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Wednesday 29 August 2012

Without A Trace 3.11 "4.0" Review


Schoolgirls wait for a bus and Tara’s (Michelle Horn) best friend says she never fails anything in her life.  The girls get on the bus but Tara says she has a dentist’s appointment and disappears.

15 Hours Missing
Her best friend says Tara seemed strange when the bus arrived.  Her mother said she didn’t have an appointment.  They’ve been friends since the 7th grade and she’s sure she didn’t run away.  She doesn’t have a boyfriend.  Jack (Anthony LaPaglia) comments they go to a good school and wants to meet her other friends.

15 Hours Missing
Tara’s mother, Stephanie (Gia Carides) gives Martin (Eric Close) her school directory.  She chose Harvard.  Her father’s dead and she doesn’t have time for a social life as she works 2 jobs.  Tara goes to school on a scholarship.  She’s on the swim team and she spends time alone studying.  Martin comments girls can be into all sorts of stuff.  Three months ago her mother found pills; Tara called them ‘Homework Drugs’ and everybody takes them.  She had her stomach pumped.

16 Hours Missing
Sam (Poppy Montgomery) gets security photos from a  bank near to where Tara went missing.  Danny (Enrique Murciano) finds her file of research papers and Tara has written papers on subjects ranging from philosophy and Hobbes, to Roman architecture and Australopithecus origins.  But she doesn’t have classes in any of these subjects so she’s writing papers for others and making money.  Sam comments she has a 4.0 average.  Danny says pills cost money.

Tara’s swim coach tells Viv (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) he was going to make her the team captain this year but she quit 4 months ago to focus on academic work.  She missed practice but liked to go to the pool because she could think more clearly there.

17 Hours Missing
Jack talks to a fellow student and friend who was suspended for plagerizing a paper.  Tara wrote it for her.  She used to be competitive but now helps others get ‘A’s.  She doesn’t see Tara anymore but she used to charge $10 a page.

Danny finds Tara was sending the papers to ‘NIX 32’ a Ryan Barry, (Brian T Skala) a freshman at Columbia 4 months ago.  He’s the man from the bank photo.

18 Hours Missing
Ryan’s clearing $50,000.  He says he’s not the kidnapper.  Tara owes him papers and the students wanted their money back.  She promised to do them.  She came to see him 4 months ago and wrote the papers only for the money.  She went to a deli on 96th & Amsterdam.

Jack talks to Kate on the phone.  Hannah has a boyfriend now, someone from her class.  Viv says Tara’s mobile phone was found in the bathroom at the deli with a text sent yesterday at 5.30pm.

Her best friend tells Jack she saw Tara last night and gave her a package.  10 minutes before she sent the message Tara called her from a payphone.  She told her she was going away with a a married man to his country house.  She borrowed a dress from her in the package.  Tara saw him at the bus stop but didn’t tell her his name.  Jack tells her she’s only 16 years old, what would she know.  Martin finds the name Luke Jamison (Nathan Anderson) in Tara’s notebook.
Luke Jamison  M.D
1109 Columbus Ave #315
Graduated: NYU Medical School 1995
Sam says that would make him 34.

21 Hours Missing
Luke’s a doctor at a free clinic, he can’t afford a country house.  She was his patient.  She found out she was pregnant 4 months ago.  It was too late for her to abort.  She’s over 8 months so she could go into premature labour.

22 Hours Missing
Jack tells Stephanie.  Martin says she was good at hiding it.  Her mother gave her a poncho last year which she hated but wore it everyday.  Martin thinks she may have taken the pills to miscarry.  Her mother says she would’ve helped her.  8 months ago she was in Andover for Springbreak for a 2 week leadership programme.  She told her mother about being with a boy because she wanted to have some fun.

One of her friend’s recalls the boy’s name was Gavin (Joey Gray) and he attends Keenan Prep.

