The Finder May Not Be Like It's Predecessor, But Enjoyable On Its Own

Promotional image of The Finder.

Before watching Bones, I didn't think much of The Finder and only heard of it due to its cancellation. During watching Bones in season 6, they introduce you to The Finder in its self titled episode. The episode introduced to you the two main characters, Walter Sherman (Geoff Stults) and Leo Knox (Michael Clarke Duncan) who reside at a bar called Ends of the Earth. Now lets get out of Bones territory and head into the year The Finder became its own 13 episode series. In 2011, The Finder opened with An Orphan Walks Into A Bar and introduced two new characters who were not introduced in the episode The Finder.

Enough with the history lesson, lets get down to the bare minimums of The Finder. The Finder is about an army veteran named Walter Sherman, who during his tour of Iraq got blown up and received brain damage. Due to his brain damage, Walter gets the ability to see connections between events, people and objects. The Finder power. He uses this to find things for people, but there is a down side. If Walter doesn't find what hes looking for, he could go into a coma. Unfortunately, due to its short run, this was never really explored and merely spoken about. Walter is joined by lawyer buddy Leo Knox, the gypsy Willa Monday (Maddie Hasson) and US Marshal Isabel Zambada (Mercedes Masöhn). Together they finds things and solve crimes sometimes.

There is a couple elements that make The Finder enjoyable to watch. First and foremost it is the antics of Walter Sherman as he takes the usual path to finding things. Sometimes it ends up with him getting knocked out or in danger. Walter also thinks differently than normal people due to his ability which causes normal people to be generally weirded out. Which makes you wonder if The Finder hadn't been cancelled, would we have seen what Walter was like before? The next element is Walter's relationship with everyone else. Leo is like Walter's protector and he typically helps Walter out on cases. Sometimes even getting Walter out of jail. Walter also has this weird relationship with Isabel where they are dating/not dating. The other plot lines of The Finder also consist of Leo trying to keep Willa on the right path, and Isabel trying to become the DA in the White House.

There are some downfalls of The Finder, which probably lead to its cancellation after one season. For Walter, all we learned as that he had brain damage and could go into a coma if he didn't find what he was looking for. I would have liked to learn more about Walter, but The Finder went for comic relief with Walter instead. We also didn't get much story on Leo as well since all we learned was that Leo's family was killed by a man that eventually ended with Walter stopping him and owning the Ends of the Earth. Sometimes it felt like some episodes were just put there to fill space. Then there were times where The Finder just got weird and confusing. I would also like to add that The Finder mentioned that Walter was in the army, but we don't see much of his military training (with the exception of one episode where it was awesome). Most of the time, its Leo doing the protecting, but thats probably because of Michael Clarke Duncan and his action movie past.

It is very hard to review a show with such a short run. If The Finder had the time, it could probably fix where it went wrong and draw in a bigger audience. Tell the stories they meant to tell. Develop the characters and their relationships with each other. Also Bones cast cameos doesn't hurt either. The Finder is still half baked as it wastes some of the resources Hart Hanson left out to use. I do like The Finder though and would have liked to see more. Perhaps somewhere during Bones run hmmmmm?

Trailer below.