I’m watching Nowhere Man, a short-lived cult hit starring Bruce Greenwood, from the mid-90′s. It’s about a guy (Thomas Veil) who suddenly – in the course of one evening – becomes unknown to everyone in his life. His wife doesn’t recognize him (and has another husband in his place). His mother doesn’t seem to know him. One friend who perhaps would still have admitted knowing him ends up dead. And so on.
So he goes on the run, all alone, and through the course of the series, finds people who know something, people who run him in circles by acting like they know something, and people in similar situations to his. And as of episode four, guess what else he starts running into?
Babes. Every week. Whether it’s a fevered erotic dream, or a woman tending him in her house while he recovers from a bullet wound, or a hooker foisted on him by a guest star… one way or another, after a certain point in the series, we have to have a Babe of the Week every week.
I first noticed in the episode with Carrie-Anne Moss, “Something About Her”, in which she plays her exact role from Memento (nice to see movies ripping off TV for a change, instead of the other way around), participating in a charade to make Tom think she’s the love of his life, only to wind up falling for him herself. Aw, isn’t it sweet?
The moral is, even if sex makes absolutely no sense in your show, it has to be injected in there anyway. Even if it detracts from the story. It’s weird, because I distinctly remember being taught the exact opposite when I was taking screenwriting classes. But I guess it’s one of those rules you’re not allowed to break, except with supervision.
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This was a show that my husband and I got hooked on, only to have it cancelled without the “mystery” solved – or it was dealt with in a half-assed way, and it pissed us both off. First, because no question was ever answered, and it was dragged out; and because it was cancelled before the show had run its course!
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