Okay, not literally, but who else was really impressed by David Denman’s (Roy from The Office) performance on In Plain Sight this week? I did not know the actor had a dramatic side to him. I mean, sure, his arc was kind of stupid, but, bravo on the acting chops. Very impressive.
What was not so impressive was the show that surrounded the guest star. But, to begin with the positive: I love how this week got back to focusing on the witness. For all of you who’ve read my complaints on the subject, this is what I meant by getting back to the guests. We still got plenty of Mary and Marshall, but the witness was no longer merely a tool for the stars. Instead, he was central to a story in which the stars played a lead role. Big different, and wildly different results. I liked the back to basics.
What didn’t work for me was the actual story, but that stuff’s hit or miss on shows like this. You can’t love them all. However, you can expect a little bit of clarity, something I feel that this episode did not provide.
I was left scratching my head enough, that I have no problem articulating my question, potentially only to have it all knocked down by some simple plot point that I missed. Here goes: did this episode take place in Albuquerque, or in Chicago? I ask, because it sure seemed like a coincidence that the bodies of the two people from the shipyard, or wherever, back in Illinois, were in the New Mexico desert when Mary and co. went searching for “Miles.” Am I the only one who got confused there?
Also, what was a therapist (that was Ali Marsh, right?) brought in to work with PTSD-related psych stuff in law-enforcement personnel doing consulting on a witness who possibly made up a wife and son? Her prior relationship with Mary doesn’t make her more informed about WIITSEC, so really she was just as much an “outsider” as an outsider, trained in the specialty, would have been. Talk about a really poor way of bringing back a guest star.
And, for what? So she and Marshall could not get together? You know, when we’re happy with the flow of a series, we never question the ridiculous nature of many of its moves. But, come on! It’s okay to be disappointed, people, because it says that you care, that you long for your show to return to the greatness, or in this case potential, that it once displayed. There’s only so long that good will, and what you did for me yesterday, will carry you through.
But, you know, I would gladly take all the rest of this episode, if I could get rid of Brandi’s story in the trade. What??? The drug-running narcissist is now a humanitarian, who helps some guy on the street, gets him to a hospital, waits for word on his condition, and then weeps at what I imagine was some connection she drew from the experience to her own life, which I totally missed?
I hear all of you getting set to tell me this is growth, that all characters have natural progressions. And there’s the rub. Natural obviously can’t mean as long on TV as it does in real life, but it does mean that there’s a progression. The sin of In Plain Sight this season is that it has decided to be impatient when it comes to letting things evolve.
We’ve experienced so many things that have simply been tossed at us, just to get it out there, to get it done with, that the quality of the story-telling has started to deteriorate. Disagree with me all you want, tell me how television has to do things on its own timetable. But in a few weeks, or next season, or whenever, we will reach a point on the show where none of us have any idea how we’ve arrived at where we are, and none of the characters will seem to have taken the necessary steps to be there either. To go to an extreme, it will be the equivalent of Jinx receiving her ten-years sober medallion after week four of being clean.
Then you’ll see. Plainly. You know, because of the title. The show’s title. Yeah.
Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Jun 30, 2009 @ 18:00 EST5EDT
When Denman’s character says he can show the Marshals where the boy is buried, he’s in Albuquerque where most of the episode takes place. In the next scene with the police and dogs in the park, they’re in Chicago. I agree that the transition was handled poorly; I could only tell because the light looked different, as if they used another lens filter to say Midwest.
Either Mary or Marshall introduced Dr. Finkle as being with the Marshal Service. Although they meant for her to be mistaken as just another agent, it’s still possible that this was true, and that she works with the Service full-time. I think her security clearance was more important than her specialization at this initial stage. Presumably if her treatment in Albuquerque didn’t work, the witness would have been shipped off to a more appropriate facility by the government.
Brandi’s old self was the woman who walked past the old beggar without a glance. It was the second pass when he was on the sidewalk in obvious distress that we saw the better person she’s trying to become. I don’t doubt that she’ll have more setbacks along the way.
*POST AUTHOR*
Yeah, I had no idea. I thought maybe that was true that they were in Chicago, but then they were back home so quickly (because, I assume he was NOT being settled back in Chicago), that I assumed they had never left New Mexico.
