Kate Is Enough

Tonight's new episode of Awake was a strong episode overall that unfortunately suffered from a rather weak bookend plot device. The opening scene had Rex flipping out over the damage done to "his" tennis racket. It wasn't hard to deduce that the real reason for his anger was that the racket belonged to his tennis-playing mother. Unfortunately, the episode made us wait until the final scene for Michael to catch up with us, a rather poor showing for a brilliant detective.

But, as I said, the bulk of the episode in between was quite good. The plot device of the babysitter Kate was a very useful one for the show. It served character and plot equally well. Her role as a witness in one reality and a perpetrator in the other helped cloud the resolution of both cases. And as a model of two different ways of dealing with grief, she provided an emotional lesson for Michael.

We've now gone two weeks since the revelation that Michael's car crash was not an accident, and have had no follow-up on that plot thread since then. Interestingly, I think that might be for the better. I found the premise of the show intriguing enough that this extra continuing plot didn't seem necessary to me. Obviously, having mentioned it, they now have to follow up on it eventually. But if they let it slip back into the background for a while, that's alright with me.

Awake does seem to be settling into a rhythm as a typical detective show that happens to have a high concept, but I'm engaged enough with it on that level, that I've actually found myself thinking about dropping a different show in favor of this one. (The long-in-the-tooth CSI.) So yeah... I'm still liking it.