Missing: Season 2 (review)

This paranormal detective series isn’t merely X-Files lite... it’s X-Files featherweight, flimsy, sheer, diaphanous even. Bursting with more calculated spright and forced girl power than you’d expect from a show that focuses on violent crime -- but not more than you’d expect of a show made for the “women’s” cable network Lifetime -- these 18 episodes of the still-airing series’ 2004 second season seem more concerned with ensuring we understand how “tough” FBI agent Nicole Scott (Vivica A. Fox: Ella Enchanted) is, and how skeptical she is of her partner, consultant, Jess Mastiani (Caterina Scorsone: All I Wanna Do), who “has visions” of the crimes they set out to solve. You’d be forgiven for thinking that jokes about being a stickler for properly prepared paperwork went out with, oh, Barney Miller, and also that a disdain for such documentation as an indicator of hard-boiledness is pretty unintentionally hilarious. There are no extras of any kind, but it could be just as fun to “have visions” about missing scenes and director’s commentaries. Stick with NBC’s Medium, which does the whole psychic-solving-crimes thing with a lot more class.