In Plain Sight, "Stan By Me": Mary's off the hook!

Spoilers for last night's "In Plain Sight" coming up just as soon as I find out where Brandi buys her luggage...

We're now one episode away from the first season finale, and I still have no idea what kind of show "In Plain Sight" wants to be. Some episodes (the better ones, not coincidentally) focus on what life might actually be like for either a WitSec Marshal or a WitSec subject, but others dwell on formulaic murder mysteries, or annoying family drama involving Mary's mom and sister. And as we come to the end of season one, it feels like the latter type of episode is seriously outnumbering the former.

Having Mary kidnapped and held hostage could have made for a really strong episode -- Mary McCormack was sure game to play Mary's terror and her drive to figure out a way out of this nightmare -- but tying it into the mind-numbing Magical Suitcase Full O' Blow(*) sucked away most of the tension.

(*) Not only is it apparently waterproof, but it now seems to wind up in Brandi's possession no matter what she does. I thought I was paying close attention last week and I still have no idea how the hell she got it out of the motel room with the scary junkie family. Nor do I really care.

The problem, I think, is that the writers (or the network/studio execs) feel like there has to be a mystery or thriller element to most of the episodes, which means there have to be dead bodies and bad guys and the like. But unless they want Mary and Marshall to seem really bad at their jobs, very few of these cases can wind up having anything to do with their witnesses' former lives, which in turn means that most of the action each week could be featured on one of dozens of other series.

Maybe the daily life of an actual U.S. Marshal in the WitSec program is interesting and exciting enough to support a weekly drama series. Maybe it isn't. I have no idea. But either the "In Plain Sight" producers have researched it (as much as the Marshals will allow them to) and discovered that it's not, or they're too conditioned to tell the same kinds of stories we get on every other cop show, and that's unfortunate.

What did everybody else think?