But against that we not only have a format I enjoy, but we have the borough of Queens, New York, finally getting its turn in the spotlight. With a population of 2,200,000 people, Queens would be the 4th-largest city in America if New York were divided into its component parts. (Behind Los Angeles, Chicago, and neighboring Brooklyn.) It may not have Broadway, Central Park, or as many skyscrapers, tony boutiques, and ethnic restaurants as Manhattan (although it boasts its share of all of those), but it does have two airports, a baseball team (go, Mets!), the U.S. Open tennis center, and areas ranging from ultra-affluent quasi-suburbs (like Douglastown) to working-class and poverty-stricken sections. Of course, the cops in this show should only be assigned to one particular precinct, but that never stopped Lennie Briscoe (arrests the wrong guy about 60% of the time, but still smug about it!) from investigating cases from Harlem to Battery Park, so…
Also working for Unforgettable is the basic gimmick, that Carrie Wells (Montgomery) has an eidetic memory and can recall anything she's seen/heard/learned, which makes the sudden recall of tiny details that drives your basic police procedural much more plausible. And the way they depict Carrie "going back for a look", with Montgomery in the place she's already been, observing the scene as well as herself, is hokey as hell but fun to watch. (No, she wouldn't actually be able to "see herself" without the aid of a mirror, of course, but it's a visual representation of Carrie remembering how she looked around the area in question, so I'm fine with it, dramatically.)
Add in your generic supporting cops (including ex-BtVS guest star Kevin Rankin [I have a fondness for anyone from the Buffy "family"…hi, Donny Maclay!]) and Dylan Baker in the challenging role of Al (who has to be Carrie's mentor/protector [since only he knows how damaged weird Carrie is], her boss, and her ex-lover, retain our sympathies yet not overshadow our lead), and we have a nicely functional show. Even if the opening credits, which say "Forgettable" before quickly adding that "Un" before it, are perhaps a touch too accurate…
Previously on Unforgettable…Carrie Wells could remember every single boring conversation she's ever endured, every bad kiss she's ever had, and every piece of muzak she's had to listen to while on hold, but she can't remember what happened on the day her sister murdered. So [headcanon] she fled the greater Syracuse area for the warm shores of Australia, where she spent her college years and picked a resilient Aussie accent and a just plain silly addiction to tanktops, no matter what the circumstances. Returning to Syracuse [/headcanon], she joined the police force but eventually quit when she was too obsessed with investigating her sister's death. After several years away from law-enforcement, she joined the NYPD, out in Queens, near where her Alzheimer's-ridden mother is cared for. Recently, her mother identified a sketch of the suspect in her daughter's (Carrie's sister's) slaying as "Jonathan", which really makes you wonder wtf the Syracuse P.D. was doing all these years, rather than asking the victim's mother. Sheesh.
Meanwhile, Carrie wears tanktops, anywhere, anytime…NYPD regulations and New York weather be damned…
TEASER
A young blonde thing jogs along, her hoodie thoughtfully unzipped to expose her cleavage. She heads into an okay-looking apartment building, only to emerge almost instantly, yelling for help and for somebody to call the police. What, she doesn't have a phone?
Carrie gets the call at a deli, where she's stuck in line behind an argumentative customer. She attempts to speed things along by itemizing the customer's purchases (since apparently the Super-Memory also makes her a whiz at addition, not to mention calculating sales taxes), then simply does the normal thing, drops a twenty to pay for her purchase and splits. Considering that she's only buying a PowerBar, she might have just used a fiver. (Or skipped the PowerBar, for that matter.)
At the scene, Detective Kevin tells Carrie she wore those jeans earlier this week. Actually, he's just fucking with her, getting a kick out of making Memory Alpha have to think about it. Love it.
There's a dead girl inside, wearing only a long tee shirt and a head wound. Looks pretty good, aside from the head wound. She worked for Legal Aid (plot point #1!). Carrie deduces because the apartment has both a frilly bedroom and a spartan one, Dead Head Wound had a male roommate. (Or a butch lesbian, or she was the lesbian, and her femme roomie killed her…think outside the gender box, folks!)
In the alley behind the building, Bald Cop has found fibers, and sassy Cop of Color has found a muddy bootprint.
