John Doe Review: "Blood Lines" Episode 2

I do not like conventional detective dramas. I've seen so many of them that new ones just seem like the same old seen-it-a-mllion-times. John Doe seems to be developing as a detective drama with the added twist that Doe can draw on such a huge amount of knowledge even more so than Jarod in The Pretender. But whereas Jarod is supposedly a genetically engineered (or bred? its not clear) savant Doe's source of knowledge is much more mysterious and is so great that one can't imagine how even the most brilliant super genius would even want to know a lot of the knowledge he draws up. The knowledge extends way into the realm of uninteresting trivia (like the model numbers of old biolers for heating buildings).

So what's up with John Doe? Can the writers move the show along in directions that make it into something more than a cop show with a super detective? Lets examine the second episode for signs of its future prospects.

At the end of the first ep John was yelled to and addressed as Tommy by a woman on a passing boat. In the second ep we learn that he couldn't find the woman but he was able to cut a piece of plastic from a boat window where he saw her touch it. He used the plastic on the ship as a source of fingerprint and of course knew how to use common chemicals found in a bar to bring out the pring and make it more visible.

John Doe has the fingerprint. But few people have complete fingerprints on file. So that was unlikely to work in the first place. Of course if he found the woman too rapidly the show would develop too rapidly. So it is best that as expected the fingerprint didn't match with anything in police files.

Okay, before you know it he's helping Detective Hayes figure out why some pool has blood a blood appearance in it. Should we stop to wonder why the police would take such an interest as to send so many people out to investigate? Its an implausibility but is it an important one? There are worse ones to come.

I have my own suggestions for how the blood could have gotten into the pool when the alarm was on:

• Put the blood in a pouch that could be thrown into the pool from a distance. Have the pouch be something that would slowly dissolve and release its contents. One would need a good throwing arm of course.
• Have the intruder wear a wet suit that makes their outer appearance look really cold (below 92.7F according to one character) and that way the infrared alarm wouldn't go off. But maybe it has motion detection too. But can such an outside detector even work wthout going off too often from birds, dogs, and other critters and even leaves blown into the area?

Okay, this is all less than total fun. But having some guy climb up on the roof in order to deliver the blood thru the storm gutter isn't that clever. And why was only the back yard surrounded by infrared sensors?

"Fell from the sky."

"Don't be so sure."

So far I'm not deeply intrigued. Plus, the tie-in from the house to the brother's house via a bit of a flower petal is very far-fetched. Why would the guy have a piece of a flower still on him from somewhere else? Why would the owner of the house come out just as they were talking about the type of the flower it is and why would he know to comment that such flowers are around his brother's bouse? This is the sort of thing that dulls my enthusiasm for detective shows.

Why go to the brother's house with a SWAT team? At that point it was just a routine trip to go question a potential suspect to see if he'd put blood into a pool. Er, who cares?

The barn: Why is the brother handing upside down in the barn dripping blood? Weird plot twist.

Doe: "This man has been embalmed by a professional."

Why would the murderer embalm a person if they just wanted to kill them? And why would the murderer, if they were that worked up to kill someone, make sure that person went thru a proper Buddhist burial ritual with their hands? I don't get it.

Okay, so we cut to John Doe trying to figure out who he is. He's out putting signs up. At the same time he's being cagey with various people about his inability to recall any knowledge of who he is.

Sign: "Have you seen me? I'm missing?" Why not: "Do you know me?" as a more pertinent caption on the sign? Heck, since he's so rich from currency trading why not just run ads in newspapers asking for people who know who he is to call some number?

Regarding his reeling off the number of DMV records with Tommy as a name: If he can hack into DMV records then he could narrow himself down by height combined with approximate age. He appears taller than average and so a fairly small percantage of the populace will have his height.

Doe: Detective Hayes, Karen, Karen, Detective Hayes.

Karen: Hey Five Oh.

Like the Hawaii Five Oh reference. I wonder how many people got it. Probably well less than half the audience.

Then Hayes refers to his boss as "Lieutenant Boss Lady".

Gotta establish Karen's basis for a continuing role in the series. Doe didn't respond to Karen's pitch for a job by hiring Karen right away. But you just know he's going to since she's a recurring character. Well, by the end of the show he'd hired her and demonstrated a realization that he needed to be emotionally connected to people. He had to have a sort of emotional battle with himself about a wedding ring in order to get to the point of hiring her.

How'd Doe know what password to use on the US Customs database? Does he simply just know passwords? What is the nature of his knowledge?

I like the way people ask Doe questions where he answers them in a way that is honest but since the question askers don't know just what secrets he's hiding they misunderstand and are satisfied. Example:

Who are you?

I'm John Doe

Does that make the wife Jane Doe?

In a matter of speaking yeah.

Okay, how and why did the shipper guy let the smuggled-in Vietnamese die? Did a Vietnamese guy kill is brother in retaliation? Is the shipper corrupt? Or just careless? Or vicious? How would the shipper cause an entire large container from a ship to fall into the water?

Anyway, here we are at the end of another episode. Lots of things happened in it that are not worth describing and just served to carry us to the next interesting twist. As purely a detective show with a know-it-all detective it doesn't quite rise to something interesting. Doe doesn't have the quirkiness of Monk and so far doesn't have the supernatural abilities of the Dead Zone main character.

At the end of the episode Doe is on the cover of a local newspaper as the savant that helped crack a terrible murder case. Some white guy sees his face in the internet and brings it to some business lady in her own office. There is a cut to the view out of her window and the surprise is that the view is of a city that could be in the Middle East, India or somewhere else in the Asian subcontinent. Here's our second connection to his past and its made to seem simultaneously exotic and either business or spy related.

The John Doe show is going to rise and fall on how well his secret origin works to make him more interesting. Super detective skills just aren't going to do it. Will there be people who know something about his past who will be spying on him or trying to kill or manipulate him? Will the writers be able to make that angle interesting?

Posted by Randall Parker at September 28, 2002 08:16 PM