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STUDIO: Lions Gate
MSRP: $39.98
RATED: NR
RUNNING TIME: 810 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES: They’re Missing.
The Pitch
They have a psychic FBI agent and they still can’t find Bin Laden.
"When they were talking Missing, I didn’t know they meant your underwear…"
The Humans
Vivica (is) A. Fox, Caterina Scorsone, Mark Consuelos, Justin Louis.
The Nutshell
Nicole Scott, an ass-kicking sistah with an FBI badge, a gun and a bad attitude (Fox) takes over as the new partner to psychic agent-in-training, Jess Mastriani (Scorsone). Together, they solve missing persons cases for the bureau that range from a murdered woman who’s not really murdered, a kid who turns up 10 years after he was supposed to have died in a car crash, and the daughter of a judge who was never missing to begin with. They have a forensic guy that used to have a brief thing with Scott and a hard-ass boss who likes to take all the credit for their work.
"So after we use our FBI-issued desktop computer to identify the perp, and drink our FBI-issued coffee while we wait in our FBI-issued offices, we’ll eventually arrest him with our FBI-issued handguns."
"You know, we really could use a little product placement here and there to jazz the show up a little."
"Hey, yeah…you got any ideas?"
The Package
Fox and Scorsone: nice. This disc set: not so nice. No behind-the-scenes, no character profiles, no commentaries, no nude shots of Fox nor Corsone…. On the real, this offering is bare bones. Or as we say in the biz, it’s Calista Flockhart…who coincidentally, has been missing since Ally McBeal ended. The cover art looks like refried Photoshop crap.
"I never knew working for the man was going to be so exciting, you know all this undercover work and everything."
"Yeah, being an Angel rocks…"
The Lowdown
Considering that this is a Lifetime Network show, it would be easy to say that this is just a chick version of Without a Trace, NCIS or other shows that deal with cops or government agents who aren’t chasing aliens, flukemen or Eugene Tooms. And honestly, it is a chick version of those shows. There’s a lot of sensitivity, mostly from Scorsone, female bonding, and female empowerment as Fox usually plays bad cop and beats the info out of perps. The show features some admittedly clever writing at times; and even though the psychic angle makes the show somewhat different, it’s a device that comes off as too much of a gimmick more times than not. I had to watch That’s So Raven not too long ago and that show features the same kind of psychic gimmick and it’s so lame on that show that I couldn’t get that out of my head when watching this one. Another thing I couldn’t get out of my head was that at times, the show came off a little too much like Walker, Texas Ranger when the physical stuff was broken out. Nevertheless, Missing is watchable, if more than a little derivative. Probably best to not let your buddies know that you’re a fan if you do watch the show cause you know, it’s on Lifetime.