Is anyone else watching Persons Unknown? It’s this summer’s Harpers Island — you know, a serialized mystery whose payoff happens at the end of amazing weather instead of having to wait six years to find out that the last season was, in fact, just some sort of dogmic purgatory. So, knowing what the hell happened at the end of a few seasons? Check. Thorough writing staff and film-like production quality? Not quite. But for what it is, Persons Unknown is good enough popcorn TV. The premise of this one finds a group of people waking up locked in what appears to be hotel rooms, not knowing how they got there or where they are. Some remember getting into a cab, some simply went to bed like normal, some are mysterious brooding bearded men whose background “you don’t want to know about” and whose intentions are as gray as half my closet. So, it’s not boundary-breaking character study but it is sort of creepy in the kind of way that after they break out they find an abandoned small town and there’s a whole crew of Chinese people cooking them dinner. There’s also a creepy “night manager” at the hotel who looks a lot like Mr. Bean and a microwave fence around the perimeter or some shit, but more on that later.
Here’s a handy guide to the kidnapping victims:
1. Janet Cooper: She’s the main character of the show — the one whose kidnapping we get to witness and who will, assumedly, serve as the moral compass for the mystery. In "Pilot" we watch as it appears that her daughter is about to be kidnapped but then she is in fact taken away. There’s a shady past with her shady, mysterious ex (who she can’t even seem to locate with the help of a PI) and she has one creepy, Type-A mother who is currently taking care of her daughter, Megan. Given a fortune cookie whose text told her to kill Joe in order to gain freedom, she refused to play the puppetmaster’s sick game. Instead, she screamed at the camera in his room and made empty threats that she had no kind of leverage to make. I will, no doubt, find her super annoying but I’m sure her mysterious family connections come into play.
2. Sergeant Graham McNair: Look! An even-tempered black, Muslim soldier! This certainly makes up for the caricatures of Chinese people who work in the restaurant. Although his character has all the dimensions of a piece of paper, I like him because he’s pragmatic and has skills applicable to this situation. Although, his argument against torturing the Night Manager (“it never works”) is a little silly to me. That dude has to know something.
3. Joe Tucker: The MacGuyver of the show is probably an ex-mercenary or cop gone bad or just conman in general. He becomes the impromptu leader of the group, mostly because everyone else is a blistering idiot. You just know that he and Janet are going to hook up and I think that he knows more about this place than he lets on — or he did some job for whoever is running it.
4. Moira Doherty: Shit, this chick is Irish. At first Moira, wandering around is a bathrobe and looking intermittedly twitchy and insane, tells the group that she’s a psychiatrist. She explains that the implants in their legs are time and location released tranquilizers and later cuts those fuckers out of everyone’s legs. She also, apparently, knows a lot about butterflies, as we find out after Tori finds one in her room. She gets all creepy during her “bonding” time with Tori and I’m a little afraid of a predatory lesbian portrayal, but mostly I’m just concerned with the fact that she admits that she isn’t actually a psychiatrist — she’s actually a mental patient. And she cut those things out of their legs!!! I think she probably knows something more about this place, too — whether the crazy allows her to remember or not.
5. Tori Fairchild: This chick shows up hungover and snobby in a dress that’s too short for her own good. She’s the daughter of an American Ambassador to Italy/former C.I.A. head, and according to flashbacks knows a little more than she should about him. Her knowledge will probably keep her around longer than the typical blonde bimbo.
6. Bill Blackham: Here’s the asshole — there’s always one in these sorts of situations. His used-car salesman character reminded me of the dick in the remake of Dawn of the Dead, which led me to the realization that that dick was none other than Phil Dunphy of Modern Family fame — that show just got a whole lot more creepy. I get that the writers had to have a foil, and I’m sure that there will be some secret agreement between him and whoever’s running the joint that gets one of my favorite character killed, but for now I just want him to shut his fat mouth.
7. Charlie Morse: It’s Cameron! All grown up! Or, as my friend Meagan put it, “that guy who’s on all those TV shows!” He’s playing a CEO of some blah, blah, blah but all that really matters is that he’s very concerned about his “sick” wife. I suspect she’s crazy and was in the same loony bin as Moira.
And there are your main characters. Meanwhile, back in the real world there’s a subplot of a journalist hunting down the story (dead ends abound, especially when someone is sent to shut him up), Janet’s mom—who claims to have never even met her ex-husband (lie) and a bunch of untied ends in town.
My issues so far:
1. Why have they not searched all of the buildings in town? Why haven’t they covered up the cameras? Why are they still communicating out loud? Smoke that sucker out of his hole!
2. When they finally escape the perimeter, but end up looping back into town, I can buy that there’s some sort of optical illusion that points the road right back to where they began but why does everyone react like it’s an “Aw, shucks” moment? Where are their “What the hell is going on here?” faces? And why does no one ask the night manager where the hell he went when he ran off?
3. Speaking of, how about interrogating the Chinese Restaurant staff instead of just mowwing down on the food that is probably slowing placating/poisoning them.
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