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.

For more on Life, click here.

Wednesdays at 9/8c, NBC
Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal

After the detectives come across a room containing hours of surveillance footage rigged by Dr. Halladay, Ted is recruited to try and find evidence of the murder on the tapes.  He and Crews cringe while viewing the life-like prison recreated on the campus which reminds Crews of his jailbird days.  The tapes don’t manage to reveal much about the murder, but do provide insight into all the cruel experiments conducted by Halladay to heighten tensions between prisoners and guards.  After Crews traces a recent phone call from the phantom reporter to his ex wife back to Halladay, he threatens Halladay into giving him more information about the murder.  Halladay finds footage of the murdered guard who not only had a reputation for mistreating prisoners but who attacked Halladay as well.  The detectives have him arrested for gross bodily harm anyway.  While they solve the problem of Halladay, they still find themselves with no murderer.  After Crews sniffs out burning plastic, we get a brief lesson in prison lingo, as the smell leads him to a shank, or “melted plastic burned to a point,” which turns out to be the murder weapon hidden inside an Exit sign.

While this week’s murder was a revealing glimpse into how quickly people can fall into self-created traps with the power of suggestion, what was more important was the missing piece to the Conspiracy Theory puzzle in the form of an old photograph of Jack Reese and four other police officers attending the funeral of a slain, fellow police officer.  Apparently the officers were the six that are now five that could be four. . .and the picture of a young and perhaps less disillusioned Reese leads Crews to solve his riddle and get one step closer to catching his cat.

Season 2, Episode 4: Not For Nothing (originally aired 10/10/08)

For another take on this episode, check out Cameron Cubbison’s review here.

To read all of Poptimal’s reviews of Life, click here.

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

Ted Earley reports this to Charlie Crews at the beginning of the latest episode of Life, thus summoning Charlie to work. Yes, for Charlie Crews, work must always intrude on leisure time-though Charlie’s idea of leisure time is listening to the covert wiretap he placed on Jack Reese’s car last week and trying to identify the other members of the conspiracy that framed him for murder and sent him to prison for twelve years.

And yes, I’m aware of the fact that I just cited the protagonist’s name four times in the above paragraph. I’m hoping that if I repeat the name enough, the character will become ingrained in peoples’ minds and they will watch the show. Of course that would only work if people are reading my rave reviews of Life, and clearly no one is because no one is watching the show except me and it’s about to be cancelled. It’s probably futile for me to even bother writing about the show anymore, since it won’t be here much longer and will soon be forgotten. But Charlie Crews wouldn’t give up, so neither will I. (Did I mention the name Charlie Crews? Because that’s the name of the wonderfully complex and entertaining cop played masterfully by Damian Lewis in the wonderfully complex and entertaining Life. And you have no life if you don’t watch Life).

We get to see the intense, edgy and slightly warped side of Charlie in this episode because Charlie and his partner Dani Reese are called in to investigate the murder of a prison guard. Except he wasn’t really a prison guard, just one of a large group of college students participating in a sociological experiment that is the brainchild of a creepy professor. Basically the guy convinced a slew of students to role-play as guards and prisoners in a real prison setting for five days. Yikes, and I thought my professors were bad.

The catch is that when Charlie and Dani arrive at the crime scene, all of the “guards” and “prisoners” are accounted for, which means that the murderer is still there. They have to figure out who the culprit is and find the MIA murder weapon within two hours, before legal council arrives and sets everyone free. It’s an economical and ingenious setup, just like the start of every other episode of Life. People: watch the freakin’ show, is that really too much to ask?

The inner tension that Charlie feels being forced to spend time in a prison-like setting is palpable, and Damian Lewis is never short of riveting to watch. This whole investigation is in the hands of Charlie, Dani, and Charlie’s old partner Bobby (Brent Sexton), because the rest of the LAPD has their hands tied with other crises. Captain Tidwell (the increasingly-impressive Donal Logue) himself has to deal with a suicidal cop who discharged his weapon in a bar after finding out his wife is leaving him. And here’s where a pleasant surprise comes in: the partner of this suicidal cop is Karen Davis (Deadwood’s Robin Weigert), who was the precinct captain last season who may or may not have been involved in the conspiracy against Charlie.

It was revealed in the second season premier that Davis had been demoted, presumably by the evil higher-ups, because she failed to get Charlie kicked off the force after he returned post-prison. I assumed the character was a closed book, so it was great to see her return for this episode, especially because Weigert brings such presence to the role. She has a couple of great, funny scenes with Logue, and it’s still unclear if she was involved in the conspiracy or not. At the very least, this episode reveals that she is close to one of the conspiracy members.

Everyone plays a significant role in the proceedings, including Ted, who helps Charlie’s investigation by going through the security footage of the prison. It’s another skillfully constructed and engrossing episode that I wish people would check out.

Season 2, Episode 4: Not For Nothing  (originally aired 10/10/08)

For another take on this episode, read Elma Rahman’s review here.

You can read all Poptimal reviews of Life here.

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

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)

For more on Life, click here.

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