Young Blonde (Laura) says that roommate is Kevin McMillan, a bailiff, and Dead Girl liked having him around because he made her feel safe, he may have been crushing on Dead Girl, and Kevin allegedly got drunk and stayed at a friend's last night, but Laura only has the friend's word for this. (Dead Girl, aka Mary, threw a party, but Kevin didn't show, despite the fact he lived there.)
Carrie and Al randomly touch on the My Dead Sister investigation (which probably means this is a non-arc episode and they're just getting it out of the way) and there's some banter about how the "mere mortals" remember things (Al: "We write stuff on our hands"), and they get a line on Big Unsexy, Kevin McMillan (Carrie: "Drunk big guy with a crush? There's a country song with an unhappy ending.") who will no doubt prove to be our first false lead of the night. (Too obvious, right?)
By the way, Carrie is wearing an eminently sensible leather coat/blouse/scarf combination here. So much for all my "unforgettable? Nah, just unprofessional, dressed like that" jokes. Perhaps somebody realized it was silly to always have Carrie in tank tops. Or perhaps Poppy was just freezing her hot Aussie shoulders off…
Al mentions what kind of SUV Kevin drives, and Carrie grants him the kindness of a "did you say…" before remembering she spotted the car on the way in, and they go around the corner to find it. You know, I'm not so sure the NYPD actually needs Ms. Memory to find a suspect's vehicle parked a half a block from his apartment. Just sayin'…
Kevin has blood on his hands, and doesn't know whether he killed Mary (Dead Girl). Well, if he had confessed, it'd be a short episode, right? ("Stay tuned for a special 1hr and 50 min. Person of Interest, next on CBS!")
Act 1
Kevin says he doesn't remember; as far as he knows, he slept the night in his car after his buddy drove him home. The blood on his hand isn't Mary's, and Bald Cop says that Kevin seems like a good guy, going back to when he worked at White Castle. Al orders a check of Kevin's blood to see if he really was drunk, and figures it might be a good idea to look up his buddy. Bald Cop says they haven't found a weapon (Mary was hit on the head, remember?) and Al is like "guy breaks into a hot girl's apartment? Sounds like rape," but Non-White Cop says there's no evidence of that. Frankly, there's not a lot of evidence, period. Detective Kevin (gotta learn the character name, given that there's a "Kevin" as a suspect) says that a friend of his knew Mary (convenient!) and she once had one of her Legal Aid clients stalk her. Hmm, perhaps Legal Aid might not want to hire hotties to deal with the (potentially) violent (accused) criminals? Just sayin'.
Det. Kevin goes to a boutique gym and interviews a kickboxing hot guy. (Note that the featured guest-actor is doing some serious kicking, but the extra next to him is half-assing it. Maybe just quarter-assing it, at that.) This is Frank, Dead Mary's stalker, who says he was just trying to be romantic and stuff. (The actor is kind of pinging the gaydar, so maybe Frank will get romantic with Det. Kevin later…bamp-chicka-bamp-bamp…) Det. Kevin thinks that a skilled kickboxer could knock Mary's head in and that would account for why Bald Cop can't find a weapon, if the weapon is Frank's foot. Frank denies this, of course. Oh, and he's got a cut on his forehead (is it his blood on Kevin's hand?) but he says that was from practice yesterday and he was in the E.R. all night. Sure you were, Frankie…
Two Carrie-less scenes in a row? Did Poppy fly back Down Under while they were shooting this one?
Nope, there she is, making a call about her sister's case. (Guess I was wrong about this not being an arc-ish ep. Oops.) Which apparently happened in 1984, making Carrie 35-40. Nice for the show to be honest about Poppy's age, I think.
And then, we get a positively HILARIOUS flashback! (Dammit, show, I like you! Don't make me laugh at you!) It's 1984 in Syracuse and 8 year old Carrie (already with trademark long red hair…dyeing so young?) is saddened to see that Mom (the actress playing Mom is wearing a big black wig, hoping it will distract us from the actress's age) has cleaned out Dear Dead Rachel's side of their room. But Li'l Carrie does this just the way Big Carrie has her memory breakthroughs…staring and moving slowly as the tinkly music plays! And then she lists all the stuff that Mom put away, which must have driven Mom nuts ("yes, yes, all of it! Jeez! Stop listing everything!"), but Mom just offers grilled cheese as consolation. Carrie chooses to pout instead, probably wondering why, if mom was going to take away Rachel's stuff, she couldn't have gotten the other bed out of that tiny room, too, and given her some space. Seriously, nothing says "get over the trauma of your sister's murder already, kid!" like a half-barren room, with the furniture still in place. Either leave the stuff or redecorate, Mom…this is just rubbing it in.
