Nowhere Man

Nowhere Man

A sci-fi series that aired on UPN in 1995 -1996.

The Set-Up: Photojournalist Thomas Veil, played by Bruce Greenwood, goes out to dinner with his wife. He heads to the bathroom for a smoke and when he gets back to his table, she’s gone. His credit cards don’t work. The locks have changed. Not even his dog recognizes him. And when Veil does catch up with his wife, she is shooting him one damn cold stare. He soon figures out that “they” have erased him because of a picture he took. Veil escapes, but has nowhere to go and no one to trust. He must now follow various clues while trying to elude “them” in an attempt to get back his life and making all his nowhere plans for nobody.

Typical episode: Greenwood is desperately following some lead while keeping a low profile. He stumbles onto a mystery with esoteric sci-fi implications. He meets someone. They seem really nice until they offer to help Veil by taking a gander at the negative of a photograph he took called “Hidden Agenda.” There is a blatant romance-of-the-week strategy to this show. He witnesses something freaky. He discovers “they” are involved. He leaves behind his ally/betrayer to an unsure fate and moseys on down the road. He knows not where he’s going to.

A la X-Files, there are two kinds of episodes. The more anthology/existential ennui episodes, and the episodes that seem to push the mystery forward. However, you rarely know which kind it is until the end of the episode.

The style: The Prisoner divided by The Fugitive times The Incredible Hulk.

Typical Dialogue: “You’re supposed to see the tricks, not the mirrors . . . Everything they give you, they can take back. Everything you thought you had, you don’t. Absolute zero. Bottom line., Gentle Jack”

More Dialogue: “It’s not science fiction, and you wouldn’t be talking to me right now if you thought it was.”

Typical Lame Narration: “As I learned, there was more – or maybe less –to this haven than met the eye.”

Most atypical exchange: “I’m a photojournalist.”
“Oh, cool . . . Have you ever taken Julia Roberts’ picture?”
“No, no. I’ve never met Julia Roberts.”
“Oh, yeah. Me, neither . . . but it would be great, though, don’t you think?”

My favorite episodes:

• 1.1 “Absolute Zero” A highly compelling beginning to the series. Director Tobe Hooper brings a mysterious and even funny creepiness to the proceedings. Paranoia unleashed. A bit overstuffed, but it certainly gets the point across. It’s all downhill from here.
  
• 1.8 “The Alpha Spike” This episode is the best example of what series creator Lawrence Hertzog was going for. It does nothing to further the overall mystery. It is simply an excuse for Greenwood to uncover some Organization-sponsored sci-fi shenanigans. A brilliantly satirical (and frightening) musical number. This episode makes a correlation between high school education and brainwashing. My favorite episode of the series by a mile.
  
• 1.9 “You Really Got a Hold on Me” Thanks to a great performance by Dean Stockwell, this episode is fairly emotionally stirring. Stockwell plays a man who has been in Greenwood’s shoes for thirty years. And it has taken a hell of a toll. A fucked-up way to do the right thing.
  
• 1.13 “Contact” This paranoid episode introduces a few key aspects -- including an unseen ally to Veil from inside the wide reaching Organization. One of the few episodes that really furthers the plot and contributes to the series as a whole.
  
• 1.22 “Calloway” A very disconcerting episode. The stakes are raised. Not only does this episode move the mystery forward, it gives the whole thing an urgency that wasn’t there before.
  

Least Favorite:

• 1.7 “A Rough Whimper of Insanity” They make a huge deal out of rudimentary Internet functions. By 1995, it wasn’t that mysterious. And the virtual realty schtick? Awful! And the main guest actor is fucking terrible. This whole episode gives me a tumor. The title of the episode is an anagram for information superhighway. This episode is really, really bad.
  
• 1.11 “An Enemy Within” Greenwood is injured in a tiny town with no phones or hospitals or electricity and must be nursed back to health by sexy single Maria Bello. An evil corporation is taking over the town and wants to take Bello’s farm. While he’s hanging around anyway, Greenwood inspires the town people pull together to fight the corporation. Bello becomes twitterpated. They flirt and kiss and have sex. Wasn’t your wife one of the things you were trying to get back, Mr, Veil?
  

How many episodes were produced? 25.

Is there much continuity? Sometimes. Ultimately, the concept itself doesn’t add up logically. It might be more plausible if Veil led an isolated life, but he seems to be a well-respected sociable person. Surely there’s someone that “they” haven’t gotten to that knows him well enough to believe him and help him. There are too many unexplored areas of his life.

Sometimes, he’s carrying the negative on him. Sometimes he has it hidden somewhere. It just depends on what the plot demands.

The show skirts a serialized strategy in favor of a more anthology-like approach to things. As a result, there’s very little sense of the bigger picture mystery coming into focus. Each revelation feels too disassociated from each revelation that came before. As a serialized mystery, it’s not successful. But that was never the intention. Show creator Lawrence Hertzog confesses that he never intended to answer all the questions raised in the pilot and doesn’t even know the answers himself. He goes on to express frustration that the network tried to force him to answer some questions by the end of the season. He just wanted each episode to be, “an allegory for the human condition, etc., etc.”

During the last half dozen episodes, there is a network-imposed story arc that actually moves the story forward and builds from episode to episode.

Like the Prisoner, the episode order creates a barely detectable character arc. In the beginning, Greenwood is lost in a sea of existential ennui. Later, he becomes more pro-active and occasionally succeeds in disrupting the Organization in some small way.

With the final revelation, the diary he mentions at the beginning of every episode suddenly becomes a plot hole.

Why was it canceled? Supposedly, the fledgling UPN network decided it wanted to focus its attention on comedies, so Nowhere Man was not renewed for a second season despite decent ratings.

Was there closure? The series ends with a very big revelation that had been fairly obvious for the last five episodes. Clearly the show runners were anticipating a second season and the finale was meant to send the show in a new direction. But it’s a revelation that creates more questions than answers, and frankly I don’t think the writers would have been able to step up to the challenge. All that would have changed would be the expository dialogue that Greenwood gives whenever he interrogates someone.

Any unattended issues: Loads. I still don’t know what the hell was real and what wasn’t.

The verdict: Wildly uneven. Frequently confounding. Constantly humorless. The storytelling is very confident, but it still doesn’t make a lot of sense sometimes. Clearly the writers were flying by the seat of their pants. Greenwood’s performance is lacking charisma. He’s a little too everyman, when he should be exceptional.

Thanks to Mark Snow’s creepy score, the ending of each episode highlights the eeriness of the show. But without real continuity in the mystery, it’s impossible to get invested. The show is not even that good at sustaining an atmosphere of paranoia. Greenwood continually gives his name as Tom Veil and never changes his appearance – isn’t he trying to hide? Dude, grow a beard or cut that floppy hair!

The formulaic plots get old. It becomes increasingly easy to guess what’s going to happen by the end of the episode.

It’s impossible to watch this show without thinking of The Prisoner. Veil is even called Number Six in one episode. Many episodes rip off the plots of Prisoner episodes. From the doppelganger episode to the broadcast hypnosis episode, to the manufactured reality episode. Hertzog himself refers to the show as a less cerebral version of The Prisoner. Sadly, this show also lacks the humor and the style of The Prisoner. And while Six was always an agitator, Veil is a survivor who never really stands for anything. He doesn’t have a point-of-view. And the show itself is just too vague. An intriguing experiment of a show that never broke out of its mold enough to make an impact.