I knew going in that anything that had Jerry Bruckheimer's sticky fingers involved probably wouldn't be very good, but I tried to have an open mind. Even after the show was completely retooled and recast from its previous incarnation, I was willing to give it a shot... Then Christian Slater came on board... There's only so open a mind can be, people...The Forgotten felt like I was watching a mad lib about crime procedurals. The writers filled in all the obvious blanks with run-of-the-mill answers and out came your standard crime drama filled with murder, and in this iteration, a fair amount of cheese and boredom. The pilot was uninspired, unoriginal, and eye-rollingly predictable from start to finish. Even in the areas where the writers were trying to reinvent the wheel, they seem to have created a spare tire.
The only real difference between The Forgotten and every other crime procedural you've seen a million times is that the writers filled in the "voiceover by" blank with "the victim." A group of civilian crime-solvers go through the motions of figuring out who Jane Doe is while her voice blathers on about life and death and whatnot in the dullest fashion possible. I have a sneaking suspicion that someone read The Lovely Bones and decided to appropriate the idea... only with much less successful results. It doesn't come across as raw and insightful as it does in the book, but rather pummels the viewer with gimmicky would-be insights that felt insincere and contrived. It didn't make me care more about the girl who died and didn't allow me a window into a foreign experience. Voiceovers rather often fall flat for me and this is no exception. In this instance, however, rather than offering plot exposition or the inner thoughts of one of the protagonists, its the musings of a character whom we'll never see again and who's already dead. Overall, the voiceover struck me as unnecessary and lame. The voice is talking to us the whole time, but unlike The Lovely Bones, the victim doesn't tell us anything about her death until the characters in the show have wrapped everything up in a nice, neat little bow. Then and only then does the voiceover go into the elaborate wrap-up and lays out what happened and why. Given that the audience has just spent the last 41 minutes watching people figure all this out, it's not only unnecessary, but fairly redundant. But the writers didn't stop there. Want another motif lifted from the book that didn't really work as well here? Yeah, the investigators see visions of the dead girl walking around in the various locales they search. Oy.
The team is lead by Christian Slater who's hot off his most recent failure, My Own Worst Enemy. I don'
t like labeling anyone a showkiller, but he certainly seems to pick some real winners. Within minutes, it became painfully obvious that he'd be filling the role of "guarded leader with a personal connection to his work." To absolutely no one's surprise, the writers filled in the "personal tragedy" blank with "disappearance of daughter." It's what drew him to this gig and is what makes him the best in the business and drives him to work harder and blah, blah, blah. As far as a protagonist is concerned, I've seen this one a million times before, only better. Slater brings nothing new or interesting to a role that the writers appear to have slapped together in 20 minutes. It's as though they were in a script writing class and had to finish a project just before class. They took the list of required elements and doled out as necessary to fulfill the quota. Soup to nuts, I'm bored.Along with Slater, the forgotten network (groups of freelance civilians all across the nation who come together with the police to identify Jane and John Does, of course--what? You've never heard of this either? Well, just go with it! I have Biology class in 10 minutes!) includes your standard band of characters: the overly attractive woman who has also suffered personal tragedy (and who will become the obvious love interest for Slater) but hides her pain with a sad smile, the other overly attractive, but younger woman who is the positive, earnest, go-getter of the group, the overweight guy who will be providing comic relief, and lest you think the writers decided to break out of the box for the final character, we have "the new guy" filled in the blank for "vehicle for plot exposition."
