graham kelton

Agent Graham Kelton  Senior FBI Agent  One daughter, Inez

Graham Kelton is a senior FBI agent and the Lead Investigator on the Collins case, a search for senator Jeffrey Collins' wife Sara who goes missing as part of a larger conspiracy. Kelton is one of the main characters in the show, he's troubled by another case in his past that went terribly wrong and the Collins case is his chance for vindication.

Whip-smart and ambitious, Kelton keeps his turbulent emotions to himself. When U.S. Senator Jeffrey Collins’ beautiful second wife, Sara, suddenly disappears, Agent Kelton is called back to work. He’s been on hiatus after watching a child die violently when his agency superiors ignored his instructions and ineffably bungled the case.
"He’s very wound up," Gale Harold says of Kelton. "He’s been betrayed by his own people, so he has some anger, frustration and fear. He has to make a conscious decision to keep his emotions in check, but they break free every once in a while.
He gets ashamed when he lets his emotions get the best of him."
Playing a character like Kelton already has changed the way Harold sees things, he says. "My whole world view expanded by doing this [role] because I’ve really had to be much more realistically sympathetic to the other side of the table than I have been previously," says Harold. "It’s forced me to get some social maturity and to expand my ability to think critically about what’s really going on in the world."
"Anything that doesn't make sense," Harold says, "that seems to be counterintuitive and nonsensical, that's like life. Investigators deal with stuff that doesn't make sense all the time. They can very quickly cut through it and start to track it and make sense of it. "But there are random events that happen that can screw up an investigation -- or if someone starts planting random information or stitching something together for you or manipulating you. I'm not talking psychotic, but you can become paranoid and start second-guessing everything you see.
"That's where Kelton's going to go. That's what's interesting about him as a character. He's isolated from everyone else in the show."
While providing Kelton a chance for professional vindication, the Collins case also challenges his assumptions about many things. According to Gale Harold, Kelton is put on the case because he respects authority and the chain of command, but strange turns in the case put that loyalty in question.
"One of the concerns in this show," Harold says, "is going to be, how can you be a maverick in your approach and still be the guy that believes in the Stars and Stripes and absolutely believes that the United States is doing the right thing and believes in God and believes in Roman Catholic tradition, all those things, wholeheartedly, but still will stick it to a senator and get right in his face? "It's a test to see if they're going to keep him or let him go. For him, it feels like a big test. 'They're bringing me back, they're giving me this job, I shouldn't be handed this, but I am, so I've got to prove myself.'
But it rapidly becomes some other thing. "It's the push-pull thing, 'You put me here, but you won't let me do my job.' You rapidly get the sense that this is all a charade. What's really happening?"

credits: NYPost and 'Vanished' Reveals Season-Long Mystery by Kate O'Hare, Zap2it.