Mary introduced Shelley Finkle as an agent, but she was introduced to the show as “the department psychologist, there for Mary’s traumatic incident debriefing and evaluation.” I think her scope is external to what the Marshals actually do, which would likely mean she’s as outside of their circle as everyone else. Of course, that’s just my best guess.
Ah, but I specifically noted at the time that Mary avoided calling Dr. Finkle an agent, so the witness could not accuse her of actually lying when he found out the truth. She didn’t call her a doctor either, just “she’s with the Marshal Service,” so she was definitely trying to avoid the witness putting his guard up around a psychologist.
I didn’t remember the exact details of Finkle’s first episode, so I was just extrapolating from the broad strokes. Since she’s officially with the Department, she’s got to have security clearance and confidentiality, and can probably be cleared for witnesses on a case-by-case basis, which I’m assuming was true here. In any case, she’s a more appropriate choice than just grabbing some civilian doctor.
As to Brandi, that’s the difference between what “the writers want us to think” and “what happens on the show.” It’s up to the viewer to decide what constitutes sufficient suspension of disbelief.
*POST AUTHOR*
Okay, I checked back and you are correct. At best, I would call it a misrepresentation, but Mary did not outright lie when introducing Finkle..
I guess you could also be right about Dr. Finkle, but, from my perspective, she was introduced to us as a PTSD in law enforcement personnel specialist. Whether she’s okay as far as clearance goes, or not, her reappearance still seemed a bit like, “oh yeah, we introduced her, so, why bring someone new in?” Not that it matters too much; just a thought.
I would have to re-watch but I think there was a location title at the bottom of the screen when they moved from the desert to Chicago.
I didn’t get why she was crying either – I can accept that she helped the guy after the nurse told he3r the trranslation of what he kept calling Brandi (a healing spirit?).
Wow that was bad grammar in the second part of my post.
What I meant to say was that I did not get why Brandi was crying after the nurse translated what he had been saying to her throughout – I think he called her a healing spirit.
I could accept the idea of her helping him after she had passed him by when he was begging. She must have spent a lot of time picking up mom so it would be second nature, staying with him after he was taken in for treatment does stretch things a little. I guess the writers want us to think she is growing.
*POST AUTHOR*
You may be right; I can’t read subtitles from my couch. I can’t find the episode on Hulu or the show’s site yet, but I’ll check when it goes up.
I agree about Brandi. I felt as if the writers said: “Hmm, that Brandi’s supposed to be growing as a person. How can we fit her in on this story? We can’t? Okay, so she’s walking down the street, and she helps a guy in need. Yes, totally natural, and it fits perfectly. Next week, she’ll teach a lesson on saying no to drugs at a local high school.”
*POST AUTHOR*
You’re right. It said “Chicago, Illinois, Next Day.” I said above that I was sure I’d raise the question only to have it knocked down by a plot point that I missed…
I didn’t see that one either; I guess I barely notice a chyron if it’s not on The Middleman.
*POST AUTHOR*
You just had me scrambling to figure out what kind of geek speak (no offense) a “chyron on The Middleman” is. Got it now … crafty. ;)
Hey, anything that gets more eyes on the cool
glass of milk that is The Middleman is kosher in my book.
I actually really liked this episode, as I like all the episodes where I can fast forward through the Brandi/Jinx parts and still get a good story. I do like this show a lot, but Brandi and Jinx really, REALLY annoy me. About 90% of the time now I just fast forward through any scenes involving them. If Mary’s in the scene, I’ll give it a chance before hitting the button, but no Mary? Immediate fast forward.
*POST AUTHOR*
Sing it, Tanya! Where’ve you been all this time that I’ve had words about them both? :)
That is how I felt about them last season. This season is slightly better, not counting last week’s annoy fest.
Tanya – you describe exactly how I feel about Evan on Royal Pains. I can not hit the fast forward button quickly enough when he is on screen!
I will give you that Brandi’s arc this week was completely pointless. Maybe it sets something up down the road, but I think they just wiffed bad on this one.
*POST AUTHOR*
YES! Like Ross admitting to Phoebe that there’s maybe the teeniest, tiniest, possibility that he’s wrong … but I’d hate to be Phoebe … let’s go with Johnny Drama’s VICTORY!
