Awake User Reviews

Awake’s pilot is a mesmerizing hour of television. It’s understated but unafraid and capable of hitting large emotional notes, subtle and yet deeply affecting, and filled with great performances. Much like Kyle Killen’s pilot last year, Lone Star, this is a an episode of television that stands up and demands your attention. It’s also similar to Lone Star in that it’s impossible to watch the pilot and not wonder just how Awake will make the transition to weekly television series. There’s the built in procedural hook of it being a police drama, but the things that truly make the pilot memorable are more ephemeral in nature and much more likely to become harder and harder to make compelling on a weekly basis.

The reason for that is the premise. The series is built around Michael Britten as he copes with his life after a disastrous car crash. In its aftermath he begins to live alternating lives, one in which his son died in the crash and his wife lived and one in which his wife died in the crash and his son lived. Michael is unable to determine which life is real, and from that conceit the show builds its examination of the ways we deal with loss. Michael sees psychiatrists in both versions of reality and refreshingly he’s quite open with each of them about what’s occurring to him. It allows the show to both sidestep an early string of episodes where Michael struggles to come to grips with his new form of life and lets the show dig deep into its conceit right away. As the pilot progresses the therapists act as a sounding board for Michael and as a way to prove that there’s no easy answer to just what’s happening to him. It might be a coping mechanism to fill in the hole that the loss of either his wife or son left or it might be a way to deal with something greater and more complex.

The rest of the series is comprised of Michael going about his daily life. Working his detective job in varying circumstances and with different partners, seeing his son play tennis, having dinner with his wife, and so on. It’s mostly mundane stuff and the police portions of the episode take up a minority of the pilot’s running time as much of its focus goes to the ways that Michael’s life is both deeply bewildering and yet reassuring to him. He has lost both his wife and his son, and yet he still has both his wife and his son. One of the most potent moments of the pilot comes from the revelation that he has told his wife of how he dreams about his son, and while at first he tried to keep her updated about his son’s life it quickly became too painful for her. Michael gets to live with his son, but for her it’s only a phantom of their child, a memory that’s too vivid and real to bear.

The pilot is helped along immensely by some stellar performances, not least of which is the lead performance from Jason Isaac. Isaac has a presence that recalls plenty of gruff TV detectives, but something in his gravelly voice and demeanor betrays a warmth that makes it immediately apparent both how much he loves both his wife and son and why they would love him deeply in return. The series effectively creates a believable family unit and the performances of Laura Allen as Michael’s wife Hannah and Dylan Minnette as his son Rex ground those dynamics further. All of them are readily capable of delivering the kind of fragile moments required of them without falling into the realm of the maudlin. TV veterans like B.D. Wong and Steve Harris round out the rest of the cast and they’re more than up to the not insignificant tasks given to them. All the actors have a great rapport with Isaac in the episode and that goes a long way towards quickly establishing and filling out their relationships to his character. The pilot is also quite well directed thanks to David Slade who gives the alternating realities contrasting warm and soft color palettes that are nicely suited to the subject matter.

One of the reasons why I can’t help but think about what kind of series this will be moving forward is that Awake’s premise makes it difficult not to focus on just what is happening to Michael. In the film version of this story it would be entirely possible that we might never find out what precisely was occurring to Michael, and since you would only need to invest about two hours in the story that outcome would be more palatable to most viewers. On TV though viewers are expected to spend huge amounts of time with Michael, especially if the show ends up being successful and running for a long while, and that investment tends to make it impossible for creators to get away without giving closure to a series’ mythology. Despite that I’m not sure if I want to know exactly what’s happening to Michael.

There’s a line late in the episode that sums up that impulse nicely, “Remember when you used to think solved and fixed meant the same thing?” One of Michael’s partner intones that line to him after they’ve solved a case that leaves a particularly unhappy loose end, and I can’t help but feel it applies to the series as well. Luckily though the pilot understands that, and while I doubt the series would be ballsy enough to completely withhold any sort of resolution should it run to a length where it was allowed a natural ending, the pilot benefits greatly from its open ended nature. Michael asserts near the end of the pilot that he has no intention of giving up either his wife or child, regardless of the psychological damage that his splintered reality might cause to himself, and when he makes that statement its hard not to think of his partner’s bit of philosophizing. The series could solve precisely what is happening to Michael, but would that fix whatever problems he is having? If Awake is to succeed the questions and problems that have to animate the series must emanate from its characters and the ways they’re dealing with their profound sense of loss; be it of a mother, a son, or a family.

Other thoughts:

• The car crash that opens the episode is really excellently shot. It’s remarkably restrained, as much of the pilot is, but the shots from within the car have a wonderfully otherworldly feel. I believe it’s due to the fact that those interiors were shot in ultra-slow motion and then played at a slightly faster speed, and the effect leads to a sequence that looks just slightly wrong. Slade cuts inside the car only one time on its way down the hill, and once we cut back out he leaves us to watch as the car hurtles down the rest of the hill and comes to a rest. It’s just the right amount of giving and withholding information.
• I’m hopeful that Awake succeeds even if it’s a bit of a hard sell. Both because I really like it and because I want Laura Allen to be on a great show that doesn’t get cancelled swiftly like her last show, Terriers.