‘Alert: Missing Persons Unit’ Boss Reveals Story He Wanted to Tell More of in Season 1

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Alert: Missing Persons Unit Season 1 finale.]

Fox drama Alert: Missing Persons Unit has, thus far, been a mix of standalone cases and a season-long mystery, but would that be the formula for the show moving forward, if it’s renewed?

That is the plan, and the second season would also likely delve into an arc for Kemi (Adeola Role) that showrunner John Eisendrath wishes they’d explored more in the first. Plus, after seeing more of and learning more about C (Petey Gibson) in these final episodes, what’s ahead for him?

Eisendrath shares more.

We saw a couple different sides of C in the finale, opening up in his conversation with Rachel (Elana Dunkelman) and being out of the office. How did you want to build to him being more comfortable in both those areas of his life?

John Eisendrath: I love that guy. I think he is a charming performer. He and I talked a lot about how were we going to reveal dramatically that he is a trans man. With his help, we landed on something that I thought was very real and visceral where he fell for a woman but was self-conscious about ultimately telling her his truth. I loved it when he told her his truth, she couldn’t have cared less. I thought he was incredibly charming with it.

What I like about C is that he’s not the sort of typical procedural show nerd. He’s very edgier and darker and more sly than most people who fill that role. I’m hoping that he can take that surprising edge into the field next year, that he can go out and — I don’t think he’s kicking ass and taking names, but he’s using his slyness, cleverness, and smarts in the field next year more, which I think will be great.

We’ve seen Kemi use her knowledge of languages and as a shaman during cases and with the mystery surrounding Keith (Graham Verchere) and heard about her past — her lives and as someone who was kidnapped herself. There’s clearly more to explore between her and her father, so how much did you want to just tease that in Season 1?

I had hoped we would have room to tell more of her story in Season 1, but we didn’t and what we left on the cutting room floor I think is going to be great for Season 2. The entire story about her father and how he was and how what he did contributed to her becoming who she is, almost all of it awaits us in Season 2. It’s not just backstory, it will be something that is going to be very present tense. The man who abducted her, the man who ransomed her that we dramatized this season, that man’s connection to her father, what it means to Kemi, and how she deals with it will be a big story for her in the next year. But it won’t be just this is what happened to her in the past. It will very much be a present tense story.

Shane Mahood/FOX

I felt so bad for her when she looked in the window.

Right. And there’s the guy with her father?

Yeah, that entire scene was so good though.

Yes. Oh, I appreciate that. There’s going to be a reckoning about that.

So would a Season 2 have another season-long case, or would it be more just standalone cases with perhaps a couple stretching over multiple episodes?

My dream would be to always have a season-long, serialized personal story that ultimately mirrors thematically and dramatically some, if not all, of the episodic procedural missing persons cases. So yes, I would hope that we would have those, because I think they are always value added to me. I feel like they are part of the sort of larger puzzle that helps us understand our characters more than any individual episode or missing persons case ever could.

Could Kemi’s story be a season-long arc explored alongside the standalones?

Yes, exactly. I don’t know what it will be, but that is a perfect example of what I would hope we would be able to do, which is in Season 2, we would be able to really get to understand Kemi through a story like what happened with her father and why her father behaves the way he does toward her and how that is going to affect her in the present.

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Could we see more of Jason’s (Scott Caan) past as a private military contractor? Because we only got that bit in the beginning.

Yes. I always liked how he would be able periodically to have knowledge of this person or that person, contacts from that world that were able to help in solving or pushing further forward a case they were working on episodically. But yes, I do think that world is going to come back and we are going to see the echoes of it both practically in terms of case work, but also more importantly emotionally in terms of how it has left an impact on Jason.

Would Petey Gibson be recurring again or series regular?

Well, since it’s not my money, it’s easy for me to say series regular. I love the guy and I would love for him to be a series regular.

And then the plan is for everyone else to come back?

Yeah.