KEENAN PREP
Gavin tells Danny and Sam he spoke to Tara last night.  She told him she’d taken care of the baby but said she needed his help to have the baby.  He refused.  She threatened to hurt the baby.

Tara called him from Lewis Clawson’s office on the Upper east side, that’s Nell’s (Brooke Nevin) father.  Jack and Martin find bloody towels and blood on the carpet and Nell hiding under the desk.  She tells them Tara was gone when she returned.  Jack tells her if the baby dies she could go to jail and she’s an accessory.  Nell figured out Tara was pregnant in the locker room.  They planned for her to go to Nell’s sister’s in California to have the baby in February, she’s a nurse.  Tara was saving money for the bus ticket.  Her mother would think she’s run away.  Tara would call her and tell her she’s had a breakdown.  She made up the part about the married man.  Tara came to her apartment for clothes and a blanket.  She gave her the key to he office and snuck out at 11.  The baby was born at 5am.  Nell had to cut the cord with the scissors.  Jack made her go to the bus stop and to school when Nell was coming back here.

Viv tells Danny to call the sanitation department to stop them from collecting the trash and ask when it’s picked up.  An ER nurse tells Sam and Viv she saw Tara on the steps but she wouldn’t come in.  When she came back with a blanket Tara was gone.  She must have taken the bus, Sam says downtown to the school.  Viv thinks she wasn’t ready to give up the baby yet.  Sam say she doesn’t have a plan right now.  Viv thinks she’s somewhere warm to decide what to do.

25 Hours Missing
Jack finds Tara at the pool.  She came here to think because it’s quiet.  He says the baby is beautiful.  He had to tell her mother and hold her baby to see if she’s okay.  Tara has a plan but her mother won’t like it.  She’s named her Rose after her grandmother.

Australopithecus means 'of humankind.'  4.0 average happens to be the title of this episode.  Even nice girls get into trouble so this was a warning of teenage pregnancy.  The fact that no matter how times change some things don’t.  Girls in my class at school were getting pregnant at 15, using similar tactics to hide it like they’d go from wearing tight clothes and skirts to baggy jumpers, weeks before exams.  Some even resorting to back street abortions.  Which were botched up.

Funny in her flashback she mentions she goes to the pool to think but nobody thought of looking at the pool after they found out she had the baby.  Also it’s the most obvious place.  Just like season 2 episode  when Martin’s aunt went back to her doctor’s house no one thought it was the most common place to look.  Also Tara had her stomach pumped yet her condition wasn't diagnozed, i.e. that she was pregnant.

Jack: “Already  it’s startin’.”
Viv: “wait 'til she’s 13.”
Jack: “You come in here to depress me.”  Think these are early signs of Hannah playing up, she already doesn’t want to talk to him anymore.  Maybe she’ll run away from home next.
Viv:” OMG…”
Jack: “What’s that?”
Viv: “Oh my God be home 6:30. Nell.”

Jack: “I admire loyalty and friendship but you don’t have that luxury right now.”

Martin: “No wonder she kept it a secret.”  More likely because it was a lie.

Jack wrongly tells them Avagadro’s Theorem: “That matter can be created and destroyed.”  All sorts of matter like a baby.  The student tells him it’s actually equal volumes of different gases contain the same number of molecules.”
Jack: “I knew that.”
Typical male attitude first they get the girl into trouble and then refuse to help.

Jack: “Wanna come out and lie to me some more.”
“Wanna be a good friend start by telling the truth.”

Jack: “Parents…parents no matter how old you get – you’re always their baby…they love you.”  An episode that is more close to home for Jack especially since Hannah will be that old soon and being the father of daughters he’ll have a lot of worrying to do.  Funny how Maria didn’t  ell him Hannah was seeing someone.  Tara names the baby after her grandmother just as Jack named Hannah after his grandmother.

Said Anthony in an interview, “[Gia] loves to remind me of it [this episode] because it was the highest rating episode we had last year.”  Gia being Anthony's wife.

 Song: Little Green Joni Mitchell

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