(Also, the dark wooden door frames and high wainscoting make the place look like an Arts & Crafts-style house, which would be pretty out of place upstate, as far as I can recall. That was an L.A./Chicago thing, to my knowledge.)
Bald Cop talks to Kevin's buddy, who is (suspiciously?) helpful, saying Kevin cut his hand on bar glass (he was angry at the Giants blowing a game), and giving the names of some guys Mary was dating through an online service. Al says the report shows that Kevin really was totally soused. Det. Kevin says Frankie really was at the hospital and Al has him check random sex crimes in the area.
Other Female Cop says the hole in the window wouldn't have let anyone reach the latch anyway, and they're going to have to go back and check it out…but of course that's our cue for Carrie to flashback, check out herself checking out the apartment, and "notice" the soap stains on the floor to go with the dirty dishes and the towel by the door. She realizes that Mary was doing the dishes when she went to answer the door, that the broken window is a fake, and that Mary knew her attacker.
Dun-dun-dun! Ads. (But not for me, haha.)
ACT 2:
Bald Cop says that Mary's browser history shows she was spending her last night on Earth checking out the website for the Sociology Dept. at Fordham (a real school? What, no "Hudson University" here?) and she sent drunk Kevin an email about it (which he never got, of course). Other Fremale Cop (Nina) asks Laura, who says that at the party last night, Mary introduced Joe the Suspiciously "Helpful" Friend as with that department and said that he was at the courthouse doing research on sentencing and so on. But when an Actual Prison System Worker asked him questions, Joe got all squirrelly. And apparently he wasn't at some conference in New Jersey, like he claimed…
Bald Cop confirms that nobody at Fordham ever heard of Helpful Joe. And Carrie slo-mos back to Helpful Joe's interview with Bald Cop, and realizes that when Joe pulled that "dating service" fib out of his ass, he was looking over Bald Cop's shoulder at a dating site on some other cop's computer. (Nice to see the NYPD staying focused, huh? Does Det. Kevin [named "Roe", apparently] have HotKickBoxer.com on his work computer?)
Nina and Bald Cop ("Mike Costello") track down Joe's apartment from his gym tag (so…he gave the cops a false address, but he wouldn't lie to his gym? Nice priorities, Helpful Joe!). Joe's gone, but his coat matches the fabric Costello found in the alley, and Nina finds a firing-range target in the sink, so Joe is now considered armed and dangerous. And not so helpful, after all.
ACT 3:
Costello notes that Joe made up this whole other life, and apparently killed Mary because she got in the way. That smells like Big Plans, which can't be good. The super at the place Joe was subletting notes that Joe's a Buffalo Bills fan. Which makes him a masochist, at least.
Carrie and Roe (Rowe?) talk to Kevin at the Queens County Courthouse, where Kevin says that
BTW, here's the outfit Carrie's wearing now. A top cut down to her aureolas, just standard issue for the NYPD, don't you know?
One quick call to Buffalo and we find out that Joe is really Joe Williams, and apparently they know that he's the same Joe Williams whose father and brother were killed in an explosion at a paint factory up there. (Way to go, Buffalo! That's quality police work!) The owner was negligent, pled to a few charges (down in Queens, for whatever reason) in exchange for a light sentence, and Carrie quickly slo-mos back to "see" the owner's name on the sentencing docket posted on the wall at the Courthouse! The sentencing is today, and Joe must be planning to kill the owner ("Reginald Donner") because the legal system was letting him off lightly. He killed Mary when she began to suspect his "doing research on sentencing" story, and he only buddied up to Kevin so he could get easy access to the Courthouse.
Aww, so no Bamp-Chicka-Bamp-Bamp, then? Poor Kevin.
ACT 4:
The security guy at the Courthouse says there's no way Homicidal Joe could get a gun in the building, so Carrie quickly slo-mos back to seeing Kevin's gun secured in his locker (I think you could figure this out logically without the Slo-Mo…sorry, Memory Alpha!) and reasons that Joe copied Kevin's keys while Kevin was passed out drunk. (Wouldn't those have "do not duplicate" stamped on them? Just wondering.) The security captain remains skeptical, until Al finds civilian clothes stuffed in a trash can, proving that either Joe is wearing a bailiff's uniform…or the Courthouse has a streaker on the loose. Either way, he finally agrees it's trouble.
