'Stitchers' premiere episode recap: 'A Stitch in Time'

Stitchers is a new science fiction crime drama, which premiered this past Tuesday on ABC Family. The premier episode is titled “A Stitch in Time,” a does a pretty good job of establishing a workable, though stereotypical story line.

The main character is a young woman named Kirsten Clark (Emma Ishta), who is a CalTech grad student apparently majoring in scientific computing where she develops algorithms which she can use to engage in hacking. She is extraordinarily observant and obviously very intelligent. However, she suffers from a fictional medical condition called temporal dysplasia. It’s sort of an amalgamation of several real life conditions, most of which cause seizures, but none that have quite the effects Kirsten suffers. In the show, temporal dysplasia is described as a condition that affects one’s perception of time and emotions. As a result, Kirsten initially appears to be cold hearted, but it soon becomes evident that due to her condition, she is incapable of feeling emotion. However, this doesn’t necessarily make her more likable.

Throughout the episode we learn that she is socially dysfunctional and has managed to alienate everyone around her, including her colleague and roommate, Camille Engelson (Allison Scagliotti), who accuses her of sabotaging her work. When Camille takes her complaint to the head of their graduate program, Kirsten is put on indefinite academic suspension and the rift between them leads to Camille kicking her out. We also learn that Kirsten was abandoned as a child, and the man she lived with is found shot. It is ruled a suicide, but regardless of her display of apparent disinterest and lack of concern when identifying his body, she is convinced it’s not a suicide at all, and sets out to prove it.

While in the process of hacking into police files so that she can uncover the truth for herself, she is abducted by a secret government agency that uses the concept of hacking to access the residual memories of the recently deceased, a process that is called “stitching” and is used to solve crimes. She is taken to a Chinese restaurant where she is introduced to Maggie Baptiste (Salli Richardson-Whitfield), one of the heads of the program. Maggie wants Kirsten to be the one to go into these dilapidating minds, and points out that it is precisely her temporal dysplasia condition that makes her a desirable candidate for this position. Having just lost access to her graduate research and a place to live, she reluctantly agrees to work for this agency.

Once there, she is “stitched” into the mind of a dead bomber who apparently placed four bombs, only two of which have been detonated. Kirsten’s job is to explore his memories to discover where he hid the other two bombs. There’s a catch though. The brain only remains electrically active for a short period of time, and although the scientists running the program have found a way to slow it down, Kirsten is still under pressure to find the answers/clues before the man’s brain shuts down for good.

His memories are presented in a blurry non-linear montage of which she is a third person observer. In an odd mix of psychic vision versus emotional immersion, she learns that he had a girlfriend that was wronged and then died and that he created and planted bombs in a calculated methodical plan of revenge. As his brain atrophies, she has to “bounce” out and is left in an emotional overloaded state during which she kisses one of the scientists, Cameron Goodkin (Kyle Harris), and proceeds to pass out. After she comes to, she finds herself in Cameron’s clothes in his apartment at which point she assumes the worst and slaps him. It turns out he was just “babysitting” her until she woke up...whatever. She then shares the clues she can remember: a blue door on Sepulveda Blvd. However, the “outside” team can’t seem to find it.

Although her superb observational skills and photographic memory enable her to be perfectly suited for the job, she doesn’t like to follow the rules and heads out to finish solving the crime on her own. Cameron is sent to bring her in, but ends up helping her instead. With the additional help of her estranged roommate, they manage to find the last two bombs and save the day, but when they get back and Kirsten is told she cannot do that again without causing the entire program to be shut down, she admits that she didn’t really want to be part of the program in the first place. However, she is suckered back into it when they present her with the opportunity to hack into the memories of her recently deceased father figure.

The plot line of Stitchers is very similar to iZombie, of course, without the zombies. On a different note, despite the fact that the reasons behind their behavior are widely different, Kirsten’s flippant rogue detective style reminds me of Martin Riggs from Lethal Weapon, an anti-hero with an indifferent temperament. The way she enters into the minds of others, and “sees” their memories invokes scenes from Dreamscape and Dead Zone. In addition, it appears that there will be a Mulder/Scully type tension filled partnership between Kirsten and Cameron, the geeky Star Trek-loving neuroscientist conducting the “Stitchers” program. However, rather than beginning entirely platonic, a romantic and intellectual yet competitive relationship between the two has already been established, complete with quirky and sometimes painfully cheesy banter.

This show is intriguing to say the least, but it is way too soon to determine if it will progress well enough to establish a following or if it will peter out with redundant scenarios that become all too predictable. Overall, I liked it, and I think it has potential. Stay tuned to see how the show and its characters develop. The next episode, “Friends in Low Places” airs Tuesday, June 9, at 9:00 PM EST on ABC Family.

Top image of Salli Richardson courtesy of Roger Wong/INFevents.com