‘Awake’ 1.10 Recap: “Sometimes You Gotta Know When It’s Time to Move On”

The premise behind ‘Awake’ leaves me with a lot of questions. In a pleasant surprise, the show has actually answered a few of them. We learned last week that detective Britten repeats each day of the week twice as he bounces from one reality to the other. Here’s my latest question: Does he feel rested when he goes to bed in one reality and wakes up in the other? Does he actually sleep in between, or is he constantly awake somewhere? If he sleeps, what does he dream about?

I’ll have to wait to see if those get answered for me. In the meantime, Britten only has to work one case this week. In his son’s timeline, he investigates the murder of a small-time drug peddler and the elderly bystander who lived in his apartment. The details of the case don’t seem to add up, until Britten discovers that the old lady was actually the target, and the drug dealer was the bystander. The building’s owner had been trying to oust all the old tenants with rent control, and when this one wouldn’t leave, he had her bumped off. If the lady had just taken his generous offer to move her to a retirement center, she’d still be alive. She didn’t know when to move on.

In the other reality, Britten tells his wife Hannah about their son’s pregnant girlfriend, Emma. Hannah becomes obsessed with being part of the baby’s life, and even offers to adopt it when she learns that Emma plans to give away the baby, but the girl’s parents are very resistant to that. Eventually, Hannah admits that her parents had been pushing her to give up the baby. She wants to keep it. Hannah and Britten agree to put their plans to move to Portland on hold, and to take the girl in. When Britten tells his captain (Laura Innes) that he’s not leaving after all, she has to put on a big ol’ fake smile for him. This comes, of course, just after we’d learned that her boyfriend is a major arms and drug smuggler at the forefront of the conspiracy against Britten.

Overall, this is a decent enough episode. However, a plot point about a videogame that the first murder victim had been playing showcases a laughable ignorance of how videogames work or are played, and is just the latest proof that Hollywood doesn’t “get” technology. See this recent list on Cracked for more ridiculous examples.

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