Summary
You can’t fault Vanished for pace in “Limerence”, but you can fault it for having highly unconvincing human drama underpinning the twists and turns.
Things seemed bad enough for Alice Monroe. Her boyfriend, Tom, was not only afraid of commitment, but also missing. And she couldn’t seem to trust anyone she met to help her, which, in a show titled Vanished is kind of expected, but nonetheless constitutes a problem. Episode 2 of the MGM+ series, “Limerence”, introduces a few more issues, including a couple of big ones. Tom might not just be missing, but might also be the most prolific human trafficker in the Middle East. And Alice is on the cusp of being killed for it.
Part of this show isn’t really working for me. I never really bought into Alice and Tom in the first place, so all the meet-cute flashbacks aren’t having the intended effect. We’re supposed to buy into the idea that their connection was instant and so strong that Alice now can’t help but have near-constant reminiscences about it. But it just made me think that nothing about their relationship was ever sincere enough for her to care this much about it. Now her life is literally in jeopardy; she’d be better off cutting her losses. There are only four episodes, so maybe she will.
I don’t think we’re supposed to think Alice is silly, but it’s kind of difficult not to. Plot points like the whole “Aurelie” thing, her seeing the name in Tom’s notebook and assuming it was a high-end jewelry store where he was planning to buy her an engagement ring, but then later discovering it was a secret yacht where he’d posed with another woman at least once, seem deliberately designed to make her look foolish. Part of her insistence on seeing this quest through must be coming from humiliation as much as love, even if she hasn’t realised it yet.
We also have a new villain, which is nice. Alice immediately bonds with Alex Durand, the head honcho in SOS Global’s Marseilles office, which is another knock against her self-preservation instinct. He’s charming, granted, and at least seems sincere, but his recounting of Tom’s recent traumatic episode in Jordan has a touch of scapegoating about it. Apparently, Tom had bonded with a young boy named Malik, who, through a string of terrible circumstances common in warzones, had ended up in a mass grave along with his entire family. This had apparently badly affected Tom. Alex even provides a ready-made excuse for why he might have been calling SOS Global instead of his uncle, as he claimed, citing how the NGO can route calls to Jordan without the caller having to pay international charges.
Neither the audience nor Alice is strictly buying this. Are we expected to believe that Tom was so traumatised he just vanished? Why wouldn’t he share any of this with Alice if he loved her so much? Understandably, Alice is leaning more towards the idea of an affair, and the evidence does exist to support the theory. The Aurelie, which Helene tracks down basically instantly, contains all the evidence of a romantic night in. Named after a woman with a matching tattoo? The writing’s on the wall. When she asks Alex for a bit more clarity, he senses an opportunity and clearly pushes the idea that something was going on between Tom and a co-worker, suggesting Alice return to Arles and, presumably, leave the whole matter well alone.
And she almost does. But when she’s due to board the train, spotting a huddle of conductors – I don’t think that’s the proper collective noun, but no matter – reminds her that the conductor aboard their own train was a little suspect. She manages to dig up his address, which is in a very sketchy neighborhood, and finds him dead on the floor of his apartment with his throat cut. In an unlucky turn of events, she’s caught looming over the body and flees instead of trying to explain herself, which, once the story hits the news, makes her the prime suspect in the murder. Seriously, is Tom really worth all this effort?
After fleeing, Alice calls Alex to tell him what she found, and also that she saw a suspicious man lurking nearby who she’s sure was the killer. Alex feigns concern and asks her where she’s staying, promising to look into it. What he actually does is call the assassin, who had killed the conductor on his instructions, and tells him to go to Alice’s hotel and finish her off. At this point, Vanished Episode 2 catches up with the cold open of the premiere, with Alice being forced to flee her hotel like Alex Honnold from a masked assailant. Luckily, she’s saved in the nick of time by Helene, whom she had also called. And this is good news for a couple of reasons, not just because it keeps Alice alive for the time being.
Helene seems to be the only person interested in telling Alice the truth. Naturally, I’m assuming that Helene is telling the truth and isn’t really a secret bad guy, but I don’t think so. Her theory of what’s going on seems to make sense to me. She rightly points out that, given only Alex and Drax had the location of Alice’s hotel, at least one of them is trying to kill her. She also knows more than she has been letting on, since she was already investigating Tom on the train, which she suspects may have been what caused him to flee. As well he might, since Helene is investigating a human trafficking operation in the Middle East that she assumes Tom – via SOS Global – may well be the ringleader of.
This seems pretty on-brand for what we know of Tom and what we now know of Alex. Something shady was evidently going on, enough that Helene has continued digging into the case in a freelance capacity despite having been laid off five years ago. It’s a big story. And now that Alice is the prime suspect in the murder of a train conductor, she doesn’t really have a great deal of choice beyond sticking with Helene and seeing how deep the rabbit hole goes. Something tells me she isn’t going to like the answers very much.
