User reviews

I always enjoy a good mystery and this is definitely one of those.....They are not afraid to tackle social issues like Abortion and Middle Eastern politics and much more.....Definitely a great series and I wish it had lasted even longer...but it did have a long run..........

The show is still very good though my friends and I, who watch it together, agree with another viewer that Ms Sanchez ruined an excellent #10 show. There were already two women and a Spanish-American on board, so the show was politically correct and the ensemble fantastic. I never wished anybody (besides Hitler and heads of the soviet Union) to die, but I heartily wish that Ms Sanches' character would be shot for good and the show would return to its previous magnificence. Well, then I could purchase the following seasons' disks as well as those I had without Ms Sanchez' not enjoyable and unwanted presence. Could there be a possible hope in that direction? What a great thing it would be.

WAT is the show I look forward to watching most every week (comes in a close 2nd after The Closer). I don't know why so many people think the show has gone downhill. It still holds my interest for that hour. My only criticism (and it's not about Rosalyn Sanchez) is that they have one of the most talented actresses alive today, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, and they hardly use her! She deserves much more character development and depth to her role. It's the same story with S. Epatha Merkerson on Law & Order. Another underused great talent. However, perhaps after being recognized for Lackawanna Blues, NBC will wake up. Let's see more Marianne in the future. At least let her express an emotion every now and then. Even Tony LaPaglia is allowed to do that.

The early seasons were good! The story lines were well written mysteries. The romance between Poppy and Eric Close was a good idea. The romance between her and Anthony La Paglia was not!!

First 2 seasons were fantastic and like most of the shows it started going a bit downhill on S3 but to make it worse they had to add an actress who can't act even a little. Any scene she is part if can be guaranteed to be bad. The original team was much much better on their own.

For three seasons this show about missing persons was a favorite of mine. Then the show itself went missing (it changed nights) and I never saw it again.

Well, okay, I did, once in a while. But I'd lose interest before the end and so was never moved to make a note of the new time slot. The show declined, like most shows, a little at a time; it never went bad, but the qualities that had originally drawn me to it slipped away. Really, they began doing so after the first season.

Of course the show was mistitled: the missing always left traces, without which there could have been no stories. The reasons for the disappearances varied (and varied more the longer the show continued), but the best and most characteristic stories were variations on the old song "The Raggle Taggle Gypsies," about a wife who has a seemingly perfect life--rich husband, house and lands, featherbed--and runs away from it. In the song the reason is never disclosed; but on the show, in its best period, a series of interviews would build up a picture of the missing person, gradually revealing what was hidden in his life and in his psyche, so that the story became less a police procedural than a character study. The contrast between the victim's outward life and his inner one, which had become intolerable, gave the format a special resonance: the character had become separated from everything around him before he ever took off; he had left already.

At first glance the regular cast seemed absurdly over-qualified for this type of show, but their ability was essential to its coming off at all. It wasn't just that they were skillful actors but that they were all able to play in the same key, set by the lead, Anthony La Paglia. They behaved like people who had themselves lost someone (some of their losses were dramatized in later episodes) and thereby set the show's tone: an air of bereavement, of having lost something irretrievable, even after the missing persons were found. As a result many of the early episodes were truly affecting, without being forced. However, as often happens on TV, sincerity was the show's first casualty, and after the first season it seldom achieved the same level of poignancy.

Of course not all the episodes conformed to the same pattern. A handful dealt with serial killers, and although most of these were up to standard they weren't really in the show's line.

And it had its share of unlikelihoods from the start. Its style was similar to that of the British spy show Spooks: intense, low-key acting and gritty locales overlaid with flash camera-work. These combined to create an impression of devoted realism which masked the impossibility of the scenes: not one of the conversations could ever have happened as written, especially among people in the professions shown.

The biggest improbability was a prior affair between Jack, the boss, and Samantha, one of his agents, which continued to inform their dealings and the atmosphere of the office in general. The show normally observed such reticence about its regulars' personal lives that a viewer who left to get a Coke was apt to miss the only testimony to a hookup or a breakup; but this connection was supposed to remain unspoken and unsuspected (notwithstanding Samantha's habit of making doe eyes at her former paramour). The two characters evidenced no grounds for a romantic attraction, and their continual almost-but-not-quite flirtations were incredible from the start.

