s Missing, formerly known as 1-800-Missing, begins its second season, everything has changed for Jess Mastriani (Scorsone). Her former partner, Brook Haslett, has been transferred, and Jess has gone to Quantico to train to be an FBI agent. Near the end of her training, she's abruptly whisked away to Washington, D.C., to help find a teenage girl who got on an elevator at the mall and vanished.
Her partner on the case is Nicole Scott (Fox), an eight-year veteran of the FBI who believes that rules get in the way of results—and she has the record to prove it. She's become infamous in the Bureau as an agent who can't keep a partner but manages to get the job done. The women are joined in the search for the girl by evidence specialist Antonio Cortez (Consuelos) and assistant director John Pollock (Louis), their publicity-seeking boss.
Jess' gift of having prophetic visions has also changed. She no longer has to dream to have a vision; however, she does need to have an emotional connection to the missing person.
The new team leaps on the case of the missing teen. Is it the hooded man who got on the elevator with her? Or her step-brother with whom she appears to have a strained relationship? Or maybe it's her high school drama teacher, with whom she seemed to have more than a student/teacher relationship?
As Jess tries to understand her new partner and sifts through the confusing aspects of the case, she knows one thing is certain. They are running out of time, and if they don't figure out how Jess' visions fit with the clues they have from their investigation, they won't be able to save the girl's life.
Revamped and improved
Missing has been completely revamped from last year, largely for the good of the series. No doubt there were some anxious moments for the production staff when Gloria Reuben, who played Brooke Haslett, and Justina Machado, who played Sunny Estrada, decided not to return to the show for the second season. However, Vivica A. Fox as Nicole and Mark Consuelos as Antonio are strong in their respective roles, and the series picks up without missing a beat in the season premiere.
The heart of the series has always rested with Caterina Scorsone as Jess, a young woman with the unusual gift of dreaming visions that help find missing people. The talented Scorsone is the only returning cast member and the one the show couldn't live on without.
Wisely, the producers have decided to drop the need for Jess to go to sleep when she has a vision. It was awkward from the beginning of the series when the action started to heat up during an episode and Jess was instructed to go off and sleep so she could dream. The other awkward part of the first season had to do with Jess not being an FBI agent. As her partner leapt into action at the end of an episode, the writers strained to keep Jess involved in the story's conclusion. Both story problems have been taken care of. Now that Jess is a regular agent, her biggest problem will be keeping up with her new kick-ass partner, Nicole.
So, all around, this season offers good changes that should help make the stories more exciting to watch. However, while the season premiere gets things off to a good start for the year, there is one looming potential problem. While Fox's character is lively, Nicole is so over-the-top that her actions often aren't believable. Fox is very appealing as an actress, but even she has trouble pulling off her character's constant bad behavior. Nicole wouldn't just be changing partners, she'd be up on charges. She manhandles suspects, misrepresents herself and never waits for backup. And that's just in the premiere.
Through the first three episodes of the new season Missing feels a little to much like Cagney & Lacey by way of Starsky & Hutch. For Fox's Nicole, it'd be wise to dial back on the Starsky and embrace her inner Cagney.
