Crime time
-
- November
- 5
NBC is trying to make Wednesday the new Thursday (Remember Must-See TV?) with a trio of crime-stoppers, beginning with the remake of “Knight Rider” at 8 tonight. Then “Life,” returning to Wednesday, follows at 9 as a lead-in to “Law & Order” (10 p.m.). The moves seem to be designed to showcase “Life,” which has been struggling in the Peacock Network’s 10 p.m. Friday slot, now home to “Lipstick Jungle.”
If there’s any justice in this world, the Friday gambit will work.Tonight’s installment of “Life” features a nifty plot — When isn’t the plot nifty? — revolving around murder amid a support group for disenchanted lottery winners. (Only in Hollywood would someone think of putting “disenchanted” and “lottery winners” in the same sentence. As I’ve said before, money may not buy happiness. But it can sure make misery comfortable.)
As is par for the course on “Life,” the case is really a metaphor for the continuing rehabilitation of Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis), a Los Angeles detective returning to the life he used to know and will never know again after being falsely imprisoned for 12 years for the mass murder of a colleague and his family. Tonight, Charlie (seen in an NBC publicity photo with Erik Estrada, who has a cameo in the unhappy millionaires plot) makes some headway in his attempts to reconnect with the only survivor of the murder spree, the teenage Rachel (Jessy Schram), a key to the conspiracy that framed Charlie.
I’m not sure I buy the Charlie-Rachel relationship. Can he ever be an uncle to her again after so many years of estrangement and distrust? Nor am I insane about Dani Reese (Sarah Shahi), Charlie’s partner, exploring her feelings for their piggish boss, Capt. Kevin Tidwell (Donal Logue). Remember, Dani: Denial can be a good thing.
On the other hand, I find the relationship between Ted (Adam Arkin), Charlie’s former cellmate and current roommate, and Olivia (Christina Hendricks), Charlie’s soon-to-be stepmom, believable and poignant. The scene in the previous episode in which they kissed, in part so Olivia could pull out the pencil in Ted’s hand (hey, stuff happens in an earthquake) was both incredibly sad and romantic.
The quirky characters work. So do the oddball plots and the seemingly unfathomable conspiracy. And at the center of it all is Lewis’ utterly original Charlie, a brilliant, brittle creature disguised as a Zen master. There’s a telling moment at the beginning of tonight’s episode when the vinegary Rachel looks around Charlie’s empty mansion — the partial result of his successful $50-million wrongful imprisonment suit — and opines that she could do 12 years in the pen for this.
The look on Lewis’ face tells you that 1. She can’t begin to know what she’s talking about, and 2. He’s glad of that.
After “Life,” “Law & Order” returns for its 19th season with a particularly strong episode ripped, as usual from the headlines. This one teams the current economic crisis with the ghost of 9/11 and the movie “Fight Club” in a case involving the murder of a stockbroker who likes a good street brawl. Prosecuting the case proves particularly frustrating, leading District Attorney Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston) to try a controversial approach that puts him at loggerheads with Det. Cyrus Lupo (Jeremy Sisto) and Assistant District attorney Michael Cutter (Linus Roache).
As usual, the narratives are spot-on, and the cast is seamless, with Roache a standout as the ambitious prosecutor able to pursue a tack he doesn’t believe in — to a point.
He and Lewis are fellow Brits finding “House”-ian fulfillment on this side of the Pond. They’re doing the mother country proud.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 at 4:19 pm by Georgette Gouveia.
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