2 out of 5

Written by: Natalie Alquier

While it’s certainly not a brand new conceit, the missing-kid mystery has become something of a format in the wake of Broadchurch, with multi-season series or 3-part minis all covering similar “shock waves of a shocking crime” setups, the particulars of the waves and crime differing a bit here and there.  Extrapolated to a higher level, that’s the basis for a whole lot of dramatic efforts in various media, but something about the extended, single focus allowed for television in the past few years has seemingly triggered a slew of these things.  As usual, though, it doesn’t really matter how unique the bits and pieces are, so long as the wholly constructed picture gives us something new to look at.  …And that’s where most of these things fail.  Broadchurch, and its followers, rely on a certain shock value: kill a kid, do it viscerally, and you’ve already twisted the ol’ horrified knife for a fair amount of folk.  The next twist is to approach it through the lens of parenting, for certainly every parent’s fear (omg we can all relate because we’re all kidded up, or we were all children once, supposedly) is for harm to come to their child; sprinkle said harm with some type of sexual deviance and “they might still be alive!” hysteria, and you’ve got a winning concept.  Underlining that this ain’t, in any way, new: such is the stuff that used to provide for 80s and 90s R-rated thrillers, with typical blind-alley whodunnits leading up to an 11th hour twist.  These are the plots of movies you can now view on cable stations in the afternoon, edited to remove the one or two “Fucks” that netted it a mature rating back in its day.

And these are the exact same plots of these TV shows, drolled up with serious music and meaningful reflections.  By taking the time to focus on all those surrounding the crime, you also get to tickle our generally overgrown narcissistic bone; after all, it’s not us to whom the tragedy happened, but I knew a guy who knew a guy and it was really hard for me at the time and now I’m a star of a subplot.

Do I sound cynical?

Wrapping back around, you can take all of these generic elements and produce something terrifically affecting, like The Missing.  Or you can make The Disappearance, which not only follows every play in the trope book, but manages to dumb it down by treating it as though we’ve not seen these plays before.

Lea (Camille Razat), the perfect daughter (BUT ONLY ON THE SURFACE HOLY COW), goes missing after a party.  Everyone lies about that night for no reason except to make themselves a suspect, the parents (father Pierre-François Martin-Laval, mother Alix Poisson) flip back and forth on the Why Don’t You Care / We Need to Move On debate, always on the opposite side from each other because it’s easier to argue that way, and you stare at the episode count and understand that you’ll just be going through the most forced cliffhangery moments for seven episodes until we discover whatever missed detail that solves things in part eight.  Seriously, this show pulls the whole “something happens off-screen and our on-screen characters respond with wide eyes” episode-ending bullshit so many times you could probably get by with just watching the first 20 or so minutes of each episode – skipping the resultant tail-chasing for the next 40 minutes – and glean all of the important bits.  Yes, this is how entertainment works, I accept that, but again: it’s all about making the work compelling enough to make me believe the case might actually be resolved, or to get me to look past the content itself and consider the subtext, and The Disappearance fails at both of those.

Yar, there are some acceptable bits, and maybe even some worthwhile elements that poke their nose through the mire on the briefest of occasions: Lea, for example, ends up being a fairly typical teen, in the sense that – spoilery talk here follows – she’s a casual drug and sex user.  While most shows (maybe most American shows) would milk these discoveries for character-assassination subplots (the parents striving to still believe in their child despite it all, yadda yadda), The Disappearance, interestingly, makes no comment on them.  The parents never falter in wanting to solve the mystery, and all the various boys caught in Lea’s web don’t seem to much care that they were only one of several suitors.  I could be favorable and say that this was a purposeful subversion of the slut-shaming norm, and it was admittedly refreshing that the show didn’t take a judgemental stance on it.  But I shan’t be favorable: it more seemed to underline the ignorant writing style, which just included these asides to provide for “ah, maybe it was boyfriend B!” distractions.  And her actions aside, the complete disconnect between the details and the character – we really have no idea who Lea is beyond a couple clips in the first episode – makes it hard to care about her, and makes all those circling about her seem equally empty.  Meaning: why was she such a compelling figure for everyone?  Answer: because we’re told she was, and she’s a beautiful, hair-flowing blond French girl, so maybe that’s all it takes.

The relationship between the two detectives on the case – Commandant Bertrand (Francois-Xavier Demaison) and deputy Camille (Alice Pol) – as well as their relationships with others, are also enjoyable.  Because these two are excluded from the suspect pool, the script seems to actually take the time to enrich their roles, even when, in Camille’s case, most of her non-plotty interactions are with unseen characters.  I kept expecting Disappearance to sideline into some subplotty nonsense with these two, but it pared it down to flavoring during scenes that otherwise worked with the core narrative, and resulted in these being the sole likeable and interesting characters in the whole show.

Now, none of what I said above touches directly on the eye-rolling crap that you can start to predict once the show proves willing to abuse it: the over-reactions that err on the side of being dumb and unrealistic; the “small” details that no human being would really remember helpfully remembered at just the right moment to provide a clue; the tiresome bickering and making up and then fingers-crossed-I-lied-again bickering.  And probably most sinfully, the mystery 101 telegraphing of who, what, where, when and why.  Sure, some of the details you can’t know because it’s bullshit withheld stuff, but you’ll probably have a general idea put together pretty early on, and you’ll probably be pretty close to correct.

The Disappearance clearly follows on the trend of season long mystery shows like Broadchurch, and despite some notable elements, plays up the most obnoxious and lazy traits of that genre.