“In Plain Sight,†the USA Network series about witness protection, came to an end last Friday after five fine seasons. Although it was, in its broad outlines, a familiar thing, a basic-cable cop show with comically bantering leads -- Mary McCormack and Frederick Weller as Albuquerque-based federal marshals -- it had its own peculiar rhythms. At its best it was as smart and rich and complex as any of television's more outwardly serious and loudly celebrated cable dramas; I followed it, purely for pleasure, from first episode to last.
Every television show is eventually about family, whether it is about “a family,†and the more so the more it goes on, as the characters and the people who play them -- and we, the people who watch them -- accumulate shared history. “In Plain Sight†was about three sorts of family: the blood relations of McCormack's Mary Shannon; the people she worked alongside; and the clients it was her job to protect, from those who would do them harm but more often from themselves. Each had its challenges.
Creator David Maples departed after the second season over disagreements with the network about the show's tone; USA, whose slogan is “Characters welcome,†wanted something lighter. But if the series that ended last week was more comedy than drama, it was still informed by Maples’ grittier vision. Without that early groundwork, without the characters having been sent to extremes â€" the first season ended with a long confrontation between Mary, her alcoholic mother (Lesley Ann Warren) and trouble-magnet sister (Nichole Hiltz) that had the weight and intensity of an O’Neill play -- it would have been less substantial, believable and genuinely affecting.
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