That's Not My Penguin

I finally had a chance to catch up with last week's episode of Awake, and I continue to be intrigued by the way the series keeps exploring its premise. Rather than just settle completely into a standard format where Michael solves a crime in each of his two realities -- with a connection between them -- the writers are still trying new things.

This week, the main twist was putting front and center the question of whether Michael is hallucinating one of his worlds, by having him deal with a schizophrenic hostage taker committed to a delusional reality of his own. There were also interesting new ways in which the two therapist characters were used this week. First, Michael interacted with Dr. Lee outside of the doctor's office -- and ultimately got to be on the scene to see Michael do his job very well, deflating concern over Michael's ability to function. And yet, this was undermined on the spot by the realization that most of Michael's interaction with Lee in the episode was actually a hallucination.

The Dr. Evans scenes were also compelling, as we finally saw a crack in her unwavering support for Michael. She began the episode encouraged that Michael was taking a healthy step forward to resolve his situation. But by the end of the episode, she and Lee had begun to flip-flop in their opinions of Michael. Now she was the one concerned that continuing to entertain the "other world," in the way he was maintaining it, was going to begin doing psychological damage to Michael.

All this said, I'm still trying to keep my enjoyment of the show at arm's length, if possible. Even though it's on NBC, where the ratings don't have to be all that high to ensure renewal, the series has been sliding dramatically since its premiere. It may well be that this single run of episodes is all the Awake we'll get. If so, then I'll hope for continued quality in however much we still get to see.