As with oh-so-many pilots, crappy writers feel like they need to explain every single aspect of a world to the audience, because clearly we're too
damn stupid to figure anything out for ourselves, draw any informed conclusions, or be comfortable with not knowing the minutia of a show for 10 minutes. The new guy/girl on a show assumes the role of the audience and is a means by which the writers can explain everything to us by having the other characters have to explain everything to him. It's lazy and easy and annoying to watch. Ugh. Great pilots don't need such a vehicle. Bad pilots require some sort of big ass SUV, and really bad pilots? I'm going to go with aircraft carrier... The vehicle for this pilot falls somewhere in between. I couldn't stop rolling my eyes and groaning it was so lame and embarrassingly convenient. Yeah, so not only does he play "new guy," but he also plays "rebel," and "special skills" guy as well. In order for the writers to not have to try very hard in the future, they very conveniently made "new guy" a--wait for it--med school drop out who happens to be a sculptor. Why, that's the exact skill set a group of investigators such as this would need! How fortuitous! It's a hallmark of lazy writing is what it really is, but who's splitting hairs.To add insult to injury, the show is brimming with self-righteous aggrandizing that had me shaking my head. I couldn't unfurl my disdain brow for like a hour afterward. Team member Earnestness and Rainbows was forced to shoulder most of the platitudes and pablum. I was actually embarrassed
for her as an actress and even for the character--whom I cared about not a bit. “What’s the first thing that happened when you’re brought into this world?” she asks Team member New Guy. “You get a name," is the obvious response. Well, apparently Earnest Sunshine is afraid no one is coming to her funeral because she offers the banal truism, “I’d want the world to remember that I was here, that I did things, that I affected people.” Well, kitten, I'm not sure that's the case... In her real life, she works in an office doing nothing of value, so I see where the writers were going with that, but it really fell flat for me. All I kept thinking of were those people who wish they could attend their own funerals to see just how loved they were. As though you can quantify the value of a life by how many people remember who you were. Ugh. In her defense, Slater himself gets the final tear-filled insight at the girl's funeral as the mother of the victim asks if the people who found her daughter are here. He poignantly (and predictably) responds, "They're everywhere." Oooh, that's deep! And cheesy! It's a Chicago style pizza is what it is... Heh, the show is set in Chicago... That just made my day. :)Anyway, the rag-tag group of ordinary heroes crisscrosses the standard crime procedural landscape trying to figure out who "Highway Jane" is, working their way through three "red herring" blanks (two of which they lazily filled in with "ex-boyfriend") a "goose chase" blank they filled in with "false identity" and ambled their way to the end where, wouldn't you know it? It's the person we least expect! Huzahh! I'm SO getting an A on this assignment! Yeah, not so fast, writing staff... Turns out, the girl who ultimately turns out to be the killer is the girl who allowed the forgotten network to identify her in the first place. Okay, I know teenagers are stupid, but why exactly did she help them out in the first place? Who knows, but more importantly, who cares.
This pilot was pretty much a train wreck from minute one and never really found its footing. As far as your standard crime procedural goes, it filled in all the blanks, but made little to no effort to blaze its own trail, turn the genre on its ear, or reinven
t a tired routine. The only real innovation is that apparently everyone in the world of The Forgotten is assumed to be telling the truth. Seriously, when one of the red herring ex-boyfriends is being interrogated by the police, he tells them he didn't do it and that he hasn't seen her in months and the detective just looks over her shoulder at Slater with a look of, "Well, that was a dead end... What do we do now?" Because the killer wouldn't have any reason to lie, you know. Indeed, when Slater confronts the actual killer, he rather incredulously notes that she lied to him. Well no shit, Sherlock. Of course she lied to you. Of course that goes against any sound reasoning for her coming forward in the first place, but coming up with something logical would have taken way too much effort, apparently.At the end of the day, this was your typical crime procedural only schmaltzier. Every aspect was formulaic, thoroughly unoriginal, and predictable (I literally guessed that the victim would be from a small town in Iowa and sure enough, I was dead on). Even if you're a huge fan of crime procedurals, I'd recommend you pass on this derivative mess. It could be that I've seen this show just way too many times to be interested, but I found this pilot to be unwaveringly dull, lazy, and hackneyed from start to finish. I found myself wishing the show focused on one of the day jobs of the team members, because yes, I'd rather sit through an office staff meeting with team member Sunshine than continue to watch the same character cliches solve the same crimes over and over again. What can I say? Staff meetings are shorter and just might have cookies involved. I think we have a winner.
In short? Show FAIL.
Pilot Grade: F
