Persons Unknown is The Real World

Persons Unknown premiered monday night on NBC and I watched it! I figured it couldn't be THAT bad, but let me tell you, it wasn't. It wasn't spectacular, but it wasn't THAT bad. The show started with a woman watching her daughter at the park. The little girl is wearing angel wings made out of balloons. What a NERD! That kid is going to get mocked SO MUCH. No other kid is wearing any sort of wings. So this lady gets kidnapped, right? right. She wakes up in some random hotel room and starts screaming about her kid. Oedipus complex, am i right?! No. Then she sees a camera in the corner of her room and she's all "WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?!" and "HELP ME!" geez, some people don't know how to take a mysterious kidnapping and then hostaging. So, she's all screaming for help like a wuss. Women. amirite?! Then this guy starts beating on her door from outside and she freaks out even though she was just asking for help. The guy tells her there is a key to unlock the door in the bible in the bedside table. Thanks, guy, you could have said that before you broke the door. So the two of them decide to trust each other and then find other people! So there's the mom, whose name is Janet because this show takes place in 1962. just kidding, it probably takes place in 2010. We're already 1/10th of the way through this century! The guy who obnoxiously broke the door open is named Joe, or something simple like that. He doesn't like to talk much, so you're supposed to think he's the mole. There is also this woman who claims to be a counselor, but is actually a crazy person, probably. There is a soldier, who we'll call soldier because I can't remember his name. Ferris Bueller's best friend is also one of the captives, but he's older now. A party girl named... something... There is, according to wikipedia, a woman named Erika, but I don't remember her. There is also a car salesman who is strangely trigger happy. So the first six find that they are in a hotel. cool. one step closer to figuring out WHAT IS GOING ON?! Isn't this creepy?!?! Not really, it's more just kind of strange, so stop acting like it's the creepiest thing ever, score supervisor. The six of them walk outside and find themselves in a very small town. They go to the sheriff's office and try all the phones. Everything in the town is very old. They have typewriters in the sheriff's office and a rotary phone phone booth. How strange, right?! Yeah, it's kinda weird. At the sheriff's office this guy pulls a gun on all of them. They find out he's another captive. WHAT IS GOING ON?! Then they see this van pull up to a chinese restaurant and the people in the van ask them to come eat. So after they corner them with guns and screaming (always effective) the chinese people are like "food?" and they're all like "okay." So they all sit down at this table and are served some food. Everyone is suspicious and someone asks "Is anyone actually going to eat this?" and the soldier grabs as much food as he can and engorges himself in the food. Someone is like "Is it good?" and he says "It's the best damn chinese food I've ever had." The soldier is my favorite character because of his delivery of that line. So then everyone eats. yeah! Then the staff brings them fortune cookies and they spin the lazy susan so the table/universe decides who gets what cookie. So they all read their fortunes. They are all pretty bland and ordinary. They all go back to the hotel and there is a man at the counter who tells them he is the night manager. what?! and he just started last night, but after they were all brought to the hotel. What?! And that he went to bed at home and then woke up here. WHAT?! and he should be used to such strange happenings WHAAAAT?!?! Then we see Janet's fortune. It actually says "Kill your neighbor and you will be set free." Keanu Reaves: whoa. Cliffhanger.

Overall, it's a pretty decent show/miniseries. It's actually a miniseries, which originally attracted me to it because it obviously has a set story, which is nice. It's trying really hard for you to understand that it's weird and creepy, which it is, but it isn't subtle AT ALL. The score is basically a constant stream of long orchestral strings, so you understand that IT IS SO CREEPY. When I think, a much creepier score would have been a lack of a score. All these weird things that are happening are very strange on there own. I don't need this House of Wax score. I'm going to watch the next episode, and probably the whole show. I don't know how good it is going to be. The final scene when we learn that Janet must kill someone to go free is obviously a moral puzzle, and so is the whole experiment, probably. When I hear "moral puzzle" I think of The Box, which was just terrible and unnecessarily confusing. I'm also reminded of the Boondock Saints and, my god, that was so bad. So I definitely have low expectations for the rest of the show, but it has a lot of potential.