Trace, CBS' procedural drama about a fictional FBI missing-persons unit, has punched the clock nearly every week for the last seven years, finding success by following a few simple rules: Solve the case. Stick to the formula. Pull in the ratings. It's not flashy and rarely inspires chitchat by the water cooler. But it's not likely to vanish from CBS' schedule anytime soon. And in today's fickle media environment, that's saying something.

"Everybody [would love] to walk into a bar and [have] people go, 'Hey! You're on that hot, sexy show on CBS everybody's talking about!'" executive producer Jan Nash told The New York Times. "But we've done very well, which is a testament to the work."

Lost and Found
Trace focuses on crusty investigator Jack Malone and his crack team of FBI agents who serve as gruff, government-employed guardian angels. The investigators work 'round the clock to find the lost and punish the perps, laboring day, night and sometimes—as happened in the Season 6 finale—when they're actually in labor.

All that's good, as far as it goes. These detectives obviously care about the folks they're trying to save, and episodes can delve into difficult but oh-so-real issues in 60-minute bites. Characters can show surprising moral gumption, like the time when one woman was apparently killed because she wanted to give back a winning lottery ticket. Another character becomes an urban Good Samaritan, performing righteous deeds to try to make up for the sins of his past.

And, occasionally, the show even takes on a spiritual sheen.

Take the case of Jay, a one-time cutthroat business owner who spent three years in a coma before miraculously waking up a kinder, gentler person. His wife is thrilled by the change in him, and Jay himself seems a bit mystified by it all. "There's a reason you're back," he's told. "You have to share that."

And so he does—by mysteriously vanishing from his hospital, solving an unsolved murder (in which he played a part) and slipping back into a coma again, as unexpectedly as he slipped out of it. His wife sobs over how unfair it is that Jay's been taken from her again, but we, the audience, see the bigger picture.

Missing in Action
Missing persons cases are rarely so sanitary, though, and the subject matter in Trace can be both brutal and tawdry. The sexual situations characters find themselves in can be frank and uncomfortable. In the handful of episodes we watched, storylines involved infidelity, human trafficking, sexual abuse and, of course, murder. In 2004, one episode included a teen sex orgy as a critical plot point—a scene so offensive it spurred a massive letter-writing campaign from the Parents Television Council and the American Family Association and earned Trace a record $3.6 million fine from the Federal Communications Commission.

And it's not just Trace's evildoers who exhibit questionable morals.

Malone is Trace's obligatory tortured antihero. Sure, the detective cares about the people he searches for, but we're to understand his obsessions are not entirely healthy. Toward the end of Season 6, he hijacks another agent's case, gets shot, breaks out of the hospital and guns down a would-be kidnapper in order to protect a teen girl. A case of the end justifying the means? Perhaps—only in Malone's case, there is no "end." He continues to follow the girl. He just wants to make sure she's OK, apparently, but if he wasn't an FBI agent, he'd likely be hauled into a police station himself for stalking.

"Don't you have daughters of your own?" the exasperated teen asks. "I'm trying to move on. You should do the same."

Malone justifies his actions by saying that he was doing what he thought was right. "I just don't think I should have to defend myself," he tells his counselor. But many wrongdoers have justified their actions by saying they were only doing "what's right," and Malone's staff is getting wise to that fact.

"How many times are you going to use that as an excuse to screw people over?" asks agent Samantha Spade—who, incidentally, is single and several months pregnant from a one-night hookup.

Vanishing Act
The show has other problems. Language can be raw, with most episodes featuring such words as "h---," "b--ch," "d--n" and misuses of God's name. And, while it doesn't typically display the level of blood and gore its channelmate CSI does, its 10 p.m. (ET) slot gives it plenty of leeway to push the envelope when it wants to. So if Without a Trace disappeared, I don't think we'd call Malone to search for it.