Without a Trace Things and Stuff

Summary

A young woman, 24-year-old Lacey Moran, disappears after going camping with three friends. She’d recently won millions in the lottery, so there are suspicions that the money had something to do with it. Unfortunately, it did.

Rating

A pretty good story, and our main characters’ lives were secondary, which is how I prefer it. I would have given it 2.5 stars if Jack wasn’t quite so slimy in this episode. Slimy Jack is annoying to watch, not fun.

Discussion

Though I want the whole rogue-Jack storyline to be over with, it is good to see that there seem to be consequences for rogue-Jack. His team isn’t welcoming him back with open arms, all is forgiven, everything is as it was before. This is good. All shouldn’t be forgiven so fast. Jack really screwed up; his team should be pissed, and he needs to do something to regain their trust and make things as right as possible. I maintain that Jack should be fired, but obviously that’s not going to happen, so at least consequences are something. He’s clearly back at work a bit too early, though, because he’s still kind of out of it.

And because of all that, I didn’t mind Jack in this episode. Until the end. Jack sneaking behind Sam to do the background check on Brian is a bit rude (though honestly I would have expected Sam to do that, but may there hasn’t been time), but it really is in character for Jack so made sense. But the whole skeezy thing at the very end of the episode with the young agent who did the background check for him (”where do you see yourself in the future?… when the time comes, call me, and I’ll make the recommendation”) was really not in character. Icky! Very icky! So rogue-Jack is still around. Ugh. Can we get rid of rogue-Jack? Maybe stick him in a helicopter and ship him off to a tall mountain? Maybe next week’s therapy will help rogue-Jack go away (even though, I assume, this means our main characters’ lives once again become the primary story, turning WaT once again into a soap opera). Like I’ve said before, rogue-Jack really isn’t any fun at all to watch.

Also, his hair needs to grow faster. I REALLY hate the ultrashort look on him.

The continuing Sam-baby storyline was surprisingly painless this week. Sam and Brian actually have pretty good chemistry and are fun to watch together (possibly because Poppy Montgomery and Adam Kaufman are a real-life couple and have real-life chemistry).

On to our missing person of the week: this was a pretty good story, and also very sad. The best friend, Paula, killing her because the money had become so important was horribly tragic. Add on the boyfriend’s suicide and it multiplies the tragedy of it all. The story was well done, without any histrionics about how winning millions is so horrible. It covered that as the basic premise, but kept it very real. The acting was also low-key, keeping it very believable. Nice all around.

Two parts of the plot are problem for me.

• When Elena and Martin first interview Lacey’s friends, they said she wanted to use the money for charity because of how she got it, but Elena and Martin don’t follow up on that statement at all. Wouldn’t the obvious follow-up question be, “What do you mean by ‘how she got it’?” And then later, after Jeff (Lacey’s boyfriend) is found dead, Elena confronts them with the info about where she got the ticket, as though there were no hints (like, say, the previous conversation) that they knew this. This is a pretty big plot hole. Now, obviously, had they asked in that first interview, they would have found out about the source of the money earlier, which would move the plot along too quickly for the hour. It would have made more sense to not have her friends say this at all, but someone dropped the ball on this.
• Why didn’t Jack just do the background check on Brian himself? He doesn’t seem to be doing much yet and thus seems to have the time. That really didn’t make sense. Presumably it’s to set up something for some storyline later on, possibly involving the young agent who helped him (yeah, that was just icky), but it wasn’t a logical progression here and didn’t make sense. (And it wasn’t revisited in the last two episodes of the season, so I expect it’s a dropped storyline.) Even with Jack kind of out of it still, it just doesn’t work.

Notes

NYC is particularly smoggy in many of the overhead city shots this week.

Sam plans to take three days off before the baby is due and two weeks after, and then take half and full days as needed for her six weeks maternity leave.

Brian had a charge of sex with a minor in his past that was dropped.

Quotes

[Jack holds out a banana to Samantha]
Samantha: Thanks?
Jack: Um, I… got it in a fruit basket. Although I don’t know how a banana says, “Sorry you got shot.”
Samantha: Maybe booze would’ve been better.

Jack: So what’s gonna happen to the kid when you’re on call?
Samantha: Well, there’s a woman who lives in my building, um, and I’m thinking that Brian could take nights and weekends, and…
Jack: Brian….
Samantha: The dad.
Jack: I don’t think I ever met him, did I? What’s his last name.
Samantha: Donovan… um…
Jack: Is he a good guy?
Samantha: Well, I hope so. I mean, I wasn’t expecting to be connected to him for the rest of my life or anything, so it’s a little weird trying to trust someone you don’t know that well. But you know what I thought? I thought to myself, what would Jack do, and then I remembered what you said, and I did the opposite, so I’ve decided to give him a chance.
Jack: Smart girl.