Life – Charlie shoots his father “hello”

(Season 2, Episode 12 – “Trapdoor”)

I was going to say that this episode was kind of underwhelming, especially since it’s the last new one until freakin’ February. But then, well, I got to the last three minutes, and holyhellwhatjusthappenedwasthatreal? Talk about a surprise ending.

First things first: I found the actual mystery of the week pretty boring, even though the evil Russian, Roman Nevikov, made a return appearance. Yeah, he threw a girl out of a window, kept a witness in a dog cage and got away with it all because he’s a highly-valued FBI informant, but he just didn’t do it for me this episode — he just reminded me of a slightly more psychotic Chuck Bass.

Even though I wasn’t too enthralled by the murder of the Russian engineer, I thought it was interesting how Roman has been keeping tabs on Crews and Reese. The comment that he made to her, “I bet you thought it was your father he was going to shoot,” was good because it brought the elephant in the room to the forefront: Reese’s father’s involvement in the conspiracy.

Since they had this scene, it makes me kind of a dummy that I took Reese’s explanation of her drinking at face value: I thought that she took the vodka because Tidwell was freaking her out with his talk of meeting his parents, and love, and whatnot. Of course, that wouldn’t explain why she would run directly over to Crews’s house. I liked how, even with the liquid courage, she still couldn’t bring herself to ask Crews about her father. Also, “How long have you been drinking?” “Since I was twelve!” was hilarious. Her exasperated eye-roll to the question was great.

Basically, what this episode lacked in the murder department, it made up for in character moments. In addition to the Crews/Reese interactions, I liked the little bit that we got to see of the Crews/Tidwell relationship. His concern for her and the stern “90 meetings in 90 days” directive was touching.

It was pretty well-established at the beginning of the series that Crews doesn’t have much of a relationship with his father. Has a reason ever been given for that? I can’t recall that being spelled out before. They talk about how he wouldn’t let Charlie’s mother visit him in jail, but my guess is that there’s more to it than that. Although I’m not sure we need another reason: After all, the guy broke into Charlie’s house to deliver a wedding invitation. I can see why you may not want to invite him to Sunday dinner. Regardless, I’m glad we’ve finally put a face to the character, and I look forward to seeing more of him.

We got to see poor Ted back in prison this week as well. While I hope he doesn’t have to be there long, it was nice of Charlie to hire him protection. Alan Arkin hasn’t really had a whole lot to do lately, outside of trying to steal away Charlie’s future mother-in-law, so maybe putting him in prison will lead to some fun new adventures.

Now to the important stuff: Somebody rang the doorbell and shot Crews! And then he was in his prison cell with Dead Tims! Then he’s back on the floor of his house. You hear Dani saying, “Crews, are you here?” which is the same thing she said at the beginning of the episode when they found the dead Russians. Is there significance in that? What do you guys think? More importantly, who shot Crews?

Clacked by Kona Gallagher
on Dec 18, 2008 @ 09:00 EST5EDT