Television Review: Persons Unknown

NBC’s Persons Unknown has plenty of plot holes and leaps of logic, but it also has an addicting quality that keeps you coming back for more.

NBC, Mondays, 8 PM EST

By John J. Joex

Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars (after 4 episodes)

The Summer season is usually a time of low viewership for the broadcast networks and they try to fill these interim months with low-cost reality shows, repeats, and cast-offs that got yanked from the schedule during the regular season. They also tend to work in some original scripted shows, but you have to wonder about these since the network execs did not have enough confidence in them to schedule the shows during a time when more viewers might encounter them. Persons Unknown from NBC is one of these shows (as is ABC’s The Gates which airs on Sunday nights) and after viewing four episodes I can see where the NBC brass might have been scratching their heads over this one and wondering what to do with it.

The series follows seven strangers who wake in a town they have never seen before not knowing how they arrived there. They find the place mostly vacant, but also discover that they cannot leave it because several visible and not so visible barriers block their exit. They also find an extensive network of cameras monitoring their every move. The only other inhabitants are a handful of people working at a Chinese restaurant preparing food for the seven new arrivals and the night manager of the hotel where they are staying. The seven people question these other inhabitants, but get little information and eventually just accept their presence. They then go about trying to find some means of escape while also pondering about the identity and motives of their captors and also casting a suspicious eye at their fellow abductees.

Persons Unknown is a mystery series created and written by Academy Award winning screenwriter Christopher McQuarie (The Usual Suspects) that harkens back at times to genre entries like The Prisoner, Cube, and even Lost. It has not displayed any overt Science Fiction elements yet, but it definitely would appeal to fans of the genre. It is heavily serialized like Lost and definitely demands much of the viewers’ attention as they try to sort out the details and unlock the mystery.

So far, the series has presented a mostly intriguing and engaging story that continues to string the viewer along and draw them into the overall mystery. However, the series is marred by plenty of leaps of logic, plot holes, and challenges to our suspension of disbelief. And the abductees seem to concede to their fate a bit too easily and their reactions seem more like those of characters in a TV series reacting the way the writers find it convenient to further the story as opposed to actual people demonstrating more plausible responses to their predicaments. A few examples: the abductees seemed to accept the presence of the night manager and the restaurant workers too quickly whereas I would have expected them to grill them with more questions. I have a hard time believing they would have considered as a viable course of action a plan to tunnel out of a town where their actions are constantly monitored (and would have spent a full week at this task). When they only received three gas masks among the seven of them, I believe this would have sparked a more severe reaction and would have quickly descended into violence. It really bothered me that the others, especially Bill and Charlie, did not try harder to get into the taxi in the last episode.

The series has any of a number of lapses like this that just make you cringe as you watch it leaves you wishing they had addressed the loose ends a little better. In fact, one simple addition could have helped frame the situation better. If they had added a few security people to the town with tazers or something like that whose job is was to keep the abductees in line, I could accept their reactions better. Without something along those lines, it continues to bug me just how easily they acquiesce to the dilemmas presented. Still, I find the show at least mildly captivating and somewhat addicting. The plot holes have not undone my interest in unraveling the mystery just yet and the final scene of episode four may have presented a potential explanation to some of those loose ends currently gnawing at me. In addition, the actors have done more than a bang-up job at bringing their characters to life and soliciting just enough sympathy that you hope at least some of them survive.

But I have to admit that right now the series is at a pivotal point where it could go either way and could start losing me pretty quickly or really pulling me in and keeping me on board until the end. The end of the last episode showed some promise and they could start unfolding some of the mysteries over the next few weeks. Or this one could go completely into left field and leave me less than interested in sticking it through to the end. At least we know the story will have a definite ending as it is planned as a thirteen episode limited series with a conclusion (that will almost certainly leave plenty of options open for a sequel series).

The main question at this point is whether the show will get the chance to air out all thirteen of those episodes. It has not done great in the ratings so far, pulling around a 1.2 rating and less than three and a half million viewers. It’s last airing saw a significant drop, though, when the network moved the show from 10 PM to 8 PM, apparently catching a lot of viewers off guard. NBC has not had much success with genre shows in the Summer with Fear Itself in 2008 and The Listener in 2009 both disappearing from the schedule after poor early-Summer ratings performances. Person Unknown could be on that same track and may not get the chance to finish airing its thirteen episodes. Fans can take some solace in knowing that last year NBC finally allowed The Listener to air its remaining episodes on Hulu, but I believe they did not make it there until sometime in Fall. In the mean time, we can just hope that Persons Unknown ekes out enough viewers to stay on the air until its finale. [Update 7/1: NBC announced that they will move the show to Saturdays after the July 5th broadcast]

Watch Full Episodes of Persons Unkown Online at Hulu.com

Go to TV.com for more info on Persons Unkown including Episode guides and Cast bios