From the beginning, the show had a penchant for sensationalism, which came to predominate in later seasons, with particular emphases on children being molested and women being hit. And then there were the big scenes without significance: Jack tells one of his agents, "You keep screwing things up, one more time and you'll be pounding the pavement"; but the agent hadn't screwed up before, and his status was back to normal next week. There were a few outright misfires, notably a dream play with one of the regular cast in disguise (but recognizable from the first shot).

As the show went on it continued to present many good stories and scenes, but more and more often these came to center on the team members rather than the victims. The writers had to strain increasingly to devise plots that weren't mere variations on what had come before, and so they came to rely more and more on crime show brutalities. Yet they always steered clear of certain subjects, e.g. although it's stated in one scene that wives often go missing because they've been murdered by husbands, I can't remember a single episode turning on spousal murder.

In the last seasons the writers tried out variations on Jack's character, at one point trying to make him into a funny man, with doleful results, and at another point turning him, more successfully, into Mike Hammer. However, the biggest error during the latter part of the show's run was the introduction of Miss Puerto Rico (not sarcasm; that's literally who she was). A thick accent isn't an insurmountable barrier for an actor, but Roselyn Sanchez didn't only sound like Desi Arnaz, she sounded like Desi Arnaz playing Ricky Ricardo. She acted like an official greeter at the Puerto Rico pavilion at the World's Fair rather than a federal investigator, and her breezy posturing--cocking her head, sharkishly flashing her teeth, tapping her toe, striking poses at odd angles like a character out of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari--killed every one of her scenes.

But she didn't kill the show; it just ran out of inspiration--and eventually, out of cases.

I am sorry that "Without A Trace" went off the air after five years, though I agree with other reviewers that it had probably exhausted its possibilities. The show had many things going for it: a first-rate cast, a set of often surprising plot twists, and an ability to look at some of the darkest parts of New York city life. Anthony LaPaglia, as the head of the FBI missing- persons unit, gave a set of performances that were truly gripping: his character was always tough, devoted, and often very reserved, but there was always an enormous amount of passion locked within him which would come out at the most desperate moments. The rest of the cast were uniformly good, and I agree with many other observers that Marianne Jean-Baptiste was a superb actress and a perfect colleague for LaPaglia's plain-spoken FBI man.

It is true, though, that as the years went by, the script writers appear to have run out of ideas about missing/abducted/brutalized persons and turned more and more to examining the personal lives of the FBI agents. We had love affairs between LaPaglia and Montgomery, Close and Montgomery, and Murciano and Sanchez, not to mention the collapse of LaPaglia's character's marriage, and the show did become more and more of a soap opera. It was probably at that point that the show started to lose the interest of its viewers.

But the single most important relationship in the show -- not a romantic relationship so much as a deeply personal relationship between two characters who really respected each other, even when they fought with each other -- was the relationship between LaPaglia's character and Jean-Baptiste's character. They were the stars of the show, and the way they agreed but often disagreed about their jobs and their lives made the show the wonderful, poignant success that it was for so many years.

As much as I admire Aussie actor Anthony LaPaglia, WAT is generally a very dull show, about people gone missing. LaPaglia is the head of an FBI unit specializing in finding missing persons. Unfortunately, he sleepwalks through most episodes. And his team, with the exception of Marianne Baptiste, is made up of typical B-level TV actors, all very generic and interchangeable. LaPaglia's character initially was introduced on one of the CSI shows. I can recommend watching WAT for one reason and one reason only: If there is no LAW & ORDER or LAW & ORDER SVU episode playing. Then it is better than nothing. It's like COLD CASE or CROSSING JORDAN: They are good enough to watch while waiting for LAW & ORDER. And I will say WAT is a cut above any of the CSI shows.

This is exactly what a procedural crime show should be.

Good plot lines, a regular premise (someone always goes missing) an engaging cast of misfit FBI agents with problems of their own, but who each week still manage to find the missions person and the bad guy. Or sometimes not.

A fine show.

I've been watching this show since it was first aired in the UK and at the moment, it has the be the only good thing on terrestrial TV (other decent shows like 'Stargate' and 'Angel' go to Sky first).

I wish British production companies could produce something similar instead of perpetually bringing out 'gritty' and 'realistic' shows that leave you feeling rather suicidal! I love the creativity of each story line in 'Without A Trace' and how each of the main characters are portrayed in such a way that they're all likable. We learn more about them each episode and genuinely care about them without the show overly focusing on their lives (a crime committed by many British dramas). The best thing is there is usually a satisfying ending since if we wanted to see the victim dead at the end of every episode we'd just switch on the news!

