The Finder is an American procedural drama television series created by Hart Hanson that ran as a midseason replacement on Fox from January 12, 2012, to May 11, 2012. The series originally aired on Thursdays at 9:00 pm,[1] and moved to Fridays at 8:00 pm beginning April 6, 2012.[2] It is a spin-off of another Fox television series, Bones, where the backdoor pilot, a season-six episode entitled "The Finder", aired in April 2011. It is loosely based on The Locator series of two books (The Knowland Retribution and The Lacey Confession) by Richard Greener. On May 9, 2012, Fox cancelled the series after its one limited season.[3][4]
Cast and characters
Geoff Stults is Major Walter Sherman, U.S. Army (retired). Due to a traumatic brain injury suffered in the Iraq War due to a roadside bomb explosion that only he survived, Walter is paranoid, suspicious, and quirky (he also says that he is "not exactly inhibited"), but it also somehow resulted in him now being able to find anything, seeing patterns where others would not. His brain uses "Walter math" to explain these things to him. In the backdoor pilot, in Bones, FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth calls Walter's gift "the Finder Power", while Leo Knox calls it "Darna Shellah" and "Akashvani". Because of his ability to find anything, many powerful and influential people now owe him favors. Walter's catchphrase, as such, is "I'mma risk it" where he often makes a decision even after Leo legally advises him otherwise. In the pilot, Booth and he are revealed to have "history" and knew each other from their days in the Army. He has a habit of sometimes taking before-and-after Polaroids of clients. Walter has the knack of also finding out things that his clients did not want to know by finding what people are really looking for, not just what they think they are looking for. According to Walter, in "The Boy with the Bucket", he was named, by his mother, after poet Walt Whitman. He is depicted as being younger than his literary counterpart, having never been married, nor having any children. Walter's original literary incarnation served in Vietnam and never suffered brain damage.
Michael Clarke Duncan is Leo Knox, a widower and former attorney. He owns the bar "The Ends of the Earth", located on Looking Glass Key, and he also serves as Walter's manager and legal advisor, and sometimes bodyguard. Leo is also known for his quoting of religious literature, particularly Buddhism. He calls Walter's power "Darna Shellah" and "Akashvani". According to Leo, he owes Walter his life. In episode three, "A Cinderella Story", Leo is shown to have lost his family (his wife Nina and teenaged daughter Ellie), to E. coli poisoning. He is based on the character Leonard Martin in The Knowland Retribution, the first "Locator" book on which the series was based.
Mercedes Masöhn is Deputy U.S. Marshal Isabel Zambada. While Walter's antics frequently get on her nerves, Walter and she have a "friends with benefits" arrangement. Isabel has ambitions of being the first LatinaUnited States attorney general. While she works as a deputy U.S. marshal during the day to gain field experience, she attends law school at night. Her intention is to be "eating dinner in the White House within six years."
Maddie Hasson is Willa Monday, a Romanijuvenile delinquent. Willa is very talented with computers, but she is prohibited from using a computer for the duration of her probation. While Willa has been betrothed to her "cousin" Timo since she was five and Timo was 10, by their mutual "uncle", Uncle Shad, the head of their family, Willa and Timo only love each other as brother and sister. As Willa believes in true love, she wants for Timo to be able to be with the girl he loves, Magdalena. At the end of the season, Willa goes on the run, violating her probation, to avoid her betrothal to Timo. They are not really cousins; it is just the Romani way to refer to one another as such, being the Romani "family".
Toby Hemingway is Timo Proud, a Romani and Willa's "cousin". Timo is five years older than Willa, and he has a talent for tarot reading. While Timo and Willa have been betrothed, Timo is himself in love with a mutual "cousin" of theirs, Magdalena.
Development and production
Fox developed a quasi-spin-off series for Bones that was built around a character introduced in the sixth season. Production on the episode featuring the Locator began in February 2011, with the episode airing in April. The series was created by Bones creator/executive producer, Hart Hanson, and based on The Locator series of two books written by Richard Greener: The Knowland Retribution and The Lacey Confession. The character of Walter is an eccentric, but amusing recluse in high demand for his ability to find anything. He is skeptical of everything. He suffered brain damage after surviving a roadside bomb explosion, which explains his constant paranoia and compulsion to find things—and for asking offensive, seemingly irrelevant questions to get to the truth.[5] Production on the episode began in early 2011.
Creator Hart Hanson posted on Twitter (in a humorous manner) regarding the notes he got from the network, "I received studio notes on the Bones spin-off idea. They want it to be better. Unreasonable taskmasters. Impossible dreamers. Neo-platonists."[6]
In the episode, the main characters of Bones travel to Key West, Florida, where The Finder is said to take place. Geoff Stults was cast as the lead character with Michael Clarke Duncan and Saffron Burrows (as Ike Latulippe, bartender and pilot) in supporting roles.[7][8][9] The three characters were introduced in episode 19 of season 6.
The Finder was picked up for the 2011–12 season on May 10, 2011, with an order of 13 episodes.[10] The series premiered midseason 2012, airing on Thursdays at 9:00 pm ET, occupying the Bones time slot when it is on hiatus.[1]
Saffron Burrows did not appear beyond the backdoor pilot episode, leaving the series, because the network decided to reconceive the role.[11]Mercedes Masöhn and Maddie Hasson joined the cast as the two female leads. Masohn plays Isabel Zambada, a deputy U.S. marshal; and Hasson plays Willa, a juvenile delinquent who helps with their investigations.[12]
After recovering one of John Fogerty’s (guest-starring as himself) beloved guitars, Iraq veteran Walter Sherman (Geoff Stults) helps a teenaged boy (guest star Brett Davern) locate his missing father, a military pilot and war hero whose plane vanished while on an undisclosed mission. Walter turns to Deputy U.S. Marshal Isabel Zambada (Mercedes Masöhn) for insider information on the missing colonel, which links the lost plane to a high-level drug dealer and its illegal cargo. When Walter and Leo discover this unlikely connection to the missing father, they not only locate the fallen aircraft, but they also uncover the real purpose of the flight, helping the boy find closure. Meanwhile, at The Ends of the Earth bar, co-owners Leo (Michael Clarke Duncan) and Walter keep a watchful eye on Willa (Maddie Hasson), a teenager parolee employed at the bar as part of her probation from juvenile detention.
