The Roush Review
TV Guide, September 16, 2000
Matt Roush
You can almost hear The X-Files Agent Mulder muttering these words of anti-skepticism to Agent Scully: "Close your mind, miss the fun." Such is the philosophy of Declan Dunn (Adrian Pasdar) a more rumpled but equally curious student of things weird and inecplicable.
Teamed up with his more rational psychaiatrist pal, Peggy Fowler (Rae Dawn Chong), they're the minor-league Mulder and Scully of Mysterious Ways, first shown on NBC in a successgul limited summer tryout and now airing in it's reqular home on NBC's corporate partner, PAX (Tuesdays 8pm/ET) .
Given PAX's more heavenly leanings--it's home to Touched by an Angel reruns and originals like Twice in a Lifetime (about a guardian angel)--it's no surprise the mysteries here are less sinister than spiritual. Even when an episode ends ambiguously, the impact is soothing, not creepy.
The result is just too predicitable, inevitably leading to schmaltzy resolutions. Here, ghosts are a healing force, urging those left behind to move on, and when Declan, after capsizing while rafting, washes up at a camp from which there seems no escape, you just know it's a metaphor for the afterlife. Yet there is an irreverence to the writing --when Declan sings "Kumbayah" at campfire, everyone groans--and a nicely self-deprecating quality to Pasdar's portrayal of Declan, an anthropology prof who isn't quite sure if he wants to debunk or confirm these paranormal puzzles. "I'm always looking for meaning when there isn't any," he frets.