It would be an atrocity if they cancelled this and I look forward to seeing many more episodes (Channel Four, take note- we'd rather have this than one of your rubbish fly-on-the wall documentaries).

After reading a half-dozen of the reviews convinced that a lot of folks who didn't like it were expecting a typical cop show. It isn't. May have been an experiment on Bruckheimer's part - turning cop show conventions on their head.

First there's the shows low-key tone: no screaming sirens, no melodramatic hooks, no heart-pounding chases or rescues. Chases and especially rescues do exist but, like all of the other expositional elements, they're portrayed in measured, deliberate and muted tones. Just like the "teams" response to each week's puzzle. All very quiet with just a hint of intensity and a clear demonstration that they care about their victims.

All elements that, except for the tone, Without a Trace shares with most cop shows. Just reversed.

Now here's the really radical departure - the show's focus is centered on what are usually the secondary characters: the victims and the lives surrounding them. In fact, most of the "team's" interactions are with the secondary characters.

Think about shows, very good shows, like Bones or Castle or Burn Notice or any one of dozens of cop shows: all centered on the "team" and it interactions. Victims, perps and puzzles exist mainly to highlight those interactions.

This is not a criticism. I love the shows mentioned.

My point is simply that Without a Trace reverses those conventions and does it very successfully. One one hand, enough time is spent on the team to humanize it; on the other, just enough emphasis on the victims and their stories to elevate them to the the primary focus.

Takes some getting used to but well worth the effort. Surprising, those few scenes dedicated to the "team", either as individuals or a whole, wind up describing a very rich set of personalities, though you might have to watch a lot of episodes to realize it.

Like all cop shows there there are problems with plot integrity and, with Without a Trace, the very premise: the FBI getting involved before the local cops and their 48-hour window. And like all cop shows, the inconsistencies and questionable plot lines are simply elements meant to invoke the suspension of disbelief. Nothing more.

If this was an experiment on Bruckheimer's part, seven seasons speak volumes to its success.

This show used to be great. Maybe not the pinnacle of television, but very, very good.

It had a nice cast, good writing (although it erred on not doing enough with the characters) and good directing (after a shaky first season).

But then it all collapsed. The creator of the show left and in came people who like their actresses incompetent and their scripts full of plot holes.

The hiring of Roselyn Sanchez is when this show jumped the shark.

Roselyn Sanchez is possibly the worst actress working as a lead in film and television today... and that's saying a lot! Her complete like of emoting, combined with her lack of diction and her unnaturally immobile face make every scene she's in a painful experience.

In addition, her bad acting exposes how bad the writing has become.

No wonder audiences have been deserting with once huge hit.

I find this show engaging enough to watch fairly regularly but have to disagree with all the glowing reviews that have been posted. The plot lines are often simplistic and sensationalist and the long music-driven "emotional" scenes are pandering and boring. The characters are one dimensional and any "development" seems forced. I feel like Lenny on Law & Order is my good buddy even though that show hardly has any character development, whereas the WAT characters seem more like bullet points--"the wise, good hearted leader with family problems", "the tough blonde going through an emotional crisis", etc. The show is okay but it's really a slick presentation of something that could use a few more IQ points.

Without A Trace is the kind of show that will engage you from the beginning, hold your interest for about 2/3 of the show before it wanes. The acting is good, the pacing is great, and the flashback scenes work, like in Cold Case.

I would attribute the reason for waning interest is because the final third or fourth of most of this show's story lines are rather underwhelming. When people go missing, you expect there to be a kidnapper or culprit behind it, with a giant manhunt and eventually an epic showdown at the end. In Without a Trace, this is the case in a small fraction of episodes. In the rest of the episodes, the reason for going missing is pretty lame. By lame I mean you will be thinking "That's it? That is why they went missing?". And in most cases the missing person really didn't go missing, they just wandered off places without telling anyone.

I know that kidnappings and manhunts would be unrealistic and overdone after a while, but they could at least make the reasons for going missing a bit more interesting. Like I said - the first two thirds of the show, based on the flow of the show and accounts from people who know the missing person makes it seem like the missing person is in huge danger, and the clock is against the crew to find this person. In the end, for example, the person just went to go find their long lost father who abandoned them when the missing person was two years old. The missing person didn't tell anyone they were going on this quest to find their long lost father. (Note: This is just an example, its not referencing a specific episode). Not quite the climatic, intense ending you were hoping for after going through the first two thirds of the show.

