TV

I think I watched this because I saw a clip on Ferguson when Michael Clarke Duncan was a guest.  I'm skeptical about "backdoor pilots" an d clips don't usually work for me, as they almost always seem ill-chosen or too short to really do the work intended.  But being able to watch something for free on Hulu is a powerful draw when one is at a loose end, so I gave it a shot.

And after the first few episodes, I went back and found the pilot -- episode 19 from last season -- was still up on Hulu, so I've watched that now.  I doubt this show will develop much in the way of thread activity, but I have a few thoughts.

+ I really dislike BONES.  I'd tried watching the show early on and got bored, and I gave it another shot because a friend of mine said it was his favorite dumb television.  His hots for John Francis Daley were not enough to sustain me, and I gave up a few episodes into the first season, repelled by just how dumb and clunky and artificial the whole thing was.  I watched the first episode of the newest season because it came bundled with the iTunes download of FINDER, and it was awful, and I even (read: predictably) watched the episode where Zooey guest-starred as Temperance's sister, and it was unredeemable.

+ So I was fairly surprised that I liked this, especially since in the first six episodes there have been two BONES character cross-overs.  I assume FOX television must be full of ads about how there are guest-stars!  Come and see them translplanted! but I don't see any of that, so I get to watch the characters out of their normal habitat.  I find them to be fine.  Outside of the unbelievable high-tech lab and away from the relentlessly gooey corpse-of-the-week, they could just be clients and have no cross-pollination purpose at all.  I like that one doesn't have to know that they're BONES characters to enjoy FINDER.

+ The tone of the show is still largely forced and artificial in the delivery.  Reality is not striven for.  Somehow, though, the main character of Walter works for me in terms of quirk in a way that Boreanaz and Deschanel don't.  I like his uncaring manner.  The seeming out-of-production order episode with the Twin Bad Guys who weren't twins with each other, but who were both twins with other, absent people was a nice bit of completely unnecessary quirk.  It could have come right out of BIG TROUBLE or something with that level of unreality.

+ In the BONES episode, Walter is presented as paranoid.  He's calmed down a lot to be the lead in his own show.  That was a good decision.  The switch from Saffron Burrows to Mercedes Masohn is also fine, if only because Burrows' cockney accent was completely unconvincing for an actual Englishwoman.  I should go back and watch THE BANK JOB again and see what she did there.  I will now miss her charming malapropisms, though.  They were fun.

+ The inclusion of the whole Gypsy thing is actually quite interesting, and Willa has slightly more character and characteristics than the other three main characters.  Which seems like an odd decision, but a good one since it has kept me intrigued enough to want more.  Will Walter Not Find Something is a end-of-season cliffhanger, and so not much of a tease this early on; the FWB relationship between Walter and Mercedes is celever but adds no character tension.  Nope, the only real week-to-week character stuff is the teenaged gypsy girl.  How odd.

+ The opening credits are awful.  The song's fine, but that montage seems actively designed to create nothing resembling favorable impressions.  It mystifies me.

+ This most recent episode, episode 6, didn't a have dream sequence in it.  This was a bad move.  The dream sequences are fantastic.  Sure, it's a mildly hackneyed way of moving the plot forward by having subconscious realizations spur conscious action.  BUt they're really quite well done and sufficiently Freudianly entertaining.   They need to not not have those.

I am now sufficiently intrigued as to want to read the source material books to see how much alteration has been done to the character and the supporting cast.  I can see myself becoming bored with the show -- with THE MENTALIST and PERSON OF INTEREST I have more than enough Thursday evening procedurals -- but I do like the deliberate attempt to subvert the structure somewhat.  To have the missing object not always be something stolen, let alone tangible, and to have crime be less of a focus makes it appealing next to the more standard murder-of-the-week procedural shows.

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It's interesting you compare it to BIG TROUBLE. I *think* the show and BIG TROUBLE are in the same genre of 'Florida Mysteries' in which extremely strange characters are part of the charm. I also think Michael Clarke Duncan's character is an homage to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, where Hunter Thompson has an unusually large and swarthy lawyer who fills much the same role.

I am not sure the LOCATOR novels the show is based on is part of the same genre though. BONES sure isn't anything like the novels that show is based on.

I like to think of this as a fun show ala Psych. I enjoy it for its silliness. I mean a gypsy girl who's fostered by a dude who runs a bar is not believable but the show is fun.

I would also like Saffron Burrows to come back but kick the silly accent.

The show occupies "amusing lark" status with TAW and myself. It's silly and fun on its face, but there's some interesting things going on just beneath the surface.

Pity it's pretty much doomed. Its ratings have been terrible.

