Life: Not For Nothing
By fred | October 11, 2008
(S02E04) [Took me a while to finally sit down and write this one down, sorry, got busy elsewhere.] It feels good, doesn’t it? To have your Life back. I’m sure many might be still trying to see whether or not the show is fully back to the level of awesomeness it had reached last season, if it’s already there, even better, and not as good. I won’t lie to you, I myself am struggling with this, on some aspects, trying to figure out if the show is as great as it was last season, and if I love it less (yeah right!), as much, or more right now.
Either way though, there’s no denying that the show is back on the air, Charlie Crews and Dani Reese are back, and just for that we all have reasons to be happy and smile.
As for this new episode, if last week I had doubts, I felt like things were a little different and I wasn’t sure if that was for the better or not, this time and with a setup like that one, it simply couldn’t have been anything less than a fantastic episode.
Charlie is the central element of this show, there’s no denial there, and the central element that defines him nowadays, is the time he spent in prison. It’s not who he used to be, or who he has now become, it’s not his cars or all his money, not his fruits nor his Zen quest, but those 12 long years he spent locked up in a cage. It’s hard to know how much it changed him, because we only know the new Charlie, but while his love for fruits and Zen might have always been there, even before, they are what whey are now, and as important as they are now, because of the time he spent with only his Zen thoughts, and no fruits.
There couldn’t have been anything better to ensure to have an episode with such intensity than to send Charlie in a prison, or, as was the case, a prison experiment gone wrong. “Enough with the jokes, let’s get serious” was the idea, basically.
It wasn’t a prison, not really, but it looked like one, and everyone inside behaved like one. Just because it was fake didn’t mean it would not affect Charlie, and I loved how we saw him painfully struggle to just slowly walking through this “prison”. In the past episodes of this season, we had met the lighter side of Charlie, some could even say a “goofy” side. He was touching things he should touch and “breaking” victims’ frozen corpses, he was making jokes, he was having fun enjoying life.
But this time, this time all his bad memories of years and years of imprisonment were rushing to his mind and it wasn’t fun, there was an intensity on his face that clearly showed he didn’t enjoyed that. Which is also why he was quick to let the sun light shine inside, why he was constantly walking out, to breath some fresh air, feel the sun on his face, why he was constantly taking big full bites in apples : to balance those flashbacks, to remember it was over, he was free now, he was a cop again.
It was all really beautifully done, kudos to Damian Lewis of course for another terrific performance, and once again to the crew behind this show, with beautiful shots and such an amazing music selection – as as become the rule for the show. I know this sounds like an old rant by now, but I’ll never say enough how much I hate NBC for ruining the DVDs and replacing the music selection by cheaper songs, pretty much always ruining scenes every time. I can’t help by praying for a future release of a “Deluxe Edition” of the DVDs or something, with the original music selection included. I would so buy that, even if they are more expensive (well, shall remain reasonable of course) because it would totally be worth it.
*raises her hand*
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