At the Winter TCA Press Tour, NBC executive Jennifer Salke explained the premise of the new show Awake this way: “Awake is an intriguing drama about a detective who finds he's living two parallel lives. It's sort of a sliding?doors concept, he's involved in a car accident that seems to have killed both his son and his wife. Yet his mind creates an ingenious coping mechanism in which he now lives two separate lives, one where his wife survived and the other where his son did.”
The Plot of Awake
As viewers discover in the premier episode, detective Michael Britten (Jason Isaacs) experienced a horrible car accident in which his wife Hannah (Laura Allen) and his soon Rex (Dylan Minnette) were involved. Britten now is coping with the tragedy in a unique way to TV viewers. Every other day he wakes up in a house in a reality where his wife was killed in the accident and he is living with his son. On the opposite days he wakes up with his son in the house and his wife has died in the accident. After he realizes this strange phenomenon is happening to him, he decides to wear a different color band on his wrist so he will remember which life he is living on any one particular day.
What makes this even more interesting is that Britten is in therapy with two different therapists, one in each existence, Dr. Evans (Cherry Jones) and Dr. Lee (BD Wong). They try to get him to search his mind to understand what he is creating for himself, but Britten has no intention of giving one of his family members up, if he could. By having them both around, it’s like they have not died, even though he only gets to be with one at a time. As he begins to remember the crash the reality of what actually happened makes him face the truth.
Not only does he have separate therapists for each scenario, he also has different partners in each one as well. Detective Britten works with Detective Isaiah “Bird” Freeman (Steve Harris) in one scenario and with Detective Efrem Vega (Wilmer Valderrama) in the other. By using the information he gets in each of his two lives, he is able to solve crimes in a way he wasn’t able to before. This newfound double life proves to be both confusing and helpful to him in his personal and professional lives.
The Appeal of the Series
Awake provides a special appeal as it brings up the psychological issues of loss and coping. While it is a strange premise for a story, it makes for an interesting television series. Time will tell whether viewers embrace this story.
Awake premiers March 1, 2012 on NBC and is scheduled for Thursday nights at 10 pm ET.
