The fascinating aspect of Mysterious Ways with Adrian Pasdar (Declan), Alisen Down (Miranda), and Rae Dawn Chong (Peggy) is that initially (I assume) Declan and Peggy were supposed to be the Scully and Mulder duo. Declan is the rather obsessed "intuitive" researcher who nevertheless bows to objective evidence. Peggy is the cool, composed, more objective counselor. Though Peggy is a proponent of the "soft" sciences (she's a therapist), Rae Dawn Chong invests her character with the same level-headed commonsense as Lucy Liu does with Joan Watson.
The problem?
Pasdar and Down have more chemistry in the romantic sense--except the characters are presented, intelligently, as having a brother-sister relationship. After all, he is a professor and she does work for him and although academic romances are not automatically bad, they can complicate straight-forward mystery plots.
What impresses me about the show is that the writers didn't dump one woman for the other. They simply expanded the relationships. In a way, the trio comes to resemble Swan and his "work wives" in Agatha Christie's Criminal Games. Since all three (in both shows) have distinct personalities, they are able to supply their individual unique perspectives to every problem.
In Mysterious Ways, the three care about each other and look out for each other--so when Declan refuses to go to a doctor, both Peggy and Miranda convince him to go in their separate distinct ways.
As in X-Files, romance doesn't need to be on the table so long as mutual closeness rules the relationships.
Two fantastic shows with great trios!
