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	Printed Articles & Interviews Newsday March 12, 1996

'Nowhere Man's' Destination
Remains a Hidden Agenda

By Diane Werts

So what's real? If you've been watching UPN's gripping "Nowhere Man" Mondays at 9 pm on WWOR / 9, you don't have a clue now. Last thing we heard in the twisting, churning saga of fugitive photographer Thomas Veil, the single truth he held to be self-evident was alleged to be a lie. That jungle-execution photograph "Hidden Agenda" that the nefarious Organization wants so badly as to steal his life out from under him? Completely fake, asserted Veil's one traitorous inside ally, seconds before he bought The Organization's latest big one.

Whew. How many more mind games can "Nowhere Man" lay on us? How many more times can this fascinating yarn give info and then take it away, hold out hope and yank it out from under us, act as if it's going to end Veil's suspense and stubbornly pervert every peice of "truth" that comes his way?

"But that's what's neat about it," says star Bruce Greenwood, "is that every time you think a solution may be at hand, there's the other side of that hand."

Ah,yes, but then there's getting your hand slapped -- which is exactly what happened to that other amazing dance of tube illusion a few years back, "Twin Peaks." David Lynch refused to come clean on his who-killed-Laura-Palmer mystery until it turned into who-cares-about-Laura-Palmer for most of the audience. Greenwood realizes the danger, and hiding out from the horde in a side room during TV critics' midseason press tour, he was willing to theorize about the show's need to ante up on Veil's "Hidden Agenda" mystery.

"I can't imagine it'll happen any later than this year," he offered. "I think they've gotta kiss the photograph goodbye. Otherwise, it's a mile wide and an inch deep, and people are just gonna wander away. So I'm thinking of it as a door, and the door has got to swing open this season. And then there's a castle there -- and there's a ring of keys."

Keys to -- what? That enigmatic mood is what's made "Nowhere Man" such an unexpected delight since its socko pilot came out of, well, nowhere last fall, It's always teased our brains with its contemplation of truth and misdirection, trust and betrayal, conviction and compromise, as seen through the eyes of Greenwood's solitary title character. "It's about what's really gong on in his heart and in his mind," maintains Greenwood, "not so much about who's doing it to him."

But that existential struggle has been overshadowed this second half of the season by "conspiracy theory" story lines obsessed with the who's, what's and how's of The Organization. The show's gotten out of Tom's head and into sci-fi-like UFO plots, James Bond-type gadgetry, and even -- such fiction! -- a mind-control scheme using TV to tranquilize the populace. The last was at least an interesting political digression. But not quite the internal "Nowhere Man" so many of us had come to cherish.

Says Greenwood, "There's been all kinds of conversations and discussions between the network /studio and the producers / writers....The first three or four episodes [this winter] were a little broader than I think was originally intended, in terms of making the conspiracy the big aspect of the story as opposed to his experience of fear and confusion that he lives with. but after these first three or four episodes, the footing becomes a little firmer in terms of what the show's truly about."

Next Monday's episode ends the whole palm-top computer arc of Tom chasing info handed over in digital form by the traitor, as he ventures to a Midwest town where he discovers there is -- are we surprised? -- another Thomas Veil living, working and displaying that "Hidden Agenda" photograph. It's a truly neat head trip. (Ditto the following week's repeat of the October episode where Veil saw his entire ordeal portrayed on a TV show.) And future story lines involve operatives using chemicals to alter Tom's memories, Tom waking from a "coma" to learn the whole ordeal is just "a nightmare," and return visits from stolen wife Alyson and other key compatriots.

So, "Nowhere Man" is going somewhere mesmerisingly mental again? And there's gonna be a payoff on that photograph?

A call to creator-producer Larry Hertzog last week seeking answers resulted in yet more questions. (Are we surprised?) The script for next week's "Doppelganger" entry "was developed during the first thirteen [episodes] and produced later," Hertzog noted. "It was developed during the era of "Let's play with Tom's head.'"

The best era! But not the upcoming era, it seems. "It will neither be that big kind of sci-fi-esque, nor quite the sort of existential dance-in-your-head kind of things," he says of the season's last five new episodes (airing next Monday, then during spring sweeps April 29 through May 20). "I think we're going yet a third way, to try to answer some of the questions that the season has provoked."

Sounds good. But..."The network would like to see a slightly more literal show as opposed to a figurative show," continues Hertzog. "They felt some of the existential shows were a little slow."

Uh-oh. As UPN expands to add a third weekly night of programing tomorrow, quality may not be enough to keep a show on their air anymore, and "Nowhere Man" still ranks in the netherworld. But the audience that's there for this show is really there. Check out the smart fans on the Internet newsgroup alt.tv.nowhere-man, or the jam-packed Webpages that trace the plot's intricacies.

Of course, the cult's not enough. Still, the network did extend its order to 25 episodes this season. "They believe in the potential of the show," says Hertzog, "They just have not actually believed we were realizing it."

Wrong. It's the eerie calm of "Nowhere Man" that makes it special, its hallucinatory nature, its investigation of dislocation and illusion. But as Hertzog told critics at the press tour about Veil's fight -- "The ultimate power still rests outside him, in that They can give the control or They can take it away" -- so it goes in the halls of network television. Let's hope "Nowhere Man" doesn't end up learning its own painful lesson about who holds the power -- and how They use it.

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