It's because of this, Without a Trace is hit or miss. Some episodes are great and intense/gripping from the start, others fail to take off and you find yourself changing the channel after 15 minutes. It's a shame, because this show has so much more potential than it does.

I will conclude on Roselyn Sanchez's character. At first, I didn't see what the fuss was about her character in the show. But after watching this show for a while now I can see why. Her acting skills need some work and she seriously seems like she is reading from a teleprompter. She has a monotonous voice and no emotion at all.

This series started out very strong, the first two seasons kept me wanting more, but then it seemed like the writers lost their purpose. Instead of concentrating their efforts on writing a good story, they felt the need to bring in political correctness. In season seven, they seemed to start thinking about the story again and brought it back together, including a very good ending.

The cast all did their job, which is to entertain us with good acting skills. Even the one that played the Spanish agent. I really don't know why she's received so many bad comments. The only thing that I didn't like too much was her heavy accent, but when I watched her performance, it was pretty good.

I love this show so much. I have watched every episode multiple times. The cast is one of the best ever assembled. The basic premise is a team of FBI Agents who search for missing persons from fascinating cases. Not every episode is perfect but there are few that aren't very good. Part of the excitement is the search and there's always the anticipation as to whether they are okay or not. a WHY did they disappear? Where are they? Who is responsible? Are they okay now? The stories are well written and intriguing. You will quickly become hooked on this show once you start.

The whole cast, including Roselyn Sanchez, seem to work well and are comfortable together; the stories are interesting; and an altogether different crime drama than the current forensics shows overload. Whoever said 'it was killed' obviously dislikes one specific actress and let it cloud his "objective critique." Good twisting plots, Stories don't all have happy endings, An reasonable attempt at character back stories, but it needs more work The CBS 'chime in' about real FBI missing persons needs to be scrapped, however, every episode it says "hear about their Bizarre disappearance tomorrow on the Today show" Every single missing missing person has a "bizzare" story??

Without a trace is a show unlike any other. Watching this show takes to place of the missing person and the characters assigned to find them. Every case takes you to places you never expect which makes it more watchable. Not only it works as a mystery show but it also has a great cast including Anthony Lapaglia who gave one of his best performances as Agent Jack Malone who leads the missing person task force and wow does he steal the show. The other cast members including Marianne Jean-Baptiste and even Poppy Montgomery etc as the task force. Seeing their chemistry and showing how much dedication they put in their roles makes this a memorable show to watch. If you catch the reruns, I suggest giving it watch. It might have cancelled in 2009 but as of 2021 I'm happy to watch this show with such admiration unlike the crap we see today.

When someone goes missing somewhere in New York, a special unit of federal officers is put on the case. It is led by Jack Malone(Anthony LaPaglia, barely suppressing his intensity), and consists of Vivian Johnson(Marianne Jean-Baptiste, maternal), Samantha Spade(Poppy Montgomery, tough), Danny Taylor(Enrique Murciano, who uses his Street smarts effectively), Martin Fitzgerald(Eric close, starting out as the rookie), and eventually, Elena Delgado(Roselyn Sanchez, who gradually got better at acting, as she got better at English, in particular at delivering the long, wordy lines with clear enunciation and keeping a smooth flow to the sentence).

With a glut of procedurals already on air, this was conceived as having an unusual twist: rather than opening on a corpse, it's that a person(sometimes more than one) has disappeared(and this one doesn't have psychics to help find them. I'm not saying all of those are bad. I'm just really relieved that we have at least one that is completely without that type of thing). This means that there is always some hope that the person will be found alive and returned to their loved ones safe and sound. Rather than focusing on a murderer, this is about figuring out why the person can't be found. The circumstances. Why. And there is quite a lot of different ways that that can happen, which are explored here. Before watching any specific episode of this, you don't know: was it kidnapping? Were they secretly a criminal and had to escape the cops? Did they do something they can't forgive themselves for and are terrified to face? Are they intentionally hiding for other reasons? And if so, which?

In order to solve the mystery(which the viewer is invited to attempt to do while watching), the team attempts to reconstruct the 24 hours(sometimes more) leading up to the last time the person was seen(by anyone willing to talk to law enforcement at least. Many times it will turn out that people like that weren't involved, but they were scared to come forward, since they might get arrested for something else they were doing). They look into their financial and phone records. Maybe they recently withdrew or transferred a substantial amount of money, either to escape their own life or to pay someone - which they might not especially have wanted to do. Maybe they were on the cell with someone who knows where they went, and/or why. Since there is not always physical evidence this does have less scenes of investigating that then one of the CSI's. This can mean less visual variety. They do sometimes have recordings of audio and/or video, or still photos, to go off of. Maybe there's something in the background that can provide a substantial clue.

