TV Review: Stitchers

TV Review: Stitchers

In the history of television, there have been blind detectives (Longstreet), fat detectives (Canon), bald detectives (Kojak), old detectives (Barnaby Jones), Polish detectives (Banacek), detectives with perfect memories (the seemingly unkillable Unforgettable), even mentally deranged detectives (Gaines, not to mention the current Perception).  But the new sci-fi series Stitchers breaks new ground—a detective who can’t tell time.

Stitchers stars Emma Ishta as a grad student named Kirsten who suffers from “temporal dysphasia” meaning she can’t feel the passage of time.  I say she suffers, but actually everyone around her suffers as apparently this condition means you can’t feel emotion or interact with anyone cordially.  Kirsten explains to the police officer who informs her that her “father” died that once she saw his body, it was like he had always been dead, so there was no point in feeling grief.  I’m not sure that’s plausible, but I’ll go with it for now.

Kirsten is abducted by a clandestine government agency who describe themselves as “NSA-ish” to participate in a unique investigative technique.  Government scientists have discovered how to hack into the memories of a recently deceased person in order to glean information.  For some reason they believe that a woman with temporal dysphasia might be able to do this better than the first participant (all Kirsten is told is that she “is no longer with the program” with ominous looks).  They need Kirsten to tap into the mind of a dead bomber to find out where he planted two bombs before he killed himself.

This is an excuse for some attempts at interesting editing as Kirsten goes bouncing around the memories of a corpse.  Of course it is like a TV series where a detective talks to the dead—if they could communicate clearly and succinctly there’s be no show, so all the information she gets is elliptical.  But since anyone with temporal dysphasia is used to having to deduce how long she's been someplace or what people are feeling, Kirsten is able to zero in on the important clues.

The whole thing is preposterous but helped by a couple of welcomed familiar faces. Salli Richardson-Whitfield, late of the classic Syfy show Eureka, stars as the head of the secret government agency.  After her stint on Eureka she is accustomed to uttering techno-babble convincingly and issuing stern ultimatums.  The other familiar face is Allison Scagliotti, who single handedly saved Warehouse 13 from dying of boredom, as Kirsten’s exasperated roommate.  She once again plays a hacker, so her recent acting background comes into play as well.

The whole thing is immensely silly, but it seems to have a sense of its own silliness.  Kirsten is required to wear a skintight black suit when “stitching” which she refers to as a Catwoman suit; when she makes an arch comment about the suit, the tech guys who designed it seriously intone, “Don’t worry, we’re men of science” and then do a no-look fist bump.

The pilot suffers from “pilot-itis” a disease that happens when shows with complicated premises have to establish the basic scheme of the series, introduce all the characters, and have an intelligible stand-alone episode, all in 45 minutes of screen time.  I found the pilot to be passable, but I’ll have to be convinced that the creators know what they are doing.

The pilot episode beats the “temporal dysphasia” drum with a big stick.  Would someone with that condition be a non-empathetic, emotionless drone?  How does she “will” a door open when in someone’s memories? Why does she see memories from a third person perspective?  I’m willing to cut the show some slack (you can either enjoy shows like Eureka or you can spend your life on chat boards pointing out the inconsistencies) but they better have plans for making things more interesting on a weekly basis.

Stitchers is on ABC Family, which is weird.  Not as weird as when ABC Family showed Middle Man, an awesome sci-fi show that was brilliant but on the wrong network.  I don’t know if ABC Family will cut this science fiction show more slack, or whether there is another one hour drama about an unconventional family waiting in the wings.  I enjoyed the pilot of Stitchers, was happy to see two good (and good-looking) actresses like Scagliotti and Richardson-Whitfield find some work, and am curious to see where the show goes from here.