When I first heard about Awake, I was equally one part thrilled and one part apprehensive. Awake appeared to me to be a series that would require a lot of thinking, a lot of analysis, and a lot of patience. Precisely my cup of tea…
ABC’s Lost was much in the same vein… except after the first episode I lost interest, whileas with Awake, I actually wanted to know more. Unfortunately time was not on my side as me free time started to dry up considerably, so I stopped watching with the intent of reading up on the episodes online.
What I dislike about television is that when a show is just getting good, they cancel it due to the overall slide in ratings. A lot of time a show needs more than just one season to find it’s legs, a big example of this would be Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Unfortunately, cancellation is exactly where Awake is headed. *sighs* Depending on how the first season ends will decide on whether I could handle simply owning one season of a television series that I enjoyed, no matter how minor.
If you haven’t heard of the show the premise is this: A detective is a survivor of a car accident that claimed the life of either his wife, or his son. Neither the detective nor the audience knows who had passed, because he is living two totally separate worlds now. The detective could be living in a world where his wife is alive and his son has passed away, but then when he goes to sleep in that world he’ll wake up in another reality where his son is alive while his wife had passed.
Which reality is real? Well, we as the audience don’t know for sure, and part of the joy of the series is discovering bits and pieces of the story as it is told between the two realities.
Jason Issacs portrays the detective, and if anyone is a Harry Potter fan and has seen the movie adaptations… well you should recognize him as the patriarch of the Malfoy family: Lucius.
Personally if this show makes it to DVD, I may actually purchase it just to enjoy the storytelling. In some ways the concept of two parallel realities colliding reminds me a lot of a favorite movie of mine: Sliding Doors starring Gwyneth Paltrow. But that’s another post for another time.
I sincerely hope this show does make it to DVD with a lot of extras explaining what would have happened in future seasons, or even still have an additional episode that helps tie every up in a neat little package. Hell even if a book series would make me happy… but anyway, I’m crying over spilled milk. C’est la vie.