Without a Trace: Blood Out

I think that adding Mary Elizabeth mastrantonio is brillant. She is a wonderful actress. And I have now started watching Without a Trace. Giving up on years of E.R. watching.

I've enjoyed the program until tonight. The new girl that played opposite Poppy Montgomery came across with an attitude that ruined the whole thing for me. Even her looks seemed to have daggers, or something disrespectful to the program. Do you see what we are seeing? We are in theatre and could hardly believe this person was put on the air. Please respond if you have the time. Thanks. C.Stanley (Deming, NM)

If you're only just now joining the party, then I can see how you're not that impressed, and how you only see it as pretty good but not fantastic. It's a little like starting to watch The X-Files in season five or Buffy the Vampire Slayer in season four.

I still love the show and think it's great, but it's not the show I fell in love with. Season one was nothing short of brilliant. And season two was also exceptionally strong. It's still above average TV, but it's no longer quite as compelling as it was when it began.

In my opinion, part of that has to do with the increased focus on the characters' lives. But I read a couple of articles that said they were doing that to boost ratings -- that they saw a spike in viewership every time they brought in the soap opera-like elements of their outside lives, specifically if they centered an episode around it. I think Jack's divorce/custody deposition episode was one of the highest rated ever?

So, they seized on that and try to do more of it -- but to me, that makes it less interesting. Especially Jack. I'm really not so interested in Jack, and he gets the lion's share of character-centered episodes. Also, I liked it better when they introduced, SVU-style, the character's private lives more subtly, relating them to the storylines organically and letting their inner lives filter in, rather than creating an episode specifically for them.

And every once in a while, they have an absolutely mesmerizing, gutwrenching episode. The episode from season two, with Jake Thomas as the boy tormented by his classmates? Oh.My.God. So intense, so painful, so emotional. And so, so memorable. And that, too, is an episode where you see the agents making connections to their own lives and getting too close to things, and yet it doesn't dominate the storyline, just meshes seamlessly with it. Naturally.

The episode you watched? Part of the post-marketing-analysis strategy of ratings over quality.