This is another amiable but undemanding entry to the Jane Doe series.

Lea Thompson is comfortable in the role as Cathy, the housewife turned CIA agent who ends up investigating black op agents going on a killing spree through some kind of mind control and trigger words.

Her partner Frank (Joe Penny) is also getting some uncomfortable flashbacks of his tour of duty in Afghanistan.

The film has shades of The Manchurian Candidate but for a family audience. We have some red herrings such as a suspect who uses hypnosis so he can have an audience who can listen to his karaoke singing.

This cable movie is pretty formulaic and by the numbers. There are side plots such as Cathy's husband trying to bag a tycoon as a client for his public relations firm, but the tycoon is obnoxious and he cannot see that. The family also has to deal with their son who has won money by illegal card games. These side plots just get in the way.

The Jane Doe series on Hallmark Channel is my favorite of the group of shows that were introduced some time ago, McBride and Mystery Woman being the other two. Jane Doe has the nice Scarecrow and Mrs. King contrast of the housewife working as a government operative and somehow seems a little livelier than the other two. It also has Joe Penny, who has always been able to bring material up a notch. Lea Thompson is Cathy Davis, the Jane Doe of the title, and William Moses is her husband. With their two beautiful children, they look like an idyllic all-American family.

In this episode, operatives are killing their bosses and can't remember doing it afterward. Cathy and Frank (Penny) investigate an old CIA program that did the Manchurian Candidate number with the keyword.

Manchurian Candidate, Scarecrow and Mrs. King - it's all pretty routine stuff, but if you have nothing better to do, these shows are pleasant enough. None of the Hallmark series move very quickly, and they all suffer from poor pacing. Thompson is still pretty and perky, and the show utilizes some of the once-familiar stars. This time it's Erin Gray as a rival of Cathy's and Monk's psychiatrist, Stanley Kamel, as a mind-control teacher.

I wish Penny could be doing something more substantial, and Thompson, too, for that matter. Until then, "Jane Doe" will have to do.

There are plenty of plot twists and fine performances by supporting characters to go around in this 2007 entry in Hallmark's Jane Doe Mystery series. The result is a very enjoyable 84 minutes.

For those not familiar with the CSA agent whose cover is working for a puzzle company while being wife and mother of the typical American family, the agency intrigue here is much more multi-layered and provides a much broader spectrum of performances than in previous entries. Joe Penny, Scott Paulin, Erin Gray, Shashawnee Hall, Caroline WIlliams, and Steve Vinovich all provide solid characterizations with signature quirks in their roles in the mystery. THe extraordinary performances are added by the late Stanley Kamel whose misuse of a CSA protocol was a highlight of the film for me and Richard Libertini as the old scientist abandoned to live like a crazy man in the desert.

The other interesting part here is the acting of the actor who played the son, relatively undistinguished in the earlier entries. Here, he gets something to do with a subplot on an unconventional and somewhat unethical way of making money and how he handles it in a way that is parents can live with. The fellow playing the corrupt developer is also quite good in giving his own signature to a hackneyed and stereotyped caricature.

Overall, of course, we're talking about a TV murder mystery. The only reason we call it a movie instead of an episode of a TV series is that it happens to be longer than an hour. All that said, How TO FIre Your Boss is more novel, more interesting, and more amusing than most such entries.