DVD Reviews

DVD Review: Without a Trace: The Complete Second Season

By Jeff Swindoll Mar 28, 2007, 14:42 GMT

After a four year wait (an eternity in the DVD realm) season two of the hit show Without a Trace finally makes it way onto DVD. Jack Malone should’ve gone hunting for it himself then maybe it would’ve turned up sooner.

Jack Malone (Anthony LaPaglia) is the head of a FBI unit in charge of tracking down missing persons. His agents include Samantha Spade (Poppy Montgomery), Vivian Johnson (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), Martin Fitzgerald (Eric Close), and Danny Taylor (Enrique Murciano). When someone goes missing they’re the folks that get the call in to solve the mystery and hopefully find the missing person.

Disc 1:
Episode 1: The Bus: Missing: a school bus full of wealthy kids. One child is released with ransom demands, but his story doesn’t match the video from another captive’s cell phone. Who are the real kidnappers, what money are they going after and where are the victims, now rapidly running out of air?
Episode 2: Revelations: Missing: a beloved, ailing priest. A donor match has been found for his diseased liver, so why would a man of faith abandon his only hope? Clues lead to sexual misconduct, but a deeper investigation shows that this man of the cloth had a past stained with unforgivable sins.
Episode 3: Confidence: Missing: a newly engaged socialite. Beautiful, smart and sharp, she’s charmed all the power players in town into investing with her. But when her background shows false identities and numerous scams, the team has to find out if she’s been exposed as a fraud or if she’s really found love and turned her life around.
Episode 4: Prodigy: Missing: a famous teenage violinist, apparently abducted from her dressing room before a show. A deranged fan seems the most likely suspect, but with a violin worth over a half-million dollars, a stepfather’s shady past, and a Romeo and Juliet romance, anything is possible. Disc 2:
Episode 5: Missing: a mother from a small town with a violent past. When a killer from Jack’s early career is being copycatted, he’s anxious to find out who’s behind it and why, only to discover that Graham Spaulding (from Season 1) has a new obsession: ruining Jack’s life.
Episode 6: Sons and Daughters: Missing: a modest high school student-athlete. The team soon finds out that behind the façade of this idyllic suburbia lurks a world of teenage orgies, accusations, and revenge that the have to unravel before it’s too late.
Episode 7: A Tree Falls: Missing: a young Guatamalan boy, kidnapped in plain sight in Spanish Harlem. In a world of illegal immigrants and the “coyotes” who smuggle them over the border, the team is greatly hindered when no one will talk to the authorities. Was this boy taken as a warning or did his desire to save his family lead him down an even darker path?
Episode 8: Trip Box: Missing: a heroic fireman who just rescued his two best friends. Out of the ashes comes evidence of arson, infidelity, and a trail of gambling debt that strains the bonds of loyalty and threatens to disband these firefighting brothers for good.

Disc 3:
Episode 9: Moving On: Missing: a driven neurosurgeon. Suspects include a too-friendly ex-husband, a boyfriend with a violent past, and a patient’s grieving family. But the key to this doctor’s disappearance lies with the baby she gave up for adoption year ago and the people trying to exploit that loss today.
Episode 10: Coming Home: Missing: a successful young man attending his high school reunion. When a happy marriage turns out to be a cover for a man struggling with his sexual identity, the team must pursue the numerous suspects who want him to stay in the closet.
Episode 11: Exposure: Missing: a paparazzo know for his ability to get any shot. Could his disappearance be the revenge of a blackmailed star or rival photographer, or does it have to do with his affiliation with a radical environmental group? The team discovers that trying to turn your life around can have dangerous consequences.
Episode 12: Hawks and Handsaws: Missing: a young public defender. When his family history of schizophrenia is uncovered, the team realizes that the lawyer’s pursuers are all in his mind, and it’s up to Jack to follow the twisted logic that can save a little girl and catch a killer.Disc 4:
Episode 13: Life Rules: Missing: an emerging new self-help guru. When the team discovers that his rags-to-riches story isn’t true and he isn’t even who he claims to be, they deduce that the kidnapping may be a publicity stunt. But when things go wrong, no one is sure where the truth lies.
Episode 14: The Line: Missing: a bounty hunter shot during a raid. The team suspects revenge from a former bail jumper, but when the clues lead to a set-up and police corruption, Jack must take matters into his own hands to save this former cop.
Episode 15: Wannabe: Missing: a middle school misfit. He’s not so different from other kids trying to fit in, but when e-mailed photos of the boy stripped and bound turn up, the team realizes they’re looking for fellow students with bullying and humiliation on their minds and a young boy desperate to outrun his shame.
Episode 16: Risen: Missing: a struggling sex addict, gone for four years. When Vivian’s diligence brings a break in the case, the team reconnects with a trail of abuse and addiction that leads to a cult where no one gets out alive.

Disc 5:
Episode 17: Gung Ho: Missing: a soldier returned after being injured in Iraq. Jack and Danny go to Tikrit to find out what really happened in a mysterious firefight while the rest of the team finds that the man’s battles to save his business and marriage at home are in danger of being lost.
Episode 18: Legacy: Missing: a henpecked husband. Evidence indicates foul play and interviews paint a portrait of a family in crisis. The truth that’s uncovered shows that one horrible event can haunt a family for years.
Episode 19: Doppelganger: Missing: a marine biology student. The boyfriend is the most likely suspect, until his identical twin brother shows up and Jack’s instincts kick in. The investigation leads to a string of dead women in different cities, but can the team discern which brother is to blame?
Episode 20: Shadows: Missing: Martin’s aunt, a nurse struggling with cancer. When he discovers that she has been assisting other terminal patients in their suicides, he fears the worst. Meanwhile, Jack faces his father’s (Martin Landau) medical crisis.Disc 6:
Episode 21: Two Families: Missing: the father of a death row inmate who execution is two days away. When the team discovers that the man may have found new evidence in the case, the search becomes a race to find the father and save the son.
Episode 22: The Season: Missing: a football coach at a college with a tradition of winning. But after a crackdown on academics and ethics and a losing season, the team finds a stadium’s worth of suspects, including angry boosters, suspended players, and university administrators.
Episode 23: Lost and Found: Missing: a young girl’s past. When an adopted teen comes to the FBI with possible evidence that she has kidnapped as an infant, it’s up to the team to find out the truth of who she is and what happened to her.
Episode 24: Bait: Missing: a billionaire’s family, taken off his yacht at sea. With the investigation naturally focusing on the businessman’s enemies and hangers-on, a surprise comes when the team realizes that it’s the yacht, or what it holds, that the kidnappers are after. The success of the show rests firmly on Anthony LaPaglia’s shoulders, but the members of his team also make interesting characters. You’ll be turning in to see what happened to the missing as well as what is going on in the lives of Malone and crew. They interweave the personal revelations of the group into the mystery well. If you enjoyed season one then you’ll definitely want to pick up season two.

Without a Trace is presented in anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) and enhanced for 16x9 televisions. Special features include a collection of “missing evidence” also known as deleted scenes on 16 of this season’s episodes. Without a Trace is a fine show and it’s a shame that it’s taken so long for the second season to materialize onto DVD. However, we can be thankful that it has finally made it and that season three is hopefully not too far behind. It is quite an addicting show.Without a Trace: The Complete Second Season is now available at Amazon and AmazonUK. Visit the DVD database for more information.