Life: Charlie just can’t catch a break

Charlie Crews and Dani Reese are back…and they’ve managed to find themselves yet another bizarre case. The crime scene involves a dead guy propped in the attic of a house for sale. The catch is the house’s roof was stolen…and the dead guy is literally stuffed to the throat with twenty-dollar bills.

Charlie and Reese identify the corpse and learn that he ran a roofing business…a con business that is. So the missing roof crime scene wasn’t just happenstance; it was a message. The rather unusual con the guy ran consisted of removing people’s roofs and then raising the rates to put them back on, though his partners insist it was a legitimate business. Just by checking the Better Business Bureau, Charlie and Reese discover that this guy had done this to 60 people, providing them with a list of 60 suspects.

They first investigate a guy who insists on wearing gloves and refuses to take them off. Charlie rightfully suspects that he’s wearing those gloves to hide his hands. Finally the guy admits to beating up the victim, but not to killing him, so the detectives move on. Their next bet is to check out the person who filed a complaint against the victim and then mysteriously withdrew it. Maybe they withdrew their complaint because they resolved the matter with a little old-fashioned violence? That seems reasonable, except the potential suspect turns out to be a little old lady. However, the little old lady has an ex-con son nicknamed Sweet Willie who convinced her to drop the complaint because “there is enough hate in this world.” Bingo.

The son runs a little antique joint, but before that, he spent his time blinding people, cutting out their tongues and breaking their fingers. Sweet Willie loves his mommy and claims to be a changed man, but our detectives learn that he has in fact inherited the roofing scam business by threatening the victim’s partners into submission. And his antiques store is merely a front for drug-running. This guy seems like he’s wrapped in a little bow for Charlie and Reese, but he insists he didn’t kill the victim, and since he’s going to jail for conspiracy and possession, he makes a deal. He claims he has the murder weapon that one of the partners gave him for insurance, but when Charlie and Reese check it out, the gun doesn’t match. Now they have to look back to the partners.

Meanwhile Ted gets a surprise visit from his grown daughter, but she turns out to be a weird little twit. She comes over to the house with a film crew, but doesn’t want to talk to Ted about anything, and doesn’t allow Ted to ask her any questions. Then she abruptly leaves and slams the door. Makes a lot of sense.

But on the conspiracy front, Charlie goes after Mickey Rayborn again. Rayborn reluctantly tells Charlie that they did indeed steal the money from the Bank of L.A. during the infamous shootout, but Jack Reese actually gave his away to charity and stayed a cop for the rest of his career. He’s still a bad guy in my book though, no doubt about it. Charlie asks why Rayborn sent him after Roman, and Rayborn claims that Roman was “an investment” but now that Rayborn is dying, he wanted to clear his conscience because Roman is a bad man.

It still doesn’t quite add up, and I don’t understand why they framed Charlie and sent him to prison. To make matters worse, Rayborn disappears off his boat, leaving behind a crap load of blood. And Charlie was the last person to see him alive, so Rayborn’s security firm thinks Charlie killed him, and his fellow officers soon will too. Charlie just can’t catch a break. Fortunately, his tribulations make for damn good television.

Season 2, Episode 15: I Heart Mom (originally aired February 18, 2009)

Disagree with this review?  Read Elma Rahman’s opinion in Not The Facts of Life here.

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