Back in the fall, I never saw much about a series called Absentia. I saw media reports earlier that Stana Katic, fresh off of Castle, was going to be in a new show sometime, but that was about it. But I recently saw a banner blurb about the show, and I thought it was just premiering this month, with no context for what it was. I assumed it was a generic mid-season replacement.

Imagine my surprise to find out that not only is it Stana Katic’s show, but it already premiered back in September and the first ten episodes have already aired. WTF?

Okay, so I’ve watched episode one, and it is a mind mess of epic proportions. Katic plays Emily Byrne, FBI agent with a husband and child. She disappears, presumed dead at the hands of a serial killer who removes the eyelids of his victims. The killer is convicted, life eventually goes on. Hubby remarries, gets a new mother for his son, son gets bigger.

Then, out of the blue, hubby gets a call…if he wants to save his first wife, he has 60 minutes to get to her location. He rushes out, she’s saved, and the mind freak begins. While she was being held and tortured for six years, life went on without her. Her son doesn’t know her, and has come to view the new wife as his mother. The former one is just a memory. Except now she’s walking around. Hubby is with the new wife, the ex-father-in-law hates the hubby for moving on or something, and a creepy brother is around to lend moral support and give her a place to live.

Meanwhile, the FBI is investigating the cases all over the place — her original murder now abduction, who held her for the six years since the killer that was convicted is still sitting in jail (and he wants out by the way), anything that might tie her old cases to her situation. They get a clue, they zero in on a suspect, all very straightforward until you get to the last 60 seconds when they drop a small bombshell on the case.

Is the show awesome? Not really, some of it has been done before. In fact, there was even a Castle season where he disappeared and came back with no memory. But what is relatively awesome is the muted tragedy of it all. Son trying to figure out what his relationship with his old mom is going to be. New wife feeling threatened initially and trying to hold on to her husband, fighting a ghost who is no longer a ghost. Hubby who gave up, moved on, and now realizes she was alive the whole time. And the victim herself, although there is some evidence in the episode that all is not as it appears to be. Where was she for the whole six years? Was she as out of it as she claims? Or does she not remember? If she was on a hellish island for five years and has come back to take up archery, everyone would call it derivative, but watching them all deal with a very dark situation is, indeed, pretty awesome. Drama without the over-acting.

I even love the husband as the male lead. But I’m suspicious of Daddy, the new wife, the brother, and several police officers. I feel like there’s a Red John twist coming sometime. And I’ll find out when it does, as I’m in for the duration.

The hard part is I have NO idea if the show will be “renewed”. It is very dark for network television, and I’m curious to see if it “lightens” up as she investigates her own abduction, and as evidence mounts against her for some crimes that were committed while she was being held.

Back in the fall, when I saw the upcoming shows for the 2017-18 season, I read the blurbs for “The Resident” and thought, “Umm, don’t we already have that show?”. More precisely, I thought:

FOX: The Resident – A medical show with hot actors? Yeah, they’ll try real hard to keep it, RENEWED;

Grey’s Anatomy, ER, heck even St. Elsewhere back in the day have all been hits with a similar formula. Residents, turnover, sex in patient rooms and closets, drama in and out of the hospital, oh, and let’s not forget the stakes here — we’re talking about potential DEATH. Or really bad ratings.

I can confess, right up front, I have very little interest in these shows. I watched St. Elsewhere, and I love the premises of the “disease of the week”, just as I do with Law and Order, etc. What I don’t like is the “extra” drama that feels more like soap opera scripting than nighttime drama. But as I’m male and pushing 50, I’m not the demographic they’re going for anyway.

So, let’s take a quick run-down on the regular requirements for a show like this:

1. New person to the group, to provide that outsider perspective, and to take the viewer along for the ride…check, we have Dr. Devon Pravash, new Harvard grad, played by Manish Dayal…and look, he used to be on the new 90210;
2. Hot male lead…Dr. Conrad Hawkins, brilliant / rude / egotistical, but you know his heart is in the right place because he carries around a picture of the first patient he ever killed and he hates the big baddie (see below)…Matt Czuchry checks the box, and his background is Gilmore Girls and The Good Wife;
3. Hot female lead…Nicolette Nevin, not listed as a doctor but acts like one, I’m sure they’ll figure that out over time…played by Emily VanCamp, it’s one of the few things I liked about the show, mostly as I miss the promise of the first season of Revenge; and,
4. A baddie…Dr. Randolph Bell, who we know is bad because he kills a patient on the operating table while his surgical team is taking selfies, and then covers it up…played by Bruce Greenwood, I first “met” him when he was playing on St. Elsewhere. He can play innocent and noble, or he can play slimy, this is his slimy version.

In the end, do I care?

Not really, but as I said, it’s not my kind of show. I didn’t feel there was a lot in the pilot that screams renewal, but it’s getting marketed out the wazoo, and Fox really wants this one to work. I’m betting they’ll get enough of a bounce to keep it past this year. But they’re going to need some more young hotties to keep it going.

The first half of the traditional TV season is over, and it’s time for the mid-season replacements to debut. Back when the announcements were made, here’s what I said about LA to Vegas:

FOX: L.A. to Vegas – Workplace comedy? Sure. Airlines to Vegas? Umm, no – CANCELLED;

Now that I’ve seen the first episode, I’d like to edit that to say, “Umm, HELL no”. If you took all the funny bits from the episode, condensed it down to 4-5 minutes, it wouldn’t make it as an SNL skit. During their slow years.

They had a cute line or two, sure. The opening premise of the stewardess arriving late to work, getting changed as she ran through the terminal, sprinting to the plane past the various passengers in time to get on board and greet the boarders. Her obviously gay steward coworker asks her to confirm if she got dressed in the terminal again, and cue the punchline, “At least I wore underwear this time”. Ba-dum bah.

The lead character is the stewardess and she goes from “I’m trying to get it together” to “existential crisis” to “total confidence in herself” as she flirts with a passenger at the end. All over the map. Wait, I think I have a line for the writers there…

She works with a pilot who’s a one-trick caricature (pilot, drunk, divorced, pathetic), gay co-steward, and a few regular passengers (a stripper, an econ professor, and a gambler), and NONE of the characters are worth watching. I was expecting to see them outside the plane, doing something in Vegas, but it literally is about the flight there, and the flight back. So far, that’s it. Now, don’t get me wrong, you can have a huge successful show where nobody leaves a bar, or even operating a flight terminal, but they’re on a discount airline with the most spacious seating known to man. Really?

As I’m reviewing this, I’m not even bothering to look up the actors’ names, because I really didn’t care that much. I can’t believe this got green-lighted.