Disappeared

Disappeared is my current favorite TV show, and I'm surprised everyone isn't watching it. So far, it doesn't seem to have gotten much internet attention -- whenever I search for it, it's hard to find information about the episodes, unlike other shows with dedicated Wikipedia fan pages. Like Sister Wives, I appreciate that it serves a purpose beyond just mindless entertainment. Sometimes it's a little slow/repetitive, but in general it's edited pretty well, and keeps me engaged (maybe a little obsessed).

Rikki Ducornet wrote an essay called "The Deep Zoo", which discusses the images and preoccupations that writers draw from for their work. She says "The mysteries of matter are the potencies that in the shapes of dreams, landscapes, exemplary instants and so on inform our imagining minds [...] For Bachelard they take the form of shells, a bird’s nest, an attic; for Borges a maze, mirrors, the tiger, for Calvino moonlight, the flame and the crystal; for Cortázar ants on the march and the cry of the rooster."

Missing persons cases are some of the potencies in my deep zoo. I don't know exactly why they fascinate me so much, but they have for a while now. I remember working at my desk job in Maine and following the case of Lori Hacking, a woman who had disappeared and was later found to have been murdered by her compulsive liar husband. At the time, I remember one of my coworkers asked me why I was so interested in missing persons cases, and I couldn't explain.

But now I think part of my interest is genetic -- my parents are both big readers of mysteries, and Disappeared episodes are mystery stories. I enjoy trying to figure out what's going on -- who's telling the truth and who's not. I like The First 48 for the same reason. But missing persons cases bother and fascinate me more, I think, because I'm such a documenter -- I like to document everything, and I also occasionally get myself into trouble by wanting to tell the whole truth about everything. When a person goes missing, he or she doesn't get a chance to tell the story, and other people have to try to figure the story out instead -- that's the whole problem, and it's the key for me.

So, I can't get enough of Disappeared, and I'm glad that it's on to give these families some hope that their missing loved ones are not forgotten. The more exposure, the better -- it's like Soul Asylum's "Runaway Train" video from the 90s, which showed runaway kids and actually reunited some of them with their families. I hope the show gains a bigger audience, and gets more people involved to help solve some of these cases.

It makes me want to help somehow, and it also makes me hope I never have to be personally involved with a story like this.