Take Three: Awake

Awake: Season 1, Episode 3 “Guilty” (C+)

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems awfully early to have a member of Michael’s immediate family be put in danger in a way other than that which they experience each episode by not existing in one universe. When Michael recognized Cooper, I was concerned that, once again, he had encountered him in his other reality, and when Rex got snatched, I predicted that Hannah was going to get kidnapped as well. I have to give this show some credit for not going down either of those routes, and instead having Michael smartly interrogate Cooper in jail to determine where he might have left Rex in the other reality. That part was extremely cool, at least conceptually, when Michael was told to get some rest and he popped a sleeping pill so that he could reawaken in the other reality and do some detective work. He’s doing a superb job in both universes of alienating his partners, not letting Bird in on the fact that Cooper kidnapped his son and bossing Efrem around like it’s his job. Like it or not, Tara has now inserted herself into the Britten family’s life by being present at Rex’s abduction, and I assume she’ll just get closer and closer with Rex and maybe even Michael, though something tells me he’ll have a tough time dating considering his wife is still alive in his head. I thought that the show had completely forgotten about that world since it wasn’t featured for the first half of the episode, but with that and the reduced screen time for the psychiatrists, maybe that’s where this show is headed, honing in more on the characters and less on the universes and their links. Is that a good thing, though? I’m not so sure.