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 If NBC's Boomtown is the filet mignon of this fall's new crime dramas — a provocative class act that finds a new rhythm and look for telling old stories — then think of CBS's absorbingly formulaic Without a Trace as the season's most satisfying plate of burger and fries.
In this smartly conceived and nicely executed companion piece to CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, what you see is what you get. For millions who've become hooked on CSI, it will be exactly what they want. This slick and uncommonly well-cast missing-persons drama from Jerry Bruckheimer (whose company produces both CSI series) breaks no thematic or stylistic ground. After the first hour, you don't really know these characters at all, except in the context of how well they perform their duties (which is very). It's all business, without a shred of pretention. Process is king. What distinguishes the show is its urgency. As with 24, time is a character on Without a Trace. The investigators on this FBI task force construct a detailed timeline to track the missing person's last known movements, knowing that with each passing hour, the probability of finding the subject lessens. But unlike the often gory forensics of CSI, the techniques in these cases lean more toward the psychological. The more these detectives learn about the invididual in question, the more likely they are to discern the nature of the disappearance. Did the person have cause to run away? Was he or she abducted or worse?  The first puzzle is a good one, dealing with the sudden vanishing of a female marketing executive who appears (via her apartment's surveillance tapes) to have just walked out of her apartment one night on her own volition, leaving everything behind.
As the feds follow leads, we find ourselves haunted by stylishly visual remnants of the missing woman in ghostly fade-ins and fade-outs in rooms she once occupied, and in flashbacks that tend to paint a contradictory portrait of this mystery woman. At first, the cast seems awfully overqualified for such a meat-and-potatoes procedural, led by Anthony LaPaglia (recent Emmy winner for his guest role as Daphne's brother on Frasier) and also featuring Marianne Jean-Baptiste (an Oscar nominee for Secrets and Lies), Poppy Montgomery (the memorable Marilyn of CBS's Blonde) and Now and Again's boyishly appealing Eric Close. But then, a show playing with such high stakes — it's the strongest competition ER has faced in ages — needs to be in good hands. A clear improvement over last season's bland The Agency (now relocated to the Saturday night dead zone), Without a Trace might soon have you wondering what ever happened to those Chicago doctors at County General.
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