Crime drama, next to mindless reality shows, may be the most abundant genre on TV. There’s ‘Law & Order’ and its three spin-offs, ‘CSI’ and its two spin-offs, ‘NCIS’ and its spin-off, every show on the USA Network and countless other scattered programs. To break up the monotony of this oversaturated format, a new crime show needs a gimmick, something that will allow the viewer to differentiate between two shows following the exact same blueprint from week to week. For ‘Unforgettable,’ that gimmick is hyperthymesia.

If the title of the show was not a big enough hint, hyperthymesia is a very rare disease that allows a person to remember everything. In the case of ‘Unforgettable’ the lucky recipient is protagonist Carrie Wells. She used to be a detective in Syracuse, N.Y., but quit and decided to start working at a nursing home. She helps them remember things, obviously. Then one day, or in the first episode, her old partner and ex-boyfriend Al, also from Syracuse, says he needs her help on the force in New York City. So for the foreseeable future, the two of them will use what is probably the single most boring superpower in the world to solve a new crime each week.

‘Unforgettable’ has a lot of problems right from the start, the most pressing of which is Wells’ titular ‘power.’ It’s pretty boring watching someone remember things. The show attempts to remedy this via elaborate flashback sequences in which present-Wells watches past-Wells in an event that is too complicated to explain —and too uninteresting to watch. No one cares about someone’s stylized thought process.

Also, the idea of a perfect memory could be interesting, but it makes no sense for police work. Presumably in every show, the detectives will hit a snag in the case. Wells remembers some teeny tiny detail everyone missed the first time, and the wheels keep spinning until it either happens again or they catch the bad guy. In the most recent episode, she uses her power of human nitpicking to find a boy hiding underneath a tarp because she recalled the tarp had moved since she last saw it. Riveting.

Then there’s the Syracuse issue. ‘Unforgettable’ attempts to inject its characters with depth and give them an interesting backstory. Unfortunately, the creators of ‘Unforgettable’ fail to develop the show’s characters, instead favoring the thrill of chasing criminals in its hour of airtime.

To fix this, the writers quickly establish that Wells and Al both worked at the Syracuse Police Department and then shoehorn Syracuse references about three times per episode. As a resident, I laughed every time it was referenced. For example, Wells shows up to the crime scene in her street clothes and Al immediately tells her, ‘You can’t dress like that here. This isn’t Syracuse.’ The name-dropping illustrates nothing about the city, as it could have easily been replaced with Rochester or Buffalo or Neverland. It is a cheap tactic that gives a sense of history between the characters, but ‘Unforgettable’ could not care less about them. They only exist to service the cases.

Speaking of a poorly developed backstory, the show’s other two character shadings are unbearably ironic. First, Wells can’t remember the day her sister was murdered. Second, her mother has Alzheimer’s disease. Both of these thoughts are about one minute long vignettes scattered throughout the episode, but they offer essentially nothing to the overall show. Wells is still going to solve crimes every week, and nothing is ever going to change that.

In the world of TV crime shows, stasis equals success. Unfortunately, that’s a wholly uninteresting concept for the cognitive viewer. If ‘Unforgettable’ wants to set itself aside from all the other detective stories, it had better invest in its characters.

jswucher@syr.edu

Published on October 2, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Jeff: jswucher@syr.edu