As to the scenes he’s not in… using the one about his kid getting a motorcycle, apparently he wasn’t privy to what happened just because he dreamed it in the other reality, for he didn’t realize what said kid was up to until the mother told him. When he was still with his son, he was oblivious to why he kept running off to the beach.
So, I’m thinking the conversation with the police captain is real and accurate. He is somehow being framed for the deaths of both his wife and child and whatever they are doing to him is what’s resulting in these duel dream states. Beyond that simple explanation though, I’m at a loss for how the reality of it is possible.
I’ve only seen the 2nd ep, but the causal lines in that seem to point to [spoiler]the wife being alive, and blue-lit world being fake.
He learns about the motorcycle from his wife, and then knows it exists in his son’s world. That’s the proof.
The resolved case, where he finds a “little guy” the killer is a constructed wish-fulfillment fantasy. The shared name is a coincidence; the two cases are otherwise dissimilar.
The blue-world shrink is trying to make him make connections between reality and fantasy. The gold-lit shrink is trying to bring him back to reality.
The conspiracy is in the real world (sad to say, as it probably makes this a cheesy attempt at a low sci-fi show with lame mind control).
Meta: Blue-lit movies are conventionally meant to be surreal: Gold-lit world is perhaps a little closer to normal lighting.[/spoiler]
It’s a good analysis in general but what I find particularly damning, as you mentioned, is the conspirators talking about how he was dreaming of short people in the fake world and how he might regain his memory of what they did.
I don’t think deviating from the concept by having scenes without him is terrible per se - just sort of lazy. But given the context of that scene I don’t see how it isn’t conclusive. How else do you explain it? He dreamed, suddenly in the 3rd person, that his boss and a goon talked about their conspiracy and his memory coming back through dreams he’s been having? Seems ridiculous.
I didn’t note that discussion in the scene at all; are you sure that’s what transpired?
The captain asked if her co-conspirator “used a short person” for the accident, but I didn’t hear any discussion about Britten getting any clues from his dreams.
Maybe I just missed that part, but I’m pretty sure you’re inferring something from the scene that isn’t implied.
I started watching the show this week, after catching the premiere online. It’s a subject I don’t find compelling (is it real or a dream?), but I liked what they’re doing, and there were some nice touches. I liked when he found his son’s old mail and didn’t catch on as to why his wife was so upset – because he saw him all the time. It also seems to have the courage of its convictions, and they get extra points because I hear they are not going to come down on one reality or another for a very long time, if at all.
I didn’t like the routine conspiracy subplot in the second episode. Unnecessary and it would ruin the premise. I hope it gets dropped.
If the focus is going to be on a conspiracy around the crash, I’m going to lose interest fast. They hinted at it in the pilot with his blood alcohol being high and him insisting he hadn’t had anything to drink that night. If they wanted to go that direction they could have at least been subtle about it and kept it in the background instead of being so blatant.
The scenes, in both worlds, that he is not in, and that he is unaware of having occurred - the only ones who are aware of them are those of us in the audience - breaks down the central premise. It’s sloppy on the level of suddenly having Batman with superstrength and then continuing with the premise that he does what he does with well trained human skills and technology.
At the simplest level, those scenes prevent the audience from knowing which world is real - which is critical to keeping the show going. I thought the bench scene between the captain and the other guy (do we know who he is?) gave it away, but my son pointed out that he had been pointing to a ‘little guy’ in both worlds, so you don’t really know which reality that happened in.
From the view point of trying to make sense of the 3rd person viewpoint in whichever world is a dream - I think you mostly have to go back to point #1. However, you can look at it as him imagining/dreaming about how a particular scene might have happened if, for instance, his son were dead. It’s admittedly weak, but I try to go with the flow - no show is going to hold up to strict scrutiny, so I generally try to apply as the amount of thinking the show wants me to.
I’m still in, although I was disappointed to see “Sophia” in a key role. Her voice is like fingernails on a blackboard to me for some reason. I have a feeling the writers are going to paint themselves into a corner, though.
I don’t like the introduction in the second episode of the conspiracy around the car crash. It seems like every new series is a serial with a big overarching story; they’re all trying to capture the magic of Lost. Now I liked Lost, and I kept watching through the (somewhat disappointing) end, but after that experience I’m very reluctant to get involved in another multi-season series. Sometimes I just want to watch a conventional drama like Law & Order, where the storylines conclude within the hour.
I’m wondering if this new development is a way for the writers to play it safe. If they can’t go very far with the, which world is real, angle then they can drop it and fall back on the, why was he set up, angle.
The goon was alarmed that Laura Innes was asking if he used a short person, and asked if it was because Jason Isaacs had started to remember things. She rebuffed him and said she could handle him. However, we the audience know that in fact he was interested in a short person because of events in the other world.
So they weren’t actually discussing if he got the clues from his dreams. But we the audience know the interest in a short person is based on the other world.
Googling Kyle Killen… OK, I never watched Lone Star, but looking it up I think it’s funny that it’s also about a guy with two lives. Granted in that show there’s nothing, I’ll say unnatural, about it like in this show.
He must be determined to have a successful show about a man living two lives. That’s kind of amusing.
I don’t like the “which is a dream?” storyline at all. If the series is about that, it’s not doing it well, and I don’t think you can do it well.
I’d rather the series be about him really living these two lives and them both being real. They can easily create a myth arc around anything else including the already addressed conspiracy surrounding the crash.
Does someone have a DVR copy of the second episode - my husband and I were discussing it after the fact and were wondering whether the captain and other guy on the bench just mention “the accident” or use phrasing implying the death of either the mother, the son, or both? We were trying to remember if they said something like “the deaths of his family” or somesuch?
Could there be three worlds - the ones experienced by the Britten and a truer reality outside those where people react to what he’s doing? That seems overly complicated, though.
I don’t know where they are going with this show, but I like it enough to keep watching for now. I wish North American TV worked like the BBC - a dedicated couple of seasons with one large story and that’s the end of it. I hate open-ended will-it-be-renewed-or-not shows, and I hate never getting the answer to stuff. I’d rather watch more shows for shorter runs than have fewer shows go on well past the point of having any logical conclusion to them.
I agree. Suddenly we’re seeing real-world events from an omniscient viewpoint? Also, I really hate that meandering non-music that shows’ producers feel the need to introduce during the resolution of a crime. Seems like every cop/mystery show uses this device, and it’s annoying as hell.
Didn’t anyone else notice that the kidnapped son episode was postponed to the third episode?
And I thought it was interesting that the tall guy the detectives were interviewing was 6’ 11". I started looking for a reference to 611 in the other reality, but didn’t see one. (Of course, you’ll recall that a parking space 611 in one reality and an address with the number 611 in the other reality were important in episode one.)
I quoted Elendil’s Heir’s post to illustrate that I wasn’t the only one to think the preview at the end of episode one was for episode two. When it was shown as the preview for episode three, it didn’t look any different than when it was shown at the end of episode one.