Life: Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant

To be perfectly honest, I have a really hard time writing about this show. The reason for that is simple: I’m in love. When I try and express what I feel and what I think about Life, my brain shuts off. I can’t find the words. My heart races whenever each episode starts and I feel like I can’t breathe. It’s the first thing I think of when I go to bed and the first thing I think of when I wake up. There hasn’t been a single episode thus far that hasn’t made me laugh hysterically, get goosebumps and cry at least a couple of times (to be clear, when I say cry, I don’t mean whiny sobs, just little manly water sprinkles). I would take a bullet to save this show, no questions asked.

With that out of the way, now I’ll try to do some honest to goodness reviewing. The catalyst for this week’s perfect episode is the discovery of a family man who is found brutally murdered and bound to a chair at the bottom of an empty pool. (One of the great things about Life is that each crime of the week is very visual and economically sets up the conflict without relying on over-the-top visual effects like CSI.) It appears to be a gang hit, but Crews and Reese visit the dead man’s family and learn from the youngest daughter that the father went to go pick up the oldest daughter from a party-that’s where he was killed. To find out more, Crews goes undercover in a place he knows all too well: prison. He overhears two inmates talking about the steroid monster who murdered the man.

Crews and Reese track the steroids to a posh (and shady) gym in Beverly Hills and quickly finger the perps: a group of rich punks who think they are above the law. They think they own the world, and that they can have everything they want…all the time. Crews and Reese’ job is to show them they’re wrong, but their task isn’t easy. The evil trio is aided by their money and by the unethical and immoral therapist who sees them all and gives them alibis. In an awesome scene, Crews goads the steroid freak of the group into assaulting him so they can arrest him and start squeezing the slimy shrink and the rest of the group.

As always, it’s a true delight to see how the villains test Crews and Reese and how the unlikely partners work together to solve the case-Crews with his unconventional tactics and quirks and Reese with her toughness, self-sufficiency and unbendable force of will.

But there’s way more to the episode than just all that. Crews tries to break through to Rachel Seybolt-the psychologically damaged young girl who was the sole witness to the crime for which Crews was wrongfully convicted-whom Jack Reese hid until Crews found her at the end of last week’s episode. Toward this end, he enlists the reluctant help of his ex-wife Jennifer (who also knew Rachel twelve years ago before her family was killed). Jennifer divorced Crews while he was still in prison but he still loves her, and finally they reconnect in this episode in a wonderful scene that is incredibly poignant without feeling unbelievable or conveniently staged.

And in the most disturbing scene, Jack Reese tries to turn Crews’ loveable friend/roommate/money manager/conspiracy-investigative helper Ted against Crews by threatening to get him sent back to prison. This is a twist I never ever saw coming and is even further testament to the show’s brilliant brilliant brilliant writing. We know that Ted owes Crews his life and cares deeply for him, so when we see him thinking about selling out Crews to Jack Reese to save himself, we feel for both Crews and Ted. That being said Ted (hey that rhymes), if you turn on Crews I will find a way to metaphysically jump into the TV and I will happily kill you. Don’t do it.

This show is as good as anything that has ever been on the air, and if you’re not watching it, you’re committing a crime and should be locked up. You’re harming humanity, you’re being evil. To paraphrase Edmund Burke, the only thing necessary for evil to prevail is if good people do nothing. So watch the show and don’t let NBC kill it. Please.

Season 2, Episode 2: Everything…All The Time (originally aired 10/3/08)

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