Walter looks for the bullets that were involved in the murder of a police officer 20 years ago. Meanwhile, Dr. Lance Sweets looks into whether Walter is fit to participate in federally mandated investigations, all the while assisting Walt in these investigative endeavors.
Isabel’s new boyfriend, Frank (guest star Lance Gross), an all-star baseball player, is robbed, and Walter steps in to help find his stolen collectibles. In the process, Walter learns Frank has lost something more meaningful than memorabilia. To earn Willa’s trust, Leo and Walter bring her in on the case.
Preston Miller (guest star Jonathan Slavin), a magician, seeks Walter's help in finding his assistant who vanished during a failed disappearing act. Alongside Special Agent Judy Green (guest star Ever Carradine), Walter and Leo find clues leading to a counterfeit money ring. Meanwhile, Leo enlists Isabel's help in looking after Willa.
The Jeffersonian's Dr. Jack Hodgins ropes Walter into searching for an "alien" spacecraft videotaped by an incoming space shuttle pilot, who is now dead. The credibility of the other pilot, Col. Bradshaw, whose reputation was harmed by a shadowy government agency for participating in the disclosure, lies in the balance. All is not as it seems, though, and Walter's life, family, and friends face a very real threat from a woman code-named Pope (guest star Peta Wilson). Meanwhile, Willa and Timo attempt to get their marriage arrangement dissolved by the notorious Uncle Shad (guest star Eric Roberts).
The episode revolves around Hurricane Catherine, which is currently in Florida, and begins with Willa's probation officer coming by the bar for an impromptu inspection of her living quarters. She ends up having to stay due to the harsh weather. Walter, being his paranoid self, boards the bar up and calmly begins preparing to stay in, going as far as making punch and asking Isabel to come over. It all gets interrupted, however, by a newsflash on TV about a missing girl. The hurricane forces Walter to find the girl while remaining in his bar.
When a DJ begins playing new songs from a rapper who was gunned down 10 years ago, Walter is hired to recover the music for the distributor. Walter, instead, decides to try finding the rapper despite all evidence pointing to his death. In the course of his investigation, Walter learns more about the dead rapper's final moments, and the origin of his songs. In the process, he is able to help the rapper's still-mourning family heal.
In the process of finding a specific culinary dish for a man and his wife's anniversary, Walter searches for the chef behind the dish and the source of its unique, smokey flavor. The investigation becomes tense when everyone at his bar ends up in a life-or-death situation between the "Smoke Monster" (lost reference) chef and a mob boss.
Walter is asked by a young girl, (Yara Shahidi), for help in finding her recently disappeared father. Initially uninterested, Walter takes on the case when he discovers the man had been talking with someone else just moments after calling his family. Meanwhile, Leo is depressed as the birthday of his daughter arrives, and he, once again, contemplates his desire for revenge.
A friend of Isabel's asks for Walter's help in finding her father's killer. Walter refuses to search for the killer, but agrees to help find an inheritance left behind for the daughter.
Shortly after a shoot-out, a notorious crime boss seeks Walter's help, but finds this job proves to be extra dangerous, primarily because he believes he is under a voodoo curse.
After discovering that a painting he found four years prior was a forgery, Walter begins searching for the original, but Walter's brother Langston shows up with news that their father is dying. Their father tasks Walter with finding his ex-wife, who happens to be in the Witness Protection Program, as his dying wish. Meanwhile, Willa struggles with her soon-to-be arranged marriage to Timo.
Broadcast
In Canada, the show was simsubbed against the Fox broadcast in most areas on the Global Television Network from January 12, 2012. It premiered in New Zealand on TV3 NZ on March 22, 2012, in Australia on Network Ten
from June 25, 2012 and in the UK on the Universal Channel[26]
on July 11, 2012[27] Australia's Network Ten only aired three episodes before pulling the series from the schedule, and lost broadcast rights in March 2016 without airing the remaining episodes.[28]
The order of the episodes that aired differs from the order produced and intended. This does create some discontinuity in the events of the show, such as Timo and Leo meeting for the first time in the episode "The Conversation", despite the two having met and conversed in previously aired episodes; the mention of Willa not having access to the internet in the same episode, despite her probation officer allowing it two episodes before; or the creation of an "honor jar" for paying one's bill, since Willa is not permitted behind the bar, when Willa was behind the bar (and the honor jar present) in earlier episodes.[29]
The series was released on Disney+ on May 20, 2022.
This list of episodes is the show's original order with each episode's televised order in parentheses.
1. Pilot (#01)
2. The Last Meal (#09)
3. A Cinderella Story (#03)
4. Swing and a Miss (#04)
5. Bullets (#02)
6. The Conversation (#10)
7. The Great Escape (#05)
8. Life After Death (#08)
9. Little Green Men (#06)
10. Eye of the Storm (#07)
11. Voodoo Undo (#12)
12. The Inheritance (#11)
13. The Boy with the Bucket (#13)
See also
The Dead Zone (TV series)—about a man who gains psychic abilities during a coma after sustaining brain damage.
Tracker—about a man who finds people and things in order to earns the rewards offered for them
