In Plain Sight: Never The Bride
By fred | June 16, 2008
(S01E03) Third installment of this new USA series, In Plain Sight, and by now things are coming a little more clear as to what kind of show this will likely develop into, how it will work (or not, actually) and what to expect from it. The two first episodes haven’t been all that good, but at least the second one was a little improvement over the pilot, flawed by being a pilot, so there was hope for a better tomorrow.
Tomorrow is now here, we’re into the third episode already and things are slowly shaping up, and forced to admit that it doesn’t look very good. Sure, Mary is one Hell of a mess, she’s a complicated character and Mary McCormack is doing a nice job in her portrayal. Too bad she can’t really do wonders, because she’s not given much to deal with in the first place.
In other words, this episode pretty much sucked, really. In all fairness it wasn’t that bad, but looking back at it now that it’s gone I have to say it should be thought of as worst than it was, because the show isn’t good, and clearly they’re not even trying to be good. I mean, when you watch some of the scenes this episode had to “offer”, and look back at the overall plot, there’s no escaping : they’re not even aiming at writing a good show.
Let’s see, so Mary has to deal with this con artist, and as she admits from the get-go she hates con-artists, “even more than murderers“. Mary isn’t shy about the way she feels towards people, and she isn’t one to let things slide. If there’s one thing she cares about, it’s her job. More than following the rules, because of course bending or breaking them when it’s “required” isn’t really a problem as far as she’s concerned, she cares about doing the right thing.
So when she has to protect someone who’s her responsibility, someone she hates quite a lot as we’ve seen, someone who breaks the rules more than once - first by allowing her pictures to appear in the paper, which is “kind of a big WITSEC no-no” as Marshall pointed out, and then by blowing up Mary’s cover which is another breach in the security protocol, well at this point, Mary should either get her out of the program, or at th every least relocate her ASAP.
But somehow there’s a tape about some FBI boss doing things his wife wouldn’t like to hear about, so they let her stay, and go on with the wedding. And for some reason, Mary’s fine with it and put on the dress. I mean, really?!? So it’s no surprise then that later on she trust the big liar of a con-artist that is her witness, who did what? That’s right, she lied to her and tried to take care of things herself, of course.
And while we didn’t get to see the mother this week (Thank God!) and had only a little more about the sister’s big story (BTW how rich is Mary, to pay for everything and everyone and live in such a big house, with pool and pool boy included ??), I’m really sad to see they clearly have no intention of making her partner, Marshall, a real character. He’s obviously here only for the occasional comic relief (which is useless since we unfortunately already have their boss for that) and other than that, he’s either MIA, or a complete moron.
For instance, when they are in the stable and she starts up a scenario “kissing” him to put lipstick all over his face, he starts kissing her, for real. Because obviously that’s what she wants to do, right now, with the bad guys a couple of feet away threatening to kill their witness plus an innocent guy too. How could he be that stupid ?? And not even get it later on, and first take his gun out before realizing what’s actually going on (if he ever did, I’m still unsure…. he looks so dumb.)
Another scene to illustrate how freaking stupid they made him, and how stupid things turn out to be, things I’m guessing were meant to be funny. So Mary puts on a dress which does reveal some big cleavage. Marshall sees that, and he’s, well, let’s say “surprised”. Let’s pretend he’s never realized how she looked before and go with it. Then the guy actually turns his head away and can’t look at her, he cannot actually look at her !! WTF!? Is he 12 or something?? Jesus!
When I see scenes like that, or Mary deciding to ignore signalization only to - of course - have her car to stop in the middle of the tracks, and then she’s somehow surprised to see a train coming (she probably thought the alarms, red lights and everything were just for fun, to slow people down for no reason…) and - of course - as she heads out her dress got caught in the door, and she has to push the car across just in time… clearly they’re not even trying to write good material, because this is just plain stupid.
So this was an episode about Mary’s relationship, whether or not she wants to move things forward, allow herself for the possibility of something greater, or not. But what it mostly showed was how bad this show is turning out to be : stupid plots, no real use of any of the secondary character except for the occasional “jokes”, poor writing overall, and at this rate I’m not sure I’ll keep watching for much longer.
There might not be much else on, but I have plenty of DVDs of actually good shows… because at this point, I don’t even care whether or not Raphael was actually on the plane, or is still waiting at the airport. What about you, do you like the show so far ?
Posted in Reviews
Shows: In Plain Sight
