Every TV network (choose your viewing platform) seems to have at least one series that revolves around the FBI, including CBS, which has, well, “FBI.”
Looks like WGN America wanted in on that party.
Its new 12-episode series, “Gone,” involves a “well-funded” FBI task force whose members, led by Special Agent Frank Novak (Chris Noth), hunt predators (sexual and otherwise) in cases involving abduction and missing persons. They do this, in part, by flying around the country in a private, ridiculously high-tech jet that resembles Air Force One. Nice perk if you can get it.
The newest member of Novak’s task force is Kit “Kick” Lannigan (Leven Rambin), a onetime child abductee who spent four years as “Beth Foster” with her fake parents before being rescued by Novak. It’s all explained in the opening scene, a flashback.
It’s now 15 years later and Kick — who owns a self-defense school in Pittsburgh (“Kick,” get it?) — is recruited by Novak, with whom she’s apparently kept in touch over the years. He needs her help in finding a young, partially blind girl named Mia who was abducted from her parents. Kick feels the pull of her past and (unofficially) joins Novak’s team: agent John Bishop (Danny Pino), he of the requisite stubble, pearly whites and good looks; agent Maya Kennedy (Tracie Thoms), who was with Novak the day he rescued Beth/Kick; and, of course, the computer geek, James Finley (Andy Mientus), another former child abductee who enlists with Novak in order to avoid jail time. (James and Kick live together in Pittsburgh, or at least I think they do — it’s unclear.) There’s also Kick’s mother, Paula (Kelly Rutherford), who wrote a bestselling book about her daughter’s abduction and enjoys the media spotlight, much to Kick’s chagrin.
“Gone” is loosely based on Chelsea Cain’s novel, “One Kick,” and doesn’t offer anything fresh in terms of its core elements (writing, cinematography, character development). It’s diverting enough, but nothing you haven’t seen before on any of the innumerable FBI and/or police procedurals past and present, including the aforementioned “FBI.” Its intentions are noble and earnest in spotlighting the alarming number of missing persons in the US, so it gets points for that. But otherwise it’s run-of-the-mill episodic television.
Noth, who’s always reliable, is fine here, but doesn’t have much to do other than set up each storyline and then bark lots of orders at everyone. Rambin is solid but we need to see more of her sad back story; there are allusions to this in the first two episodes, so the show’s writers will, hopefully, add some context to her tragic past before “Gone” is gone altogether.
