Slack Water

As Awake pulls close to the finish line (likely for good, given its dwindling ratings), it's losing some of the great steam it had in the beginning. While the show has not turned "bad" by any stretch, it has become a more typical detective show without that special spark it had in the beginning.

The series' strength remains in Michael's life outside his detective job. And tonight's episode did have a good storyline there, with Hannah and Michael embracing the idea of becoming grandparents. Though the shape of the plot was rather predictable, the emotional beats it hit were still fairly genuine.

But the problem for me seems to be that the show can't keep juggling all its balls in the air at once as effectively as it did in the beginning. This week, three characters sat on the bench. Not only was Rex absent, but Michael paid no visits to either of his therapists. And I think each one of those characters -- along with Hannah -- are a vital part of what makes the show distinct.

It's funny that the episode mentioned The X-Files right at the end, because the "mythology" -- the ongoing storyline -- was ultimately the weakest element of that show. And tonight, as the larger story unspooled a bit more, it seemed far less interesting. It seems that there's nothing unusually sinister about Michael's accident. It seems to have just been a simple matter of a drug kingpin wanting a detective out of the picture. It seems too conventional to be true. On the one hand, I hope it is. On the other, I'm not really eager to see the next chapter in that ongoing saga.

Awake seems poised to be a show with early lofty ambitions that came slowly unraveled as its ratings declined. The TV landscape is littered with the corpses of such shows. But I suppose I've come this far; I suspect I'll see it through to the end.