Grade: B
After what was a horrific episode in
”The Little Guy”,
Awake is able to recover & return to form established in its pilot with
”Guilty”. As Michael finds his son kidnapped by a former criminal he apprehended in the green reality we see him fight & do whatever he can in the red reality to get him back. As the series plays to its strengths again it is easy to see what made
Awake so good in its pilot. By sticking to a somewhat procedural & riffing on it with the ability of two established realities the series can experiment with its story while not trying to set up some grand & ultimately unneeded mystery.
In the green reality we see a convict with kidney failure use his dialysis treatment to escape & go off on his quest for revenge against his arresting detective, Michael Britton, in the most horrific & shakespearean of ways. As we quickly see Michael do whatever he can to help get his son back it quickly becomes clear that things are not going to be straight forward as the suspect John Cooper is shot & killed causing Michael to try to use the red reality towards his advantage. As the series goes back to its original formula there is an apparent ease in its storytelling. Nothing comes off as strenuous in the story as we know the rules as laid out in the pilot.
In the end the story is basic procedural fair that
Awake is able to take to another level given its intriguing premise. With all the heavy lifting of the series done in the pilot it is not hard to find a decent groove that can carry the series on without adding much boredom for a while to come. That isn’t the case though as
”The Little Guy decided to bring another element into the series entirely. The goal now for
Awake is to navigate these waters without coming off as another NBC procedural destined to ruin itself.