A major aspect of this is how much of it is a character study. A lot of time is devoted to talking to persons of interest, including family and friends. You get a sense of who they are, what their personal experiences were like, and how they shaped them. Very frequently you end up feeling for them. This has heaps of empathy for for many very different people. It encourages you to as well. Standing up for those who need a champion. And, unfortunately, occasionally making excuses for powerful people intentionally doing something wrong. Flashbacks give us brief yet often powerful glimpses into occurrences that lead to to the situation, taking place as little as minutes, or as long as decades, ago. They also increase the overall number of locations, which helps prevent things from becoming samey. Sometimes they merely serve to redirect suspicion from one person to another, introducing a new individual who we may not know a lot about from right away, who has motive, opportunity, and/or are maybe seen threatening harm. And a lot of times those turn out to have been words they wouldn't act on. The need to keep a slow trickle of information can cause frustrating elements like that. After all, each ep needs to reach 42 minutes in length. And we can't have viewers figuring everything out from early on.

Executive Producer Jerry Bruckheimer mandated that the show be visually arresting even if a viewer was channel hopping with the sound off. As such, the dynamic camera is always moving. The stylisation is never excessive, even when it will will occasionally dip into the very unusual. One example includes when the protagonist is a woman who recently went blind, and the cinematography and editing put us right in her head. That means emulating that the only sense of her surroundings that she has, is based on sounds and what she can touch with her hands. Her terror at being lost in this new situation grips us and put us on the edge of our seats.

As seasons pass a lot of shows grow more extreme than they were early in their run. All things considered, this did not fare that badly in that regard. Still, some things did definitely increase in amount. Suspects shot, although it was always to prevent them from hurting someone, a last resort, and seldom played as being cool - certainly they always attempted to take them in, so that they could stand trial. There got to be more instances of use of torture that lead to useful credible information, which is something that experts have thoroughly debunked. I'm not saying everything has to be realistic. However. This is something that leads to more regular people believing it to be a necessary evil. And finally, while this was never actually similar to a soap opera, the traits that resemble those of that sub-genre did become more prevalent. If you're not above enjoying something cheesy, it is nice to see these people who live in such a dark world smile and be happy.

This contains a lot of violent, disturbing, sexual content. I thoroughly, wholeheartedly recommend this to everyone who enjoys solving puzzles in fiction. 7/10

Almost every episode has its own predicament and the protagonist is a phenomenal actor. One episode there was a hostage situation. For 40 minutes straight I was sitting on the edge of my seat. The tension grew every single second, the hostage showing real emotions as if it wasn't even a show. The smallest details are shown from sweat to dialogue to how people act in certain scenes. If you like mystery, YOU WILL LOVE THIS SHOW.

What a waste! It took the WAT producers a half season until they hit their stride (the pilot was oh-hum but the show showed potential for growth, in particular with its great cast.) The second season was excellent, with better photography and more interesting writing and decent "persoanl arcs" for each character.

I was looking forward to the third season, but then it all collapsed in a second.

The writing went downhill faster than an olympic racer. And of course, to make matter worse, they had to tinker with the cast and add Roselyn Sanchez to make sure that we got how terrible the writing is.

Oh, well. It had one good season...

A little while ago,I'd written a user comment that was faintly praising and perhaps a little more than cruel in dismissing this show as a sort of pedestrian,superficial attempt at sincere drama that is acted well-enough and scripted competently enough to be interesting. After watching more episodes(mostly in re-runs) and getting roundly unsupported by those who bothered an opinion of my review,I decided to do a rewrite.

While I still stick by my assertion that this show isn't quite as innovative or searing as it aspires to be,it's still quite compelling a drama. While the acting varies,from superb and sublime(mostly Anthony LaPaglia as the chief,but Marianne Jean-BAptiste and Poppy Montgomery are good as fellow agents),to completely flat(mostly Roslyn Sanchez,who IS easy on the eyes but not much more),the stories DO draw the viewer in,and the earnest and deliberate means of spelling out the Bureau's investigating a missing case. Good storytelling that is not (ordinarily) as graphic or de-humanizing as a CSI episode,that still handles the subject manner soberly(if sometimes short-sighted),this show may not be my favorite on the telly,but I will watch it if it's on more often than not. That,to me,seems like a more accurate assessment.