I’m a few days late here but I saw a hugely problematic plot hole.
The guy is all traumatized & makes up a son when he stops the smugglers & the kids die?
So WHO IS HE TALKING TO ON THE PHONE IN THE BEGINNING? Why does he tell the smugglers he wants to get home to his kid?
It made no sense to me.
He’s hearing the imaginary son’s voice in his head, just like the actor is in real life. There’s no one on the other end of the phone. I just saw Simon Pegg do the same thing in Ice Age 3.
*POST AUTHOR*
Wendy- I felt the same way.
Ryan- I think Wendy’s saying that his seeing the smugglers preceded his finding the dead kids, which preceded the imaginary son. At the time that he was chatting with them, he would not have been making up a son at the other end of the line. It is a plot problem.
No, it’s the other way around. Remember, after he chats with his “son,” he drops the forklift full of boxes on the guys inside their car, then runs off, and then we see his WITSEC ID. I doubt he went back to work the next morning while waiting for the U.S. Attorney to file his paperwork.
From what he says in the episode, we eventually learn that he had two encounters with the smugglers. The first time, he didn’t confront them. He heard some noises, ignored them, and then found the two bodies of the illegals later, when nobody else was around. His guilt after that, when he didn’t work or eat, eventually led him to suppress the memory of the deaths and invent his son to cope with the trauma. He then goes back on the job, talking up his son to everyone around him.
*POST AUTHOR*
You know, my wife said the same thing; I just have no recollection of his mentioning two encounters with smugglers. So, you’re saying that he went through the whole dead body episode, and went back to work, but then later saw two guys smuggling whatever and went into WITSEC?
I guess it’s certainly plausible that, if you talk about something enough, no one has any reason to doubt you. This is getting beyond the scope of the show, but, if he had a relationship with the two smugglers, wouldn’t they find it odd if one day he was childless, and the next he had a six year-old son? I know it’s impossible for show-writers to imagine every conceivable thing that viewers might have a problem with, but I’m just not grasping the whole made up kid story. I mean, it’s over and done with, but as long as it’s still a topic of conversation, and we’re waiting on a new episode…
No, I deleted it before your review, so I’ve had to write all this discussion from memory.
Oh, the incident we see between Ed and the smugglers definitely wasn’t their first time hearing about his son. In fact, after Ed left, I got the impression that they were kind of sick of him talking about his kid all the time. There’s nothing to suggest that time had not passed between the two incidents, so that Ed could have encountered them several times during that period.
Certainly your mailman would know your son, because he’s seen him around your residence. My point was that my UPS guy doesn’t know anything about my family, because I only see him at work, same as Ed and the smugglers. Certainly they have a familiarity with each other, but to me it seemed the sort of casual familiarity you have with customers or a co-worker from another office.
Ed also seems to skip Take Your Child to Work Day.
Yeah, it’s really only the kind of plot that becomes clear on the second viewing. You’re following a character along in their own viewpoint when suddenly the writers pull the rug out from under you, either through memory loss/rewriting, POV trickery, or clones/holodecks. If you were multitasking again while watching this episode, it’s easy enough to miss.
(IMDb finally added the credit, and Denman’s character was Ed Fogerty/Flint).
The point of the first incident was that Ed suppressed everything about it, which is why he was able to return to work two weeks later. The smugglers never saw him that time so they didn’t suspect anything. The second incident, when Ed catches them in the act and they want to kill him, he’s still working with his alternate memories when he enters WITSEC. The confrontation wasn’t traumatic enough to trigger yet another set of memories. It is only when Mary finds him in the desert later that Ed makes his breakthrough, and leads them to the bodies.
I don’t recall if they mentioned Ed’s family or not, but I can see his friends distancing themselves when he started talking crazy. As to the two smugglers, remember they’re not friends or even co-workers of Ed’s. They’re delivery drivers for a company, one of many that ship cargo through Ed’s yard, and he only sees them when they’re dropping off or picking up (at least, there’s no mention of them even getting together for beers). They have the same kind of casual conversations I have with the UPS guy that’s assigned to my neighborhood. They might find it odd that Ed’s suddenly so excited about his kid all the time, but they probably never even knew he didn’t have a son before that. It could just have been that his son’s finally old enough to share Ed’s passion for astronomy.
