Round Two: Perception

Perception: Season 1, Episode 2 “Faces” (C+)

Though I’m still not convinced that there’s much to this show, I will concede that this hour does a much better job of showcasing prosopagnosia than last year’s Milla Jovovich starrer “Faces in the Crowd.” Daniel may be obnoxious, but it’s hard to argue with the effectiveness of the test he conducted in which he dressed Kate differently and introduced her to Frank as an entirely new person. This case was laden with incestuous complexity, since Frank, the initial suspect, was actually a culprit all along, even though he didn’t murder the person they thought because she wasn’t actually dead. Unfortunately, Daniel’s ability to recognize faces doesn’t also come with a clear grip on reality. Hallucinating a mole on the task force did assist him in solving the case but also made him seem crazy, and it’s unclear whether he was actually visited and threatened by a Ukrainian man who told him to stop helping the FBI. His therapist’s suggestion that there’s another kind of mole, one that burrows underground, suggests that this show will try to make its storylines as layered and full of subtext as possible, if only to seem more intellectual. I predicted the big reveal that Kelly Rowan’s Natalie wasn’t real midway through the hour, and I’m not sure it changes much other than to explain that Daniel really does have no one in whom to confide. I’m thrilled to see Jamie Bamber, of Apollo of “Battlestar Galactica” fame, as a new hire in Daniel’s department, and I’d love to hear his take on the workings of the brain and see him in action working with Daniel.