Life: An Online Account and A Social Disorder

This week’s episode finds Charlie Crews and Dani Reese investigating the murder of a tow truck driver/salvage yard worker found crushed inside a demolished car. Ouch. Once again, the show adroitly uses a very visual crime as the springboard for action without wasting a lot of time. The detective duo quickly links the victim to a series of torrid online interactions with someone using the handle “Bethany.” Furthermore, they discover that this Bethany also had an internet relationship with another worker at the salvage yard, forming a rudimentary love triangle. You’d think by now that people would have realized Internet relationships are an invitation to mayhem.

Naturally, Crews and Reese suspect “Bethany” and figure the key to solving the case is finding out who this person is. (The hilarious Donal Logue as Captain Tidwell says it best: “Let me tell  you something: there is no her, there is no Bethany. There’s a thirteen-year-old member of the marching band with an online account and a social disorder.”) Nevertheless, Crews and Reese try to track her down by comparing what “Bethany” said about herself to both truck drivers and seeing what overlaps under the theory that anything she said more than once is likely to be true and not an Internet fabrication.

The crime-of-the-week is perhaps not quite as strong as it has been in previous episodes, but there are plenty of assets that more than make up for it. There’s a subplot involving Crews’ ex-wife Jennifer showing him around the storage unit containing all of the stuff they owned together when they were married and before Crews went to prison. It makes for a scene that is tender, nostalgic, and funny. There’s some great dialogue and the sexual tension between the two keeps building.

Another fun subplot involves Ted, who miraculously got the teaching position he was interviewing for the other week even though Crews, acting as his character reference, showed up to the interview high on lab chemicals he had accidentally ingested. It’s fun to see Ted nervous on the first day of school, trying to make a good impression on the kids. (There’s even a little bit of all-too-true social commentary involving students so frantically typing everything Ted says on their laptops that they have no idea what he’s really saying). Adam Arkin consistently manages to bring a perfect blend of sympathy and humor to Ted and makes the character a key fixture of the show.

The combative relationship between Dani and Captain Tidwell continues to play well, and they share a couple of scenes in this episode that feel genuine and come off as very funny. Crews continues to explore the conspiracy against him and identifies another potential member, but the real surprise involves Jack Reese. Crews gets the call that Rachel Seybolt has finally started talking, and when he gets over to the hospital he is shocked to discover that she is talking and laughing with Jack Reese. I don’t want to ruin it in case there actually is another person on planet earth besides me that watches this fantastic show, but suffice it to say that Jack-who has been the villain you’ve (okay, I’ve) been dying to see Crews take down since last season-may not be a stone-cold villain after all. That even the question is posed, that the character is still evolving-is further testament to the strength and creativity of the show’s writing.
Life is all that television should be: enjoyable, fresh, exciting, affecting, evolving, and fundamentally character-driven. I just wish I weren’t the only person acknowledging it.

Season 2, Episode 5: Crushed (originally aired October 17, 2008)

For another take on this episode, read The Way We Were by Elma Rahman.

For more on Life, click here.

Wednesdays at 9/8c, NBC
Photographs courtesy of www.nbc.com