Control freaks
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- November
- 29
I’m still trying to figure out why some critics say Charlie Crews is much more interesting than the cases he investigates on NBC’s “Life.” Like “The Simpsons”  another well-written though vastly different show  each quirky episode of “Life” starts out being about one thing and ends up being about another. (Sort of like Life, without the quotation marks.)
Last night’s tremendous installment  which featured all kinds of creepy, controlling daddy figures  began with the story of a murdered teenage girl and ended with a teenage boy, called Nate, who befriended her. Turns out he had been kidnapped years ago by a guy who was obviously a pedophile and who kept his “son” a psychological prisoner. This, of course, immediately spoke to Charlie (Damian Lewis), who knows that the bars people place on their souls can be as powerful as the ones they put on cells. And it led to an understated but no-less-haunting finale, in which Charlie  hinting at the sexual abuse he undoubtedly endured in prison  reached out to the boy, suggesting by his very presence that while Nate would always be an individual set apart because of his traumatic experience, there was nonetheless a way through it.
I’m of two minds about “Life’s” treatment of the prison rape Charlie must’ve endured. (I say must’ve, because I don’t think it would be possible for such a man  a good-looking cop  not to be assaulted in prison, even if he were ultimately placed in solitary confinement. As one of the characters in Spike Lee’s disturbing “25th Hour” says of the handsome drug dealer brilliantly embodied by Edward Norton, he doesn’t have the face for prison.) On the one hand, I think “Life” should acknowledge the 800-pound-gorilla in the room and address the issue psychologically. On the other hand, with all the exploitative sex and violence on the tube, the series’ restraint and ironic distance might be the best approach.)
In any event, scenes like last night’s closer have clearly given NBC the confidence to order a full complement of episodes of “Life” for this season and to begin to showcase the program with a two-parter airing at 10 p.m. Monday and Wednesday (on Channel 4 locally). This does not, however, bode well for “Journeyman,” which currently occupies the 10 p.m. Monday time slot and has not received the same vote of confidence from the Peacock Network. While I like “Journeyman” and think it’s getting stronger, it’s not as compelling as “Life” and may wind up losing its time slot to the better show. Survival of the fittest. Such is life.
Now a word about Damian Lewis’ performance as Charlie, which looks all the more remarkable when you have the pleasure of contrasting it  as I did over Thanksgiving weekend  with his turn as Soames Forsyte on WNET-Channel 13’s marathon airing of “The Forsyte Saga,” part II.
Soames Forsyte  the constricted, possessive scion of a wealthy British family at the dawn of the 20th century  would so hate the free-wheeling Charlie Crews, even though they have more in common than meets the eye. (Watch Charlie interrogate a suspect. Like Soames, he has a killer instinct.)
Soames’ dark secret  the thing he can scarcely bring himself to discuss, he’s so ashamed  lies with the cruelty he visited on the wife who betrayed him. Yet such is the genius of Lewis’ performance that he makes the sometimes villainous Soames totally intelligible. Indeed, it’s worth watching the entire series on DVD to revel in the stiff way Lewis’ Soames comports himself  speech clipped, shoulders hunched, arms close to the body.
His Charlie has a whole different verbal and kinetic rhythm  looser but still edgy. Like an Olivier, Lewis can create a character from the outside in. But like a good Method actor, he can also express the internal, as in that scene with that lost boy, in which he says and does little and yet conveys so much compassion.
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on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 at 4:19 pm by Georgette Gouveia.
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Category: Damian Lewis, Journeyman, Life, PBS, Simpsons, The Forsyte Saga
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