One of the advantages of being sick and not being able to get back to sleep when you wake up in the middle of the night is that you have an opportunity to catch up on some TV that you’ve missed. In my case, it was the new Fox show The Finder. The show is a spin-off of Bones (as there was an episode that featured two of our main characters last season) and created by the same team. The series is based on The Locator series by Richard Greener, which I might have to check out now. So, let’s check out the series.
Like many other concept procedurals, The Finder focuses on a strange person who has a unique knack for solving cases. In this case, it’s Walter Sherman (Geoff Stults) who is a retired Army Major who came back from Iraq with some minor issues and a knack for finding anything he looks for (with the downside that he is unable to stop looking until he finds it). Aiding him is his business partner Leo Know (Michael Clarke Duncan) as a widowed attorney who runs a bar named The End of the Earth. Aiding our two heroes are Isabel Zambada (Mercedes Masohn) who is an ambitious Deputy US Marshall who also has an on-again, off-again relationship with Walter. Rounding out the crew is a teenage girl on probation named Willa Monday (Maddie Hasson) who is from a Gypsy family and has a record of crimes. Willa has to stay with Leo (and work at the bar) as a condition of her probation, but she also has some family obligations that she would like to get out of even though she feels loyal to the family.
The basic run of the show is that a client shows up asking for Walter’s help in finding something. Walter decides whether or not to take it (he usually does or the episodes would be really short). Then Walter and crew do their own unique investigation, which is part science and part intuition, to try and find things. Walter always finds what the client is looking for, even if it isn’t what they client thought they were looking for. Among the cases shown so far are: A magician who’s trick goes awry and want to find where his lovely assistant went, a baseball player who lost his good luck charm, a nerdy engineer who found the love of his life but ended up with only her shoe and an astronaut who lost his career because he reported seeing a UFO.
The show is a typical procedural and you know that (for the most part) Walter is going to find what he needs to find. But the enjoyment of the show is from its humor and the interplay between the characters. Willa seemed like she would be the odd man (girl) out in the adventures, but the writers have done a good job keeping her involved. They have also done a great job with slowly filling in backstory for all the characters, so you know why Leo volunteered to keep an eye on Willa and why Isabel keeps working with Walter, even though it could affect her ambitions. I find it a funny and quirky show that I hope is able to stay around for a little while longer. Check it out Thursdays on Fox.