It is strange to discuss an episode so thoroughly that I didn’t even like all that much (found Ed even more annoying than Roy), but this is always a fun show for me. I have no idea why USA decided to give all their programming a week off. And having to wait for Harper’s Island on CBS isn’t cool either.
*POST AUTHOR*
I sincerely hope you didn’t experience said second viewing….
I suppose I can get behind the memory suppression thing after the initial incident with the smuggling. I did get the impression, however, that, while they may have been chatting politely, the smugglers knew full-well about Ed’s kid (more than from recent ramblings). Maybe some sort of subtle nuance that they gave that they shouldn’t have? Or vice versa? I don’t know.
I did go back to re-watch the scene after finishing the episode, and I experienced the same thing that I had the first time: like my mailman (and I live in an apartment building) knows my 14 month-old son, and has since he was born, and would recognize him with or without me (in fact, that’s how he realized my wife was my wife), despite how many people live in my building, or are otherwise on his route. It’s a familiarity that develops, that the smugglers and Ed really gave off in that initial scene.
But, then again, I could be reading too much into it. It just doesn’t sit 100%. Okay. I’m sure we’ll have plenty more differing of opinions come the next episode! :)
Whoops, hit the wrong reply again. Please see “July 10, 2009 at 6:31 PM” comment above.
Aryeh, how do you track comments? The Recent Comments section in the sidebar only shows the last five, and I have to go back to this page regularly to check for replies. Then there are the folks who comment on posts that are several months old which I never see unless I happen to be on the site at the time.
*POST AUTHOR*
“Ed also seems to skip Take Your Child to Work Day.”
Silly. :-)
I suppose I can see what you’re saying, especially if there was a solid window of time between the two incidents with the smugglers. I still think anything short of Ed’s discussing his son for the entirety of his relationship with the two guys would smell foul (for all we know, he could have been discussing a six year-old with guys he’s known for ten years, for all of the last 3 weeks. That would seem more than a little suspicious.) But it’s also possible that they had a conversation in which they discussed that and he “cleared it up.” So, who knows. On to this week.
Also, as the writer of a post, I actually get notified when a comment has been left on one of my pieces. It’s a bit of an unfair advantage. But, I asked around a bit for you, and discovered a couple of things, some of which may be useful now, others to come:
Some frequent readers/commentators find that adding a bookmark to a special folder helps. You can drag the bookmark of any thread that you’re following into it, and then quickly check each one to see if there’s anything added worth continuing. A pain, I know, but it beats hopscotching around the entire site.
We’re also looking into two things to aid people who are regular readers. Both will enable ease of use, either by receiving notification when a comment is made on a post you’re following, or maybe via RSS. Right now they’re being researched.
In the meantime, I appreciate the effort to keep this conversation going! :-)
As I said previously, it would be easy enough to explain that Ed’s son just started sharing his interests recently, or maybe his ex-wife that has custody recently moved closer to Ed’s place, so it’s not such a long commute any more.
But really, just dial back your omniscience from audience member to a low-level smuggler. To you, Ed is just the security guy at the shipping yard. Your reaction would be more “I didn’t know you had a son” than “This guy is acting screwy all of a sudden. Maybe he found one of our packages and he’s onto us.” The two drivers were no Michael Westen either. They might be suspicious, but not enough to do anything drastic about Ed.
Thanks for checking. Yeah, the system from TV Squad would be fine. Site tracking would also let us put up avatars like you writers, which would help to differentiate me from the lower-case ryan that’s been posting recently.
*POST AUTHOR*
Right; I suppose it’s tough to imagine being in someone else’s shoes, but you’re likely right. If you’re trying to do your job, and just listening to some guy prattle on with only half an ear, you might not even notice, and certainly wouldn’t care.
Although, who knows if one of the guys wasn’t a “Michael Westen” – style, burned spy? The spies, my friend, they are among us.
Ryan, if you go to en.gravatar.com, you can set up an avatar that will show up here. Just make sure you register with the e-mail address that you use to post comments on CC. It should show up on your posts automatically after that.
Thanks, Bob! If it worked, the image is of a Tachikoma.
*POST AUTHOR*
Oh, it worked. Wow, did it work.
Reset the World! :-)
It’s kind of creepy how it goes back and fills in all my old posts, though.