I've never watched an episode of Bones, but I started watching this on a whim - thought I could do with some fluff inbetween episodes of more dramatic stuff - and found it thoroughly entertaining. I even kind of like the intro, although as you say it's hardly pulse-pounding stuff.

You're right about Willa - it's an odd thing to have the biggest character stuff happening to her and not the other three, but I suppose she's the easiest one to work with; Walter's obviously limited in terms of his potential emotional development, US Marshal woman is fairly one-note and they seem to have shot their load with Ving Rhames's backstory already. Never mind - I'm not watching this for intricate character portraits or elaborate storylines.

(Side note about Willa - in Europe, or at least in Britain, 'gypsy' is a recognised term for a specific ethnic grouping, making some of her conversations with that dude gypsy a bit uncomfortable. 'Gypsys steal, we don't beat people up!' he said in the episode where Willa wailed on the guy who killed Ving Rhames's family. Imagine replacing the word 'gypsy' with 'Hispanic' or 'black people'...!)

Which of the guest characters were from Bones?

The shrink and the UFO nut are regulars on Bones. The entire show is sort of placeholding for Bones while the star Emily Deschanel is off producing her own little spin-off (she is pregnant).

Ah, cool. Shame that it sounds like its days are numbered - it's a charming little show.

Writers from BONES and FINDER have been on The Nerdist Writers' Panel pocast, and I think that's where I heard that the only reason BONES has made it to syndication-level of episode numbers is because, despite the fact that the show had initally terrible numbers, it was left alone to grow a respectable audience.

If FINDER is really here to paper over a delay in BONES production, then either: it will die quickly, because they won't have need for it next year, or it'll stick around regardless of ratings and then might surprise people in the same way that BONES did.  I mean, we're nerds and it's on FOX, so we pretty much have to predict it's death, but they seem to like Hart Hanson a lot, and might give him a significant amount of rope.

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I think the writers know about possible friction with the word "gypsy".  I certainly do, and I'm not in Europe -- and I felt a little uncomfortable typing it out the way I did in that post.  While I missed the particular squidginess of the sentence your quoted, my memory of the show is that they most often refer to the "family", which gives them some leeway.

It wasn't until last night when I read the Wikipedia entry on the show in order to find the BONES episode it came from that I understood how cool the casting was for Uncle Shadrach.

SPOILER: He's played by Eric Roberts (Julia's brother, Emma's dad), who got his major acting start in a film called King of the Gypsies from 1978. I've not seen it, but from the title, it's a nice shout-out.

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The gypsy thing is interesting - she's definitely meant to be part of some sort of culture, rather than that just being something she's called. I think she may even be meant to be Roma, but the references they've made to family also fit groups like the Travellers.

I am now 190 pages into the 416 page "The Knowland Retribution", the first book in The Locator Series, upon which THE FINDER is based.

I will finish it, if only because I'm planning a blog post called Finder, Finder, Finder, Finder in which I compare the show to Carla Speed McNeil, Greg Rucka, and Emma Bull.

But otherwise, it's very different from the show, lacking considerably in charm, and very haphazardly structured.  Not recommended.

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So Finder returned after a month off with a disappointingly mediocre episode directed by, of all people, David Boreanaz, and guest-starring, of all people, 50 Cent. After the entertainingly absurd aliens episode and the clever hurricane-based bottle episode, I thought the series had really got a handle on what makes the series work: you either need madcap characters from strange walks of life (the magician ep, the aliens ep), an unusual investigation that challenges Walt's skills by restricting his movements (the hurricane ep) or interesting subplots with fun supporting characters, especially if they're peripheral to the investigation (psychiatrist guy in the missing bullet ep, Katey Sagal from the hurricane ep).

The latest episode didn't really have any of that, just a mundane, low-stakes investigation and an oddly maudlin twist. The dream sequence looked great though. Still, the cast are charming enough to win me over even if the plot's a bit dull, and I do hope the series manages to build a decent enough audience to be renewed.

When the high point of your episode is showcasing how amusingly bad the star is at hip-hop, you know there's a problem. Still, nice to see Salli Richardson-Whitfield from EUREKA. But a straight-ahead mystery just doesn't work here.

The wife, a Bones fan, was marathoning through Finder last night, so I caught bits of a few episodes, mostly the alien one. I liked that the music had echoes of X-Files in it. I asked the wife if Pope was going to be a recurring villain, and she said these shows don't really do arc storytelling, which is too bad.

Funny that someone compared it to Psyche (another of my wife's favorites), because Finder feels much more like a USA series than something that belongs on Fox. It's got that mix of moderate production values, low-stakes mysteries, and characters whose charm carries the show that has been USA's brand since way back in the Silk Stalkings days.

Maybe they can shop it over to USA, since ratings have been kind of weak. They'd have to lose the Bones connection, though.

