When Vanished premiered, it hit the ground running with a slightly less than remarkable one-hour debut that exploded (literally) introducing us to a laconic misanthropic FBI agent Grahm Kelton, played by Gale Howard (from Queer as Folk fame).

and

(And I was JUST talking to qaffangyrl about this Howard thing a couple of days ago and THEN IT HAPPENS ALDKJASLJ.)


From here.

When Vanished Vanished.

Thursday, May 03, 2007
by Greg Stewart

I wanted to give some closure to a post I made last year about a FOX television program called “Vanished” that surreptitiously lived up to its name in December of ‘06. Like a wisp of smoke in a breeze, this past fall after a dismal end run Vanished silently Vanished.

To eulogize the show would be giving it well more credit than it deserves. So instead, I’d rather just try and lay out why I think it failed and then leave the convoluted mess on the lawn to fertilize the next growth of Masonic TV.

When Vanished premiered, it hit the ground running with a slightly less than remarkable one-hour debut that exploded (literally) introducing us to a laconic misanthropic FBI agent Grahm Kelton, played by Gale Howard (from Queer as Folk fame). The premise of the show was a simple one: A nameless waiter at a swanky party kidnaps the wife of a ranking Georgia Senator for, as we find later, extortion to sway his vote for a Senate Chief Justice confirmation.

But, like most cabals, this story doesn’t stop at the kidnapping. What we find, as the labored series lumbered forward, are glimpses of mysterious Masonic symbols leading up to a brief flash of the square and compass. To make sure we got it, it went to such lengths as using Euclid as a street name, in Acacia city, where a Masonic Civil War era cemetery is used as a device to show the off unity of these bitter foes.

But somewhere, half way through the show, they introduce a female character who knew the old Masonic cipher (you know the one we all know, with the squares and 3 side boxes with dots).

This character just happened to be some low ranking minion of some more sinister cabal. Through the eyes of a day by day development, we get pulled through the suicide of a past Georgia Governor at the discovery of his formerly frozen, now thawed, wife smacking us in the face saying someone is in control, reminding us that they even could blow up the Senator in a public place, and infiltrate everything at all levels, as the Senators pregnant daughter’s boy friend would later attest as he was framed for kidnapping the Senators wife. He just happened to be best friends with the same lady who knew the ancient Masonic cipher. This was all before episode 7. Like I said, convoluted…

But then the turn came; the main character, whether because of low interest, poor contract negotiations, or seeing the ciphered writing on the wall, was killed in highly conspiratorial manner. Slain at the feet of the Georgia Senator,

[link to Gale's death scene on YouTube :| :| :| ]

he had the secret that could break the case, but alas it doesn’t as he never gets the chance to say it before dying the hero’s death. But that was a tipping point; from there it went down hill faster with a new lead character and an even more convoluted story line. We get introduced to secret child mental asylums and a host of repressed memories. But the one thing that was lost in this abrupt story change was all the hidden ties to Freemasonry. The show, eventually canceled, never made it to its 13th episode. No, it was instead relegated to host its last 4 episodes on line, which only further presented the convoluted the story line drowning it beeper into the murky depths of cancellation. There was some resolution, the Senators wife escaped from her high tech torture chamber, and she managed to find herself back into the hands of an earlier lover whose baby she may have had, but they never really said. Needless to say, the pit the show had found itself in was the true representation of its name. The story had literally vanished, and consequently, so did its viewers.

There was a lot of talk about why, at least on the boards I haunted while it was on. Why did the show make an about face half way into its production run when it was making such a strong effort early on to build the Masonic conspiracy. Granted, it never came out into the open and said it was not a show about Freemasonry, nor did it ever say it was about one particular discipline. My own conclusions were from the feeble signs given by the show itself, such as the way the V and the A in the opening sequence moved to form a square and compass each week and the early references to the temple of Solomon, and then the latter use of Masonic iconography and ciphers. My only assumption could have been that it was about a shadowy Masonic cabal who were kidnapping the wives of prominent men in government for extortion.

So if you missed all this when it was on TV, if your really interested in spending 13 hours of your life to wade through the mire, for now you can still catch it on the show web site and on their MySpace page. But really, at the end of the day, you didn’t miss much. Hopefully, as its name alludes, the memory of this show will vanish just as fast too.


Remember back when we were all excited about Gale having his own show? *wistful*

And, hey, here's a TV Guide article on Vanished that I musta been too pissed off about forgotten to scan back in Oct. Mentions the infamous Gale-is-a-diva rumor. *amused*