- Home
- Television
- Life
- Review - Life, Episode Twelve, "Find Your Happy Place"
Review - Life, Episode Twelve, "Find Your Happy Place"
Eric Cole
Eric is a 31-yo Philadelphian who has spent the past several years writing fan fiction for various television programs under a psuedonym. He likes any show that maintains solid, clever writing, and walks away when the writing becomes sloppy, lazy, and cliched. Like "Desperate Housewives".
View all articles by Eric Cole
(Note: For this season, episode recaps will no longer feature the exhaustive, scene-by-scene retelling that Season One recaps had. It's simply much too time-consuming to write, and if you missed it, you can just watch it later at its NBC site.)
The last time we saw "Life", the focus was almost entirely on Crews' conspiracy investigation, with the homicide-of-the-week taking a rare backseat. In Episode Twelve (or One, if you like), a series of garish murders grabs the steering wheel back. The detectives deal with a bitterly unhappy serial killer who strikes out maliciously at those he perceives as being happier than he. So warped that only the thought of his latest victim slowly suffocating inside a numbered trunk brings him joy, the killer strikes an ironic (though hardly unintentional) similarity to the members of the Conspiracy, who locked Crews in a cage for twelve years for their own selfish interests. But that's par for the course for this show. We're frequently invited to see the links between Crews' cases and his own past, much as we're also treated to odd little examples of how society has passed Crews by (in this case, automatic faucets in a public restroom).
While the case itself is compelling, the latest developments in the Conspiracy Wall are, unfortunately, less so. Time has passed since "Dig a Hole, Fill it Up, Part Two", but they're not clear on how much. Enough for Lt. Davis to have been demoted (to where, we don't know yet) for reasons not said (not playing ball with Jack Reese seems like a decent notion). But not enough for the missing Rachel Seybolt to have turned up . . . that is, until Ted shows Crews what $700,000 in private detectives has produced - photos of Rachel outside a youth hostel. A preliminary search of the hostel, which only caters to foreigners, turns up nothing, but in the waning moments of the episode, a second look leads to a tiny recessed chamber in the wall with Rachel inside. She's terrified to see Crews, possibly because the last time she saw him, she was telling paramedics that he had shot her, but he reassures her with some words he lifted from her father - "The fire sent me.
"
Interesting, yes. A relief, yes. (Guess who'll be taking advantage of all that space in Crews' house.) Great? Eh, well, maybe not. Admittedly, the Conspiracy probably didn't entertain the notion that Crews would hire every private dick and shamus in Southern California, but still, having Rachel in their possession served two very important purposes. One, it kept Kyle Hollis from blabbing further, and two, it hamstrung Crews' investigation. Why they imprisoned her THERE, of all places, was beyond me. Why not move her out of town? Hell, out of state? These guys stole $16 million, for heavens' sake! (And I thought the conspiracy members on "Prison Break" were stupid.)
There were some other interesting bits, though.
- "Special Guest Star" Brooke Langton appeared briefly as Constance during a documentary clip, which seems to confirm my suspicion that she and Karen will both be "recurring cast members". Besides establishing that, sensibly, she's not gone, it also established that perhaps Constance doesn't know what Crews is up to, the way she used to.
- Donal Logue had an entertaining debut, although he could have waited more than twenty seconds to start flirting with Danni.
- I believe this was the first time "Life" has ever confirmed what Crews' civil settlement was - $50 million. Random people have tossed numbers like that around before, but I believe this was the first solid number.
- The method to the killer's madness, in terms of placing his victims' bodies, was a bit Jokeresque. Not to mention a bit anticlimactic, considering NBC showed a clip of the killer's map in at least one commercial. Good job, network execs.
- Secretaries slapping their boss around? Apparently, not just a secretary fantasy.
- How the hell did the killer get a copy of his first victim's screen test?
- There were kumquat trees where I used to live in Florida. Mmmm, yummy.
- There's a new episode just four days later! Woo-hoo. (In case you hadn't noticed, a reasonably good episode is more than enough for me, just as long as the new season is back.)
The last time we saw "Life", the focus was almost entirely on Crews' conspiracy investigation, with the homicide-of-the-week taking a rare backseat. In Episode Twelve (or One, if you like), a series of garish murders grabs the steering wheel back. The detectives deal with a bitterly unhappy serial killer who strikes out maliciously at those he perceives as being happier than he. So warped that only the thought of his latest victim slowly suffocating inside a numbered trunk brings him joy, the killer strikes an ironic (though hardly unintentional) similarity to the members of the Conspiracy, who locked Crews in a cage for twelve years for their own selfish interests. But that's par for the course for this show. We're frequently invited to see the links between Crews' cases and his own past, much as we're also treated to odd little examples of how society has passed Crews by (in this case, automatic faucets in a public restroom).
While the case itself is compelling, the latest developments in the Conspiracy Wall are, unfortunately, less so. Time has passed since "Dig a Hole, Fill it Up, Part Two", but they're not clear on how much. Enough for Lt. Davis to have been demoted (to where, we don't know yet) for reasons not said (not playing ball with Jack Reese seems like a decent notion). But not enough for the missing Rachel Seybolt to have turned up . . . that is, until Ted shows Crews what $700,000 in private detectives has produced - photos of Rachel outside a youth hostel. A preliminary search of the hostel, which only caters to foreigners, turns up nothing, but in the waning moments of the episode, a second look leads to a tiny recessed chamber in the wall with Rachel inside. She's terrified to see Crews, possibly because the last time she saw him, she was telling paramedics that he had shot her, but he reassures her with some words he lifted from her father - "The fire sent me.
Interesting, yes. A relief, yes. (Guess who'll be taking advantage of all that space in Crews' house.) Great? Eh, well, maybe not. Admittedly, the Conspiracy probably didn't entertain the notion that Crews would hire every private dick and shamus in Southern California, but still, having Rachel in their possession served two very important purposes. One, it kept Kyle Hollis from blabbing further, and two, it hamstrung Crews' investigation. Why they imprisoned her THERE, of all places, was beyond me. Why not move her out of town? Hell, out of state? These guys stole $16 million, for heavens' sake! (And I thought the conspiracy members on "Prison Break" were stupid.)
There were some other interesting bits, though.
- "Special Guest Star" Brooke Langton appeared briefly as Constance during a documentary clip, which seems to confirm my suspicion that she and Karen will both be "recurring cast members". Besides establishing that, sensibly, she's not gone, it also established that perhaps Constance doesn't know what Crews is up to, the way she used to.
- Donal Logue had an entertaining debut, although he could have waited more than twenty seconds to start flirting with Danni.
- I believe this was the first time "Life" has ever confirmed what Crews' civil settlement was - $50 million. Random people have tossed numbers like that around before, but I believe this was the first solid number.
- The method to the killer's madness, in terms of placing his victims' bodies, was a bit Jokeresque. Not to mention a bit anticlimactic, considering NBC showed a clip of the killer's map in at least one commercial. Good job, network execs.
- Secretaries slapping their boss around? Apparently, not just a secretary fantasy.
- How the hell did the killer get a copy of his first victim's screen test?
- There were kumquat trees where I used to live in Florida. Mmmm, yummy.
- There's a new episode just four days later! Woo-hoo. (In case you hadn't noticed, a reasonably good episode is more than enough for me, just as long as the new season is back.)
Spread The Word
Article Series
This article is part 1 of a 2 part series. Other articles in this series are shown below:
-
Review - Life, Episode Twelve, "Find Your Happy Place"