Know there were some Dopers out there who wanted to catch this. Starts tonight at 10pm eastern on NBC.
I don’t see it lasting very long. “Journeyman” had a similar but more interesting plot, and a much better cast, and was cancelled pretty quickly.
I watched it last week (it’s been available free OnDemand for a while). I liked it, but it felt a bit… subdued for a show with such a dramatic premise. The tone, I mean. I think it’ll need to try harder if it wants to gain and hold an audience.
Fascinating. So, do you figure we’ll ever find out which world is the real one? It was interesting how he said right at the end that he has no interest at all in getting “better” - he gets to see both of his loved ones, and that’s all that a person who has lost a loved one wants.
I thought that was a very realistic reaction; there’s no way he would be able to choose in that situation, effectively “killing” one of them again. It seems to me the central conceit of the show is that both worlds are real; that he is somehow travelling between two alternate realities. What I don’t quite understand just yet (unless I missed it somehow) is exactly how time is passing in each reality. He goes to sleep in one world, wakes up in the other, and spends the day there, then repeats this process every time he sleeps. But what day is it when he wakes up? For instance, he wakes up Monday morning in the world where his wife is alive, spends the day there and goes to sleep Monday night. When he wakes up in the world where his son is alive, is it Tuesday morning or back to Monday again? If it’s Tuesday, where does his son think he was all day Monday?
Journeyman was insipid by comparison. I liked Awake and will give it my attention for at least several episodes. I gave Alcatraz a similar shot and it disappointed me.
I’m not going to sweat the timeframe thing, though - he takes a nap in one universe, wakes up in the other, works a case for ten hours, falls asleep again, wakes up in the first universe, and yet doesn’t “lose time”… I’m just gonna let that slide as part of the fantasy premise.
Incidentally, if something happens to Daniel Craig, I can picture Jason Isaacs as a new James Bond.
Good question - he probably doesn’t have a 12 hour sleep/wake cycle, so the two worlds can’t simply be offset by 12 hours. So, for example, he goes to sleep in World 1 at 11 pm on Monday night; he wakes up in World 2 at 7 am Tuesday morning; he lives all day in World 2, then goes to sleep at 11 pm Tuesday night in World 2; he wakes up at 7 am Tuesday morning in World 1, I guess, and lives all day Tuesday in World 1. Repeat.
Well, given the character’s reaction, he’s clearly not interested in trying to find out whether his wife or son is “really” deceased.
Call it My Two Deads.
I really enjoyed the episode. I’m gonna try to not get too attached since I don’t know how long it’ll be on TV, or if I’ll like it when it becomes more of a crime procedural with a twist in future episodes, but I thought it was a good pilot, and all the actors were good in it.
I wondered about that too. But it doesn’t bother me too much since it’s not a show like Daybreak or Flash Forward where the protagonist is desperately trying to figure out what’s going on. He doesn’t want to figure out what’s going on.
Also I thought there might be some dream logic and time passing going on. I’m awake for 16 hours, then I sleep for 8 hours but it can feel like 16 hours. And in both dreams and real life you can get from one place to another without really paying attention to how it happened, since in dreams you can just jump from one place to another, and in waking life you can zone out while walking or driving to a familiar place.
The show could go some interesting places with differentiating dreams and wakefulness, but I’m guessing that’ll come after the shows been on a little while (if that happens) since it’s easier to attract audiences with a cop procedural rather than something too deep about dreaming and mourning.
Oh, the timeframe thing won’t irk me, really, I’m just curious. And I agree with Cat Whisperer that that’s probably how it works. But then I’m wondering if the replay of each day means he’ll be aware of things he shouldn’t be on the second pass. I wouldn’t think the two worlds would be all that different on a macro scale, so he should be able to anticipate certain things before they happen at times (must make for a hell of a case of deja vu!). And then that opens up possibilities for how that enters into his police work (loved the line, “I had a dream about it . . . or, I’m having a dream.”)
