The subtitle of “Alert: Missing Persons Unit” refers to a division of the Philadelphia Police where Nikki (Dania Ramirez) leads an elite force of officers, trained in the art and science of tracking down kidnapping and abduction victims. Is. It’s a subject close to Nikki’s heart; Six years earlier, as mentioned in the prologue of the first episode, her son Keith was kidnapped at the age of 11, and has never been found. This tragedy contributed to the gradual disintegration of her marriage to Jason (Scott Cain), who was working overseas as a military contractor when her son was taken, and guilt over not being there when it happened. .
As the current timeline of “Alert” opens, Nikki and her new boyfriend Mike (Ryan Broussard) have convinced Jason to return to Philly PD to work directly with them at MPU. Jason has more difficulty signing Nikki’s long-pending divorce papers than he adjusts to a new job in the public sector—perhaps because the unit is barely separated from his non-police jobs (beyond , sure, it’s convenient and seemingly instant access to SWAT teams). Eligibility Treats MPU like a family business. Technically, they are indebted to the wider department; In practice, they are just another private security team.
The show feels the same way with respect to its titular case-of-the-week structure. It intends to follow the team as they find one missing person at a time; The first two episodes provided for review are titled “Chloe” and “Hugo”, named for a young girl whose father may know more about her kidnapping and a vengeful mother, respectively. Lets go of the abducted and tortured person. These stories provide some temporary urgency to the episodes. But what really drives the show is an unexpected first-episode break in Keith’s case — which assures the story that the “X-Files”-style character won’t stay in the background as a motivator. It’s a neat twist on the old standby of crime-solving heroes who couldn’t have been more impressed with the previous case (with further twists that some other movies missed; revealing which movies might be spoilers). Will be).
So it makes sense that the Keith story would divert interest from an episode-to-episode kidnapping that was once high-urgency (the victim has only an hour to live!), ridiculous (… because a woman has taken her victim with fentanyl and until he informs her that he really hasn’t!), and is so full of narrative shortcuts that they ultimately provide a kind of shruggi (the team is a sketchy company Finds out about fentanyl torture via (spying on people via their smart TVs). This wouldn’t be the first procedural where the process takes a back seat to a more compelling master plot.
But the division of labor of the show seems off. It still has to introduce a quirky supporting cast including “holistic” analyst Cami (Adeola Roll) and nerdy tech guru Si (Pete Gibson) and get us up to speed on Nikki and Jason’s (separate) personal lives. In the second episode, all this business forces the main characters to treat a completely significant change in life with bewildering carelessness.
It may only be early-series clumsiness that “Alert” will shake off. However, so far, much of the suspense seems overly cliched; The show about missing persons opens with a big sequence where Jason… defuses a bomb in Afghanistan. Why does his ex want to rehire him into this department? Caan (who looks more like his late father James) and Ramirez aren’t exactly at fault, but these characters don’t feel lived-in; They feel exposed. It’s never a good sign when a fast-paced 44-minute network thriller still leaves you impatient to get to the good stuff.
“Alert: Missing Persons Unit” will premiere on Fox after the NFL on January 8 and then on Monday, January 9 at 9 PM ET/PT before moving into its regular timeslot for Episode 2.
