Groundhog Taye

I'm actually making this post on Thursday the 30th, not Wednesday the 29th. Technical issues kept me from posting this last night like I wanted to. But given the subject matter, I figured I'd go ahead and date it yesterday anyway.

I've got a little to say about the new TV series Day Break, starring Taye Diggs. You've probably seen the ads, even if you haven't watched it -- this is the show about a police officer framed for a murder, who is re-living the same day over and over again.

It's not one of the great new shows of the season, nor one of the worst. Actually, given the ratings it's been pulling in, it's probably very soon going to be one of the most cancelled series of the season. It's likely just one serial drama too many (and launched two months after most of the others, on top of it), and thus people aren't giving it a chance. Which is a shame, because I find myself quite enjoying it.

It's a strange thing, but it's actually the technique of the writing I'm most enjoying. They have their premise of re-living the same, single day over and over again. And they're doing a truly remarkable job of identifying trouble spots with that premise and addressing them.

For example, in the movie Groundhog Day (played for comedy, of course), Bill Murray's character goes through a suicidal phase where he just kills himself over and over again. In this TV series, one potential dramatic pitfall would be that there are no lasting "stakes" for the hero. If he's out to solve this mystery, he could just rush into any danger in his search for clues -- even danger that might get him killed -- knowing that he'll just wake up the next day, safe and sound, and hopefully wiser for what he's learned.

The writers tackled this issue very early on, by establishing that whatever physically happens to the main character actually carries over as he begins the day again. In one episode, he's shot and loses a lot of blood. In the next iteration of the day, he doesn't even wake up -- his girlfriend awakens to find him unconscious and bleeding from the bullet wound, and has to rush him to the hospital. Must have consequences, and can't have an invincible hero. Check.

Another issue that worked fine in Groundhog Day (again, because it's a comedy, and a movie that only need sustain itself for under two hours) was that the main character slowly built up a "laundry list" of the perfect day he had to go through. He had to be in place X by a certain time to do a certain thing, then place Y by a certain time to do a certain other thing, and so on.

That would be very impractical for a TV series for several reasons. First, episodes would just gather more and more fluff -- uninteresting motions the character has to go through just because he learned in previous incarnations that they were the right things to do. Furthermore, each such encounter that involved a new guest actor would just continue to bloat the list of actors needed to tell the story of each successive episode.

This problem was addressed in last night's installment. After multiple failed attempts by the main character to safely separate his partner from her drug-addicted boyfriend, he finally succeeded in one iteration of the day, saving both their lives. And then, when the next day began, his partner actually behaved differently. She called him, out of the blue, to say she woke up with the feeling that she needed to get her boyfriend into rehab. In short, we learned that not only can each new iteration of the day affect the main character, but each new iteration he does "correctly" can have a lasting effect on others in future iterations. Gone is the need for a laundry list, or the need for the monotony of the "re-living the day" concept.

As I said, the show has been getting dismal ratings. At this rate, it's not likely to still be around by Christmas. But for however long it lasts, I'll remain very interested to see how the writers diagnose and repair other pitfalls in their "feels more like a movie than a TV series" concept.