Quite a few people have said that they are turned off from Awake when it gets into crime-of-the-week mode. They say there are enough procedural crime shows on TV today that we don’t need another; I get that. I do wonder, though, if this episode counts as a typical cop drama. The fact that the crime itself directly involved Michael and his son I’d say differentiates it enough, that it shouldn’t turn those folks off like the past episodes.
I’ve seen a few sites pose the question of which of Michael’s realities is the … well, the “real” one. Honestly, I haven’t really thought of it that way before. To me the question seems to be of whether Michael is imagining the entire thing — perhaps while in a coma — or something else entirely. I guess if you go back and watch the series premiere, the color of the crash scene sure seemed to be the blue color of Rex’s world, not the orange one of Hannah’s. If people are already questioning that part of the story, I wonder how long they’ll remain patient for an answer.
One interesting thing to see in the coming episodes is what happens to Michael when wakes up in one reality (is there a better word for “reality” or “world” when talking about these places?) after having something change him physically. What I mean is, what happens if he gets hurt with Rex and later wakes up with Hannah — will he still be hurt? It certainly wouldn’t make much sense, though, and I imagine he’s already noticed if anything like that carries over, like needing a shave, for example. But I do imagine something similar will happen in the future.
Something else I wonder is if Michael can force himself to stay awake for more than a day, in order to delay a trip to the next world. And, if he does delay things, is he just oversleeping in that other world while he’s awake in the other, or does time sort of shift? Based on what happened in this episode, it would seem time shifts, since Michael took sleeping pills in the middle of the day in Rex world, then woke up in Hannah world at what appeared to be a normal waking time. But if time does shift, would that mean Michael could do tricky things like win the lottery and such? Something tells me that won’t happen.
So far it seems that everything that happened before the accident remains the same in both realities, though many things that happened after vary. Even the convict’s fate changed — why didn’t he try to escape in Hannah world at the same time too?
So did this week’s theme turn those of you off who don’t like police procedurals, or was it different enough to please you?
Clacked by Keith McDuffee 
on Mar 15, 2012 @ 23:00 EST5EDT
“What I mean is, what happens if he gets hurt with Rex and later wakes up with Hannah — will he still be hurt?”
In the pilot, Michael cuts his left hand in the red world when he can’t find his wife (or his colored band) and panics. When he’s next in the green world, the bandage Hannah applied to his hand is gone, and there is no sign of a cut on it either. So based off that, I’d say it doesn’t carry over.
I was one of those who is bored by the procedural parts. But this episode completely worked for me–it was much more affecting than I expected. Part of that was from the wife’s speech at the youth center, which I thought was excellent.
Maybe I’m just more interested in the case when Michael is personally involved in it. I remember how I disliked when “Lie to Me” shifted to that exact model, and suddenly, for a whole season, every case had a personal connection to someone who worked at Cal’s firm. It seemed cliched to me, and I longed for them to go back to simply being professionals. So I’m in no way suggesting that they should find a personal attachment for every police case that Michael investigates here.
My big concern when I saw the previews for this episode was that it would be the typical “criminal out for revenge” kind of kidnapping. I was very pleased to see that they went a very different way with it. So was the convict who was still alive in the wife timeline healthy, without cancer? I got that impression. If that’s the case, and things can differ so much, it’s almost a leap to think that his ex-partner “did it” in both worlds. I guess it comes down to one being a dream and one being a reality, as the producers have already promised. I much prefer to think of them as two parallel universes of some kind, neither one formed out of Michael’s imagination.
I don’t really follow the sleep sequence, though. He relives the same day in each world? So he goes to sleep in the Rex world Monday afternoon, and Rex is kidnapped and out in the shed in the desert. He wakes up in the morning in the wife world (Monday morning? Tuesday morning?), lives through nearly all that day, getting the ex-partner arrested by nightfall, and making the phone call to the newly-freed would-be kidnapper. He finds out where the shed is. Then, he goes home, swallows more pills, and wakes up back in the Rex world…when? Late Monday afternoon? Tuesday morning? And grabs the caravan of police and ambulance and heads out to rescue Rex.
Does anyone have enough of a grip on how this is supposed to work to clarify that?
Overall, though, I’m still very impressed. “Smash” had already turned to mostly crap by its third show. This one is still being surprising, finding ways to be moving, and remaining fairly smart.
I also have questions about the days of the week. I’m not sure if he is reliving the same day with different senerios. Does anyone know?