‘Alert: Missing Persons Unit’: Malcolm-Jamal Warner on Team’s New Boss, Breaking Rules & More

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Alert: Missing Persons Unit Season 3 Episode 4 “Sophie.”]

The latest Alert: Missing Persons Unit case is personal for Chief Inspector Bill Houston (Malcolm-Jamal Warner), and as a result, he makes a decision that he wouldn’t necessarily have under other circumstances.

The missing person in question is Lieutenant Sophie Kirby (Donna Benedicto), who, along with her husband Sergeant Adam Kirby (Kurt Yaeger), served under Houston. After a truck crashes into Sophie and a friend’s car, fake EMTs arrive on scene and kidnap her. When MPU finds their ambulance, there’s a bullet from the munitions center in which Adam works. Houston doesn’t question it and instead tells Kemi (Adeola Role) to find him.

“He trusts his team,” Warner explains to TV Insider. “He supervises the unit, but this is what they do on a daily basis. So I think he has to, even though he’s overseeing it, go with their gut.”

He also goes with their plan to rescue Sophie, even though it would mean great risk if they’re caught. The plan requires stealing guns from the base for an exchange. He says he’ll be right beside them if they get caught. But if this hadn’t involved people he knew, he wouldn’t have approved that plan “as quickly” as he did, confirms Warner. It’s just not who he is.

That goes back to trusting the unit. “There is that added personal investment of, ‘I got to get my people.’ So I think just having the combination of those two,” he says. “It’s something that if it did go south, he’s invested enough that he would take the hit with them. I really believe that about him.”

Houston is someone who believes in structure and rules and did have problems with Jason’s (Scott Caan) cowboy tactics, but his opinion is changing the more he sees of the unit.

“I believe that the more time he spends with MPU and Jason specifically, there are more situations where he would be open to bending the rules because at the end of the day, it’s about getting results and that’s what MPU does very well,” Warner tells us.

His first episode was the second of the season, in which the team’s boss, Nikki (Dania Ramirez), was killed. Now, the unit needs a leader, and in this episode, Houston approaches Nikki’s husband Mike (Ryan Broussard) about stepping up. He did ace the lieutenant exam last year, and while there are still a few people ahead of him in the promotion list, it’s nothing that can’t be politicked. Mike tells him he’s not sure, then, at the end of the episode, turns him down. As Mike explains to Jason, after everything that happened, some things came into focus; he doesn’t belong at a desk, doing paperwork and in charge of everyone but rather out in the field with him.

But according to Warner, his character hasn’t completely ruled him out to lead the team. “I think Bill is wise enough to give him time. I think Bill also respects there’s still the grief that Mike hasn’t allowed to really happen yet. So I think Bill gets, okay, he’s going to need some time,” he explains, adding he wants him to change his mind.

Alert: Missing Persons Unit, Tuesdays, 9/8c, Fox