'Trace' Draws a Solid Fan Base

Fans of the missing-persons drama "Without a Trace" know little about the early life of Samantha Spade, the FBI investigator played by Poppy Montgomery. That changes tonight with the first of a two-part story in which Spade's sister is introduced -- and then goes missing.

"We find out some stuff that's incredibly dark about her past and her relationship with her family," Montgomery said of her character. She declined to elaborate in hopes of, as she said with a laugh, being "vague yet intriguing."

Executive producers Greg Walker and Jan Nash were willing to share a bit more. Those who follow the show, they said, have seen hints in the second and third seasons of Spade's broken family, along with allegations of abuse. And in an episode earlier this season, Spade reacted impassionedly to the case of a missing artist.

"That episode ends with what appears to be a flashback from Samantha Spade's point of view of someone being hit with a shovel," Nash said. The episodes tonight and next Sunday "start to answer what that incident was about and why she had such a strong emotional reaction to that one case."

If "Desperate Housewives" had worked up a story line like this, the anticipation would be intense. But "Without a Trace" has generated little of what Hollywood likes to call "heat" -- the attention that creates headlines and yields magazine cover stories.

"I haven't had to buy a tux yet in five years, and I don't know if I'll need to," Walker said. "But we're everybody's mom's or sister's or aunt's favorite show."

"Without a Trace" debuted in 2002, going head-to-head with -- and ultimately beating -- "ER" on Thursdays at 10 p.m. Since moving to Sundays this past fall, the show has regularly won its time slot despite being delayed frequently during football season. "Trace" averages more than 14 million viewers per week and earlier this season passed the 100-episode landmark, which sent it into syndication. TNT airs the syndicated reruns on Wednesdays at 6, 7 and 11 p.m.

"It's huge recognition from our fans," Montgomery said. "Having done five series that failed, it seems to me like such enormous recognition just to hit our 100-episode mark and have such a huge audience. I know how hard it is to get a hit show on the air, so I feel like it's recognized a lot."

Walker said he thinks "Without a Trace" is an under-the-radar type of show. "No one feels abused and isolated," he said, "and no one feels like we're in a situation where we're completely undernourished in terms of praise."

The series succeeds, he and Nash said, because it deals in hope. In the first season, senior agent Jack Malone (Anthony LaPaglia) called himself "a hope junkie," and that phrase is never far from the minds of the writers.

The show doesn't open with a dead body, the way procedural dramas such as "Law & Order" and the "CSIs" typically do. Instead, the mystery begins with what happens just before someone vanishes. The missing person's story is then told through a series of flashbacks that explain the circumstances behind the disappearance.

The "Without a Trace" detectives will usually find the missing person and, in the process, solve the crime -- but the outcome isn't always a happy one.

"Procedurals like 'Without a Trace' have been a staple of TV since the '50s," said Jason Mittell, an assistant professor of American studies and film and media culture at Middlebury College in Vermont. "It's a very comfortable format. You know when you watch that things will be resolved by the end of the episode.

"Most procedurals have a mystery focus, so whether it's a murder mystery like 'CSI' or a medical mystery like 'House,' there's a real sense of 'There's a problem, you're going to spend an hour figuring out how it happened, and by the end there'll be an answer.' And traditionally, the answer is reassuring -- the bad guy is caught, the victim is found," Mittell said.

Rather than stealing from the headlines, some episodes of "Without a Trace" have eerily seemed to forecast them. The Laci Peterson case in California made news months after a Season 1 episode was filmed that centered on a missing pregnant woman. During the second season, the show told the story of a priest involved in a hit-and-run accident; an Arizona bishop was charged in a fatal hit-and-run soon after. And this season's first episode dealt with a boy held captive, a story that played out a lot like the case of missing teens Shawn Hornbeck and Ben Ownby in Missouri in January.

If that sounds spooky, imagine how the writers feel. In brainstorming episode ideas, Nash said, chuckling, "there's a standard rule around here that no writer of a procedural television show should go missing."

WITHOUT A TRACE

Sundays at 10 p.m. on CBS