They start to evac the building, but as the alarm sounds, Carrie convinces Rowe that Joe is too obsessed, he's not going to pass up his one chance for vengeance, and they (and Al) need to get to the prisoner area right now.
Carrie heads down to the basement, passing various security guys. (But as she only ever saw the back of Joe's head [at the precinct], she can't ID him.) Joe gets to the prisoner area, pulls his gun, and forces his way in. (None of the other security guys are armed? Odd.)
Carrie gets her gun on Joe just as he gets his gun on Donner (and Rowe and Al are there to back her up, quickly) and then she has to talk Joe down. She does it by asking him the details about Donner's trial, and then asking him about the best vacation he ever took with his father and brother, and when he doesn't recall that as instantly as the trial details, she tells him that his obsession with Donner is forcing out the good memories, that by fixating on his loved ones' deaths, he's in danger of losing the details of their lives. (Of course, this could be said about Carrie's own obsession about Rachel…good writing here.)
Joe gives in and surrenders (and Mary's death was apparently "only" manslaughter [she twisted out of his grasp and hit her head on something…something CSU should have noted, I would think, but whatever], so he won't go away forever), and Carrie, perhaps having what she said to Joe strike home, finally opens up to Al and Rowe about Rachel's death (Rowe had been out of the loop before, and even Al didn't know all of this).
It turns out that she searched her entire house, but Rachel's things really were gone. And so she decided she wouldn't forget anything about Rachel, ever again,and fixed all the details of their room in her memory, recalling where everything used to be.
Now, in theory, this sounds as silly as the original flashback scene (you can just decide to have an eidetic memory? Really?)…but, in practice? Well, as Carrie describes each item ("our troll collection…pictures…the unicorn she won at the County Fair and that she said was half mine") and we see Li'l Carrie looking around the room, the items re-appearing as the camera pans (and a cover of The Cure's "Love Song" on the soundtrack), because Rachel's things (and thus Rachel) never truly gone as long as Carrie can remember…well, by the end, I'm crying like a baby. Damn. Very well done; better than I thought this show was capable of, to be honest.
And then Rowe says he'll be glad to contact his uncle in the convenience store trade (the possible killer might have possibly worked at such a store in the area; Carrie's been trying to get employee records from 1984, with about as much luck as you would expect), and Carrie tells him he actually wasn't that far off about how recently she'd worn the jeans in the teaser scene (and then gives him the intervals of the two times before that when previously she wore them) and Rowe gives a little bow and calls her "Master" and leaves…and Al, having watched this cuteness is like "Master?", and Carrie kids that he's just jealous…but there could actually be the seeds of jealousy there, on two separate accounts. First, that Carrie and the 10-years-younger Rowe were almost nearly flirting in front of Al (who is, after all, her ex) and second, that Rowe is now more looking up to Carrie than his actual boss, Al, so it's a professional issue, as well. Don't know where they're going with this, but good writing again. Good enough to make me look up the name of the episode writer (Jan Nash) and be on the lookout for more of his/her scripts.
And then Al leaves, and Carrie flashes back to running in the woods with Rachel, and then we see Li'l Carrie alone in her (in reality) half-empty room, and we match cut to Carrie, in the exact same pose, alone in the darkened office.
Damn. Good episode.
WRAP-UP:
For a show that I was pretty much defending as an enjoyable trifle in my intro, that worked surprisingly well. Still some clunky bits (Li'l Carrie slo-mo-ing is still laughable, no matter how many tears I shed at the end), but tightly written in many spots, Carrie mostly wore appropriate clothing, and they kidded the premise without disrespecting it, which is a fine line to walk.
Poppy Montgomery also really sold the last scene (helped by doing a chunk of it in voice-over, I suppose) and her accent is almost under control, really mostly notable on the "o" vowels that she pronounces as "ow". (So "coat" is "cowt" and "closer" is "clowser" and so on.) And they're starting to do more with Kevin Rankin, who's becoming a good actor. (Truth be told, he was kind of one-note in the BtVS guest-spot, but he was playing an idiot and was easily overshadowed by Amy Adams as his cousin. [She had the better-written role, anyhow.])
This is the kind of episode that makes me want to watch another episode. Which, as I have the whole season in my computer, is easily enough done. But maybe not right away…
Leave your comments, and I'll remember EVERY SINGLE DETAIL.
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