'Missing': Ashley Judd can't overcome cliched premise
In the "Missing" premiere episode, "Pilot," Ashley Judd stars as Becca Winstone learns that her son disappears while studying abroad, and it's a race against time when she travels to Europe to track him down. Credit: ABC
He does and . . . by the show's title alone you know what happens next. The lad disappears and Becca, a humble flower-shop owner, has to summon her inner super-spy to find him. That's the easy part, because she once was a CIA operative.
But that backstory is (well) complicated, and, in the context of the sprawling landscape of spy fiction, cliched, too. As a culture, we've seen it all in the spy genre -- so much so that TV these days tends to wrap spies in parody ("Chuck") or turn them into sly, all-knowing, broad winks ("Burn Notice").
This show really wants you to believe Becca's the Mom Next Door who is also the toughest spook ever to have come in from the cold. Judd brings absolutely no humor or idiosyncrasies to the role that might help sell that unwieldy proposition. She's all business -- a judo chop here, broken neck there, until such time as she's required to shed a tear or two to remind viewers that she's just a mother who has lost her son. Oh, brother.
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