[SPOILERS] It's strange, but I have next to no emotional attachment to the characters of Persons Unknown after eight episodes, so the juice of enjoyment is being squeezed entirely by the plot. Trouble is, even the storyline's struggling to hold my attention (particularly when it leaves the confines of the town), although "Saved" delivered some unexpected twists and provided intriguing insight into Joe's (Jason Wiles) past."Saved" was a deliberately bizarre episode, as so much of it took the form of drug-enhanced flashbacks, coated in thick fuzziness. Joe's been removed from the town by his superiors, given a full body shave, strapped to a table in a crucifixion pose, and connected to IV drips that are pumping him full of a drug to ensure his obedience as part of The Program.
Flashbacks reveal that Joe was once a priest in a deprived South American town, who shot and killed a man (who and why, we don't know yet) and thus earned himself a one-way ticket to the town courtesy of Tom's (Reggie Lee) tazer gun. Assumedly his experience there opened his eyes to the benefits of The Program and he joined The Organization as their most trusted, almost exalted, aide? But all of that's now in jeopardy, with his superiors believing his love for Janet (Daisy Betts) has started to cloud his commitment to the cause.
Elsewhere in town, everyone was adjusting to the possibility that Joe's been "eliminated"; Blackham (Sean O'Bryan) started to lose whatever semblance of self-esteem he has left after sustained vilification; and Moira (Tina Holmes) began to doubt the usefulness of the "clue wall" she's been building, until McNair (Chadwick Boseman) talked her round by revealing his deeper feelings for her.
Perhaps the most intriguing element of "Saved" was the reveal that "dead" Tori's (Kate Lang Johnson) alive and a member of The Program, currently assigned to be Joe's nurse while he undergoes "reprogramming". Or was she just a familiar face Joe was hallucinating? I'm more convinced by the idea Tori was a plant all along, so this means there were two moles amongst the original group that arrived in town. There were also hints that Blackham possibly knows more about why he's in this situation than he's let on, too. Notice the scenes with Blackham ranting at the hotel cameras about his situation, which felt to me like he'd perhaps agreed to undergo this "therapy", but has got more than he bargained for.
Towards the end of this episode, the town's perimeter barrier was turned off to allow Blackham to leave, but he instead decided to return to the town and use his proven "loyalty" to endear himself further to his kidnappers. Is this a hint that Blackham, perhaps like Joe before him, is being groomed into being an obedient lapdog for The Program, or is it just Stockholm Syndrome taking effect? His kidnappers are effectively the only people who have ever taken an interest him, after all.
As usual, events outside of the town were plodding and dull, such is the insipidness of Mark (Gerald Kyd) and Kat's (Lola Glaudini) characters. In particular, Kat appears to exist for exactly two reasons: a sounding board for Mark, and to translate foreigners for him (she not only speaks fluent Italian, she also knows Mexican this week!) Wherever Mark's investigation into his ex-wife's disappearance takes him, you can be sure Kat knows the lingo. This week, they went to see a crazy asylum inmate Angela Barragan (Joanna Lipari), supposedly the only person to ever escape The Program with her life, who also worked as its Director once. She gave them nothing of value, beyond knowledge that Joe was once a local clergyman who went missing.
When you write down what happened, it sounds like an engaging story with plenty of forward momentum. I guess that's partly true of "Saved", but the manner in which Persons Unknown tells its story during the episodes just doesn't grab you on a deeper level beyond simply collecting facts to add to your mental collage. I have sympathy for Janet and Joe's characters, I quite like Alan Ruck's performance (although he's been wasted for weeks now), Erika (Kandyse McClure) made a great first impression that's beginning to cool now, but everyone else is so thin and uninvolving it's hard to feel any attachment whatsoever.
Overall, Persons Unknown is clearly a show that's reheating some old ideas in a fairly enjoyable manner, but it's crippled by the weak characters and a feeling of ambivalence toward the situation that I can't shake. The "what's going on?" hook is losing its grip, and there's no real threat to anyone stuck in that town now. The only character who's faced real problems and dilemmas is Joe, and he's essentially one of the bad guys!
Asides
- How was Joe taken from that bathroom, huh? Answer me that! Is this the first clue that the town isn't real and everyone's actually strapped to medical beds like Joe, being administered drugs that make them share a group nightmare? A sort of proto-Matrix affair?
- Angela may have escaped The Program, but clearly The Organization are okay with her as a loose-end because they have one of their ubiquitous cameras in her cell!
WRITER: Linda McGibney
DIRECTOR: Bill Eagles
GUEST CAST: Reggie Lee, Lola Glaudini, Kate Lang Johnson, Joanna Lipari, Andy Greenfield, Alan Smyth, Ismael 'East' Carlo & Adam Lieberman
TRANSMISSION: 31 July 2010 - NBC, 8/7c
