The struggling new series Vanished is returning to Fox tonight, October 27th. The series has not done too great in the ratings, but hasn’t been cancelled outright. It airs at 8pm. It follows the disappearance of Sara Collins (Joanne Kelly), the second wife of Georgia Senator Jeffrey Collins (John Allen Nelson),

FOX has only ordered 13 episodes of the series, and it seems that it is committed to airing those 13. But they will not make a commitment to order the additional nine episodes unless it does well in the ratings on Friday nights.

If you are a fan of the series, be sure to tune into Vanished, airing on Fridays at 8pm on FOX.

If you have been following Vanished - and granted, few of you are - you saw character lead Detective Kelton (Gale Harold) killed off since he was coming too close to discovering the truth about Sara’s vanishing.  While there have been rumors that Gale Harold was acting like a prima donna on set and it may have contributed to his sudden demise only 7 episodes into the series, but the producer denies that is the true reason behind the odd decision.  Instead, they were thinking “outside the box.”  And I guess killing off the lead definitely qualifies as “outside the box”.

Ausiello was there with an interview with Vanished producer for the full scoop.

Ausiello: So, just to be clear, this was solely a story-line-dictated decision, and had nothing to do with Gale or his performance?
Berman: No. Fox told us to think outside the box from the beginning. We’re not constrained by, “Oh, we have a [contract] with him for this season.” We want this to be an edge-of-your-seat kind of show. And I think now, with killing off our main character, no one can guess what’s going to happen next.

Vanished has not yet been picked up for additional episodes after the first thirteen, hence wrapping up the the Sara Collins mystery by then.  And if FOX picks up more episodes, they will be exploring additional multi-episode mysteries.