I was wondering the same about Pope. The ultimate finder vs the ultimate hider makes sense, in a superheroic kind of way. Although her phony accent was so bad that I'd be kind of grateful not to hear from her - literally - again.

Ah, it's always nice seeing Peta Wilson get work. Accent was...not good, though.

So, I thought last week's episode seemed oddly mundane and that all the characters had taken a bit of a retrograde step in their characterisation, but then this week's (which ran straight off the back of last week's, pretty much) had Leo meeting Timo 'for the first time', despite him being pretty familiar with the kid before the break.

That suggests to me that they're running a couple of episodes that they held back from earlier on in the season, which is interesting - firstly because it means we should be getting back to the goofier, crazier episodes soon (I hope, and assuming that those episodes indicate a conscious change in the show's direction and tone) and secondly because it suggests they filmed a bunch of these before the season started. Does anyone know how common it is for a US show to film so far ahead that they can shift a couple of very early episodes to mid-season?

I'm watching the show on Hulu, which is running a week behind broadcast, as part of their whole Hulu Plus Delay revenue incentive.  But I agree with you that last week's ep (Finding a Meal) had the tone of an early production episode.  Walter hasn't done the "Eh, I'll risk it" catchphrase in a while, Leo hasn't done much legal advising prior to Walter doing something stupid, and Isabelle was actually used in the ep, all of which felt like the writers sticking pretty heavily to the initial formula (see also: chalkboard debate).  And all of which made me feel like it was an enjoyable episode (although I always prefer a dream sequence to a lack).

I'm not sure why the show would be run out of production sequence.  The commentaries (or blogs) about Leverage addressed this on occasion, with Friedman dropping little bits about how a given episode seemed better positioned to take advantage of ratings or lead-in audiences, or to be used to reintroduce viewers after a gap in broadcast.

However, when you get stuff like obvious plot and character inconsistencies -- like you say, Leo actually being introduced to Timo several weeks after he's tried to get his and Willa's arranged marriage bought out -- it makes less sense.  Still, I like the timbre of the early eps, and don't mind this minor flashback.  It's just that I also believe I recall comment someplace that indicated that boradcast order often trumps production order on DVD releases, which would make this particular glaring inconsistency you've pointed out one that might be locked in stone for audiences to notice and be irritated or confused by for some time.

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Yeah, the chalkboard thing occurred to me after I posted. It's interesting to see what stuff they seemed to stick with and what stuff got dropped. Walter kind of being a dick to his clients went pretty fast, as did the 'versus' conversations that were, I'm guessing, originally going to open each episode. I'm guessing the former disappeared because it made the protagonist too unappealing (likewise his arguments with Isabel last week), and the latter went because, well, it was kind of boring. Oh, and the idea of Walter making gadgets and remote-controlled doohickeys. I kind of like that one, though.

The out-of-production sequence thing...? I'm guessing it's partly because the second episode to air had a guest appearance by a Bones regular and they wanted to play up the crossover potential. Also, you know, these two episodes ('The Last Meal' and 'The Conversation') just weren't very interesting. I mean, they weren't awful, but they both seemed to be written with the idea that Walter looking for an abstract concept (the memory of a meal; a conversation) would be enough to carry an episode. Whereas the two that were screened first had Walter looking for fairly mundane things - a bullet, a missing person - but took them off in wild and goofy directions.

It's a shame the series has bombed since the March break, because I still really enjoy it and would like to see it develop further over the next couple of years. Ah, well...

Out of sequence...In the lost girl in storm ep. it ends with PO stating Willa can have internet access because she used her internet skills to help find the lost girl.  In the very next ep...i watched them back to back...Leo reminded Willa that loss of internet was against her parole.

Wikipedia (take that as you will), is showing the air order is wildly out of sync with the production order. As aired, we've seen episodes in the order of 1, 5, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10, 8, 2, 6, 12, 11.

Seems, I don't know, very odd to air a show so decidedly out of order.

Aaaaaaaaand cancelled!

Oh well.

It happens, especially in shows as episodic as this one. I'm guessing it was because they felt that 2 and 6 (restaurant and dad on the lam, right?) were kind of mundane, whereas the earlier ones in that running order were quirkier and had broader characters. Oh, and a Bones crossover character. I just don't get why they didn't snip the lines of dialogue that showed they were being run out of order.

Shame the show's been cancelled. Ah, well...

Thought the final couple of episodes were strong, though I wish they'd have played it a little safer with the ending. I assume the massively downbeat closer - Walter arrested, Carla losing her badge, Willa running away from home - was to set up a bunch of cliffhangers for next season. Instead, it's just an incredibly tone-deaf closer to what was usually a whimsical and silly show.

Shame. I would have liked to spend more time with these characters, and to see where they were going with the 'dark Walter' storyline.