Forgotten” isn’t a Slater vehicle. Playing a generic TV-drama part—the troubled head of a dedicated team—he muffles the sarcastic arrogance he usually brings to the screen. With his star power dialed down, Slater brings no more to the role than many TV standbys could have brought. It’s no wonder that ABC’s promotional campaigns barely mention him.
Like most of the dramas produced by the prolific Jerry Bruckheimer, “The Forgotten” boasts good production values. The establishing shots of the Chicago skyline are beautiful, and nearly every scene is shot in a golden blur of sunlight. When we see the victims in flashback, the lighting is even blurrier, so we barely see them at all.
The dialogue is either flat or overwrought, especially when the Forgotten Network volunteers talk about the importance of their work. After reminding her fellow team members that you’re given a name when you enter the world, Candace says, “You should have it when you leave.”
Perhaps so viewers will empathize with the victims, each one delivers posthumous narration, delivered from a presumably eternal perspective: “I’m not waiting to be saved,” says one. “It’s too late for that. I’m waiting to be found.”
By the second episode, the premise was established, so the writers had more time to develop the mystery, and the story built to a decently suspenseful end. But in a network-TV world that’s become an alphabet soup of crime drama— with various versions of “CSI,” “NCIS” and “L&O”—a new procedural has to offer more than that.
