COMMENTARY | The long anticipated spin-off of “Bones” featuring quirky professional locator Walter Sherman (Geoff Stults) as “The Finder,” delivers a strong cast of characters with a dollop of fantasy
Episode three, aptly titled “A Cinderella Story” finds NASA asteroid expert Ira Messing (Ian Reed Kesler) desperately seeking the troubled blond (Jodi Lyn O’Keefe) he met at a bar the previous evening. After enjoying a brief tete a tete, Lisa receives an upsetting call on her cell and rushes away leaving behind her fierce red stilettos.
Messing plays Prince Charming, calling on the finder to locate Lisa, so the nerdy – but endearing – scientist can rescue her from whatever evil is encompassed in that phone call.
Sherman tracks the mysterious Lisa down through a friendly hooker (Ginger Gonzaga) with a passion for shoes, a salesman (Wilson Cruz) with a secret closet of designer knockoffs, and a taser-crazy room mate. In a nearby marina he pinpoints the boat Lisa rode in on by looking for a flock of birds (Lisa had bird droppings in her hair at the bar).
In the boat Sherman and his trusty side kick Leo Knox (Michael Clarke Duncan) find a collection of ladies’ shoes and evidence of a serial killer at work.
Concern for Lisa’s welfare mounts until Sherman realizes that all the shoes belong to one woman – the lovely Lisa – and concludes that it’s not Cinderella who’s in danger, it’s Prince Charming.
Although most of this investigative drama plays out in standard live action format, there is a rather bizarre dream sequence in which Sherman plays Prince Charming to his friend and sometimes assistant Deputy U.S. Marshal Isabel Zambada’s (Mercedes Masohn) Cinderella. The writers seem to feel the need to beat the audience over the head repeatedly with the theme of their unrequited mutual attraction, and this is one of their devices. Although the message is over delivered, the scene is funny and engaging, especially when the pair get into an argument over how to handle the fact that the glass slipper doesn’t fit.
The Walter Sherman of this series is a watered down version of the one who helped Bones and Booth find the missing fragment of a 17th century nautical chart in the episode of “Bones” that introduced “The Finder” to the viewing public. That Sherman’s paranoia and bizarre mannerisms interfered with the investigation almost as must as they advanced it.
The new series version of Sherman has lost nearly all the psychosis of the “Bones” version. There is a scene where he walks back and forth across a bed of pebbles in a pair of red stilettos identical to the ones the missing Lisa wore – but really, it’s not like we haven’t seen a guy in heels before. These rather mundane quirks are no match for the truly spastic behavior of the “Bones” Sherman, and that’s a little disappointing. The first Sherman would have demanded much more creativity from the writing staff, and – if they pulled it off – could have been an epic character in pop culture. Of course if they failed to pull it off…I guess the producers decided this was a safer route to take.
New Sherman is much more relatable, but I can’t help musing about what could have been.
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