That actually makes a lot of sense. Maybe that’s what they were getting at with different things going on, like him knowing things he shouldn’t know (because he lived them before in the different reality).
I liked it and the acting was solid. I figure at some point, probably soon, the focus will become more on what happened the night of the accident. Then we’ll begin to suspect that he was framed somehow and the real thrust of the show will be figuring that out and who is behind / why.
I don’t know if overall the whodunit aspect will be enough to sustain it in the short term, but I thought the twist of it somehow threatening either the wife or son could be interesting. Anyway, it’s already guaranteed to hold my interest more than Alcatraz, which I bailed on during the second episode.
I enjoyed the show, though at least for the first episode I had to really pay attention. I guess it helps to have crib notes.
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Wife. Male shrink. Rosy film. New Latino partner (old partner scheduled to transfer). Red? wristband.
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Son. Female shrink. Blueish film. Old black partner. Green wristband.
It seems like they are setting up the tennis teacher as a potential love interest.
I’m not entirely happy with the random 611 synchronicity. I think I’d be happier if it was just a straight up alternate universe. I’m also a little worried about the mythology elements hinted at in the preview with some sort of conspiracy surrounding his car crash.
I was amazed that they did the reading thing. It was more than I’d bet on a TV series actually addressing. Despite that, it should still be ridiculously easy to do a few simple tests to narrow down the nature of his situation.
If the shrinks exist in both universes, they could simply have him ask them each a question only they would know the answer to. That would immediately prove that each universe is real.
He should also look at something stock prices pre and post crash to determine how much/fast the two universes are diverging.
I guess the hand injury is another obvious test, though I forgot to check whether or not it carried over.
I thought it was spectacular, although I’m a little biased b/c I may as well be the guy they pitched it to, for two reasons:
[ul][li]Replay by Ken Grimwood is one of my favorite books[/li][li]I’ve been a Jason Isaacs fan since The Patriot, Case Histories, and a bunch of other stuff that I can’t remember right now.[/ul][/li]
The camera filter trick thing needs to go away though. Use those arm bands instead and use the same filter to keep us guessing. But don’t use either one as a plot device to trick us into which reality we thought we were seeing.
I think the problem is that, from his perspective and ours, nothing of what they say can be trusted. Did he not know the answer because his brain decided not the pull the curtain? Did he actually have something memorized from the constitution and didn’t realize it? I think there is only so much we can gather from the inputs he receives in either world and take them at face value.
I’m thinking the show will go in the direction of “they both died, you were to blame, you have gone crazy, and your brain has broken asunder”
However, if they decide that both versions are indeed different realities and he’s simply Quantum Leaping between them, I’d be interested. I think we’ll get a hint at that if the characters around him notice shifts in behaviors day to day or reference events he can’t remember. He could simply be occupying other versions of himself while he’s in these two worlds (maybe more). Idk. And that’s what I like about the show so far. I really don’t know.
I am not watching the show–the whole idea of it annoys me–but I had to congratulate you on this.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the truth ends up being something like this, where really neither of the realities is real. I was leaning towards the idea that he’s in a coma from the accident, and his wife and son actually both survived. His swapping between realities could correspond to when they each come to visit him in the hospital, or something.
I quite liked the pilot, but I’ll be interested to see if it can hold up over a number of episodes. The procedural stuff was good, but I don’t really see a reasonable way to have a mystery of the week, where he’s always solving things by swapping info between the two realities.
Don’t mind if I do. 
Did anyone else notice that when he woke up without his wrist band that the coloring was blue (as if he was in his son’s reality), but once his wife walked in, it turned the reddish hue again?
What was up with that?
Me too, but he needs to get his teeth whitened. The brown stains on his bottom teeth really detract from his otherwise incredibly handsome looks.
I watched the show last night and I liked it enough to keep watching. Lot’s of theater people in the cast.