In Plain Sight

I have to catch up with the beginning of the first episode, but what I saw tells me USA has a winner on its hands with IN PLAIN SIGHT. The main character, a rather fetching but ball-busting federal marshal played by Mary McCormack, is a swipe of Karen Sisco from Elmore Leonard's OUT OF SIGHT, crossed with Jordan Cavanaugh of CROSSING JORDAN and even Adrian Monk of MONK, to name just a few influences. McCormack racks them and stacks them with the best of her male counterparts. Predictably, she has a troubled personal life and a ditzy mother, played winningly by Leslie Ann Warren, 62, but not looking a day over 50. In the opener, it's her birthday and she just knows Mom has planned a surprise party. She also has a murder to solve and some people to put into witness protection. By the end, all is well, of course. And so on to the next episode. McCormack, a TV and movie veteran, is the whole show. The majority of the supporting cast is made up of your basic generic TV actors, looking a little too young and too clean cut and too thin. Sounds like WITHOUT A TRACE, don't it? McCormack does a post-coital nude scene in the opener, clearly to keep the guys watching. My theory is that we will never see her naked again. But that's OK. She's just fun to watch.

After a lifetime in law enforcement, I don't like cop shows. The vast majority of them take themselves waaaay too seriously, and Hollywood displays very little understanding of how cops and police departments work. Oh, they have their technical advisors who show them how cops do tactical stuff, and they do manage to get that stuff mostly right, but it's the day to day stuff that they screw up. For example, how many times have shows depicted a detective leaving some major department and going to another city and immediately becoming a detective? Sorry folks, it just doesn't work that way. I don't care if you have a gold shield in the Big Apple, it you move to another state, you're going to go through the entire testing process all over again, go through another academy, and start out as a junior patrol cop working a beat.

So I don't like cop shows. Except.....

Mary Shannon has to be the most irascible, sarcastic, cynical, wry, blunt pretend LEO to ever pin on a TV badge. I love every minute she and Marshall are on the screen. Whoever writes for the show, especially the dialogue, is a genius. Practically every other line Mary utters is something that I wish I had thought of. At the same time, I identify with both her partner Marshall, and her supervisor Stan. Mary is the sort of partner and subordinate that you love to work with while simultaneously dreading whatever they're going to do next.

The show is hardly a model of realism, but I've given up on Hollywood ever getting that right. I watch the show because I want to see Mary cause Stan to pull out the rest of his hair, to hear her lay into some pompous FBI agent, to tell some protectee or family member just what an idiot they are, or to cause Marshall to go off on some existential tangent. You go girl!!

I'm not really a fan of TV crime shows, but new series always give me the chance of experiencing some fresh air - so I check them out. In this case, I was glad I did. The pilot started off slow, but after about 30 minutes (it was 90 minutes total w/commercials), it actually became interesting and stayed that way to the end. Subsequent episodes have kept up the momentum.

One novel aspect of the show is that its about a lady marshal in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She's in charge of people in the "witness protection program" who have been assigned to her area. She cautions and reassures them that since 1970 (when the witness program started), "No one who has followed the rules has ever been harmed." Powerful words.

Can they comply? When things go wrong, can she protect them? How can she keep their identities safe - even from the local police?

Aside from the setup, the show is ultimately interesting because she's fun to watch. She's sassy, witty, playful, smart, responsible ... and physically tough. I recommend watching an episode; if the lead character grabs your interest, then you're likely to enjoy the show.

My wife and I thoroughly enjoyed this show. Our comment was that it looks like Hollywood people actually can write. We prefer character driven shows and the characters are great. There is whimsy and great interplay.

The plot was complex but only because more than one story overlapped and the pilot should probably have been 2 hours instead of 90 minutes to help develop some of the themes and the characters, but there was no problem in following what was happening.

I hope the relationship between Mary and Raphael develops. She obviously wants more but sees herself as either not capable of such a relationship or because her job won't let her have a solid relationship.

But will she develop a relationship with detective Dershowitz? That would be interesting.

We look forward to the next episode.

Although it's hard to decide the future of this show based on its pilot, I would assume that this show will do well on USA. While it's not quite as good as the advertisements led it to be, I enjoyed the first episode and the characters it developed. As others have mentioned, I hope that it does not end up focused around solving murders, but rather the families the Marshalls need to hide. Mary is a refreshingly sarcastic woman with great one-liners and an over-all amusing personality. There is a great juggle between local crimes, witness protection, and personal affairs. Hopefully the rest of the episodes will live up to the standards the pilot has set.