"Life" is a mystery. No, I don't mean the meaning of life, or whether the chicken or the egg came first, or which is right, evolution or intelligent design" Excellent questions all, but I mean that the television program "Life" is at heart a mystery show, not a police drama.

So, rather than give readers a blow-by-blow account of each episode, from now on I'm going to divide my episode reviews into four sections: Crime of the Week (whatever crime Crews and Reese are investigating that episode), The Big Mystery (developments in Crews' personal investigation), a little segment we'll call So, What's Up With Ted Earley" (as neither cop nor detective, Ted rarely has much to do with mysteries), and Personal Observations.

Because if you want to know what's going on, isn't it easier if it's laid out straight for you"

For someone who seemed particularly panicked that she accidentally ingested illegal drugs in Episode One, Det. Danni Reese doesn't seem to have anything against alcohol.

She doesn't particularly want to go to her recovery meeting, but she does it because she has to. And she rewards herself in advance by indulging in her favorite pastime - going to a bar, having a drink, and picking up strange guys. Said guy is named Rick, and he's going to the same meeting as she is.

"My name is Rick, and I'm powerless". But apparently not as powerless as the woman who he raped. To Reese's ears, Rick's sharing session with the group sounds suspiciously like a confession to a sexual assault. No one else seems to notice, including the pretty blonde he was just sitting with, but Reese blows off his advances after the meeting and takes off.

Having checked his license plates, Reese lets Crews and Lt. Davis know that Rick is Richard Lawson, and that he has a misdemeanor sexual assault conviction on his record. Both Crews and Davis point out that Reese doesn't have much to work with, but since Rick claimed the other woman tried to make some trouble for him, Reese turns to 911 logs from last November.

(And just to remind everyone that Reese has issues when it comes to men, we learn that the detective who initially helps Reese with the 911 logs dated her briefly and unsuccessfully.)

Of course, Rick has his own issues with women. Not knowing she's a police detective, he meets Reese a second time, but when she's not very forthcoming about her problems with addiction, he angrily tells her she's just like all other women. (Always a red flag on a cop drama that you're dealing with a rapist.)

One of the running themes of "Life" is that Crews, locked away for 12 years, lacks familiarity with modern technological developments like cell phones and the Internet. Here he gamely tries to locate the victim, identified as Nancy Wicsinksi, by entering a chat room and looking for friends on her Facebook page. "LuckyBob231" is a great detective and he gets points for trying, but he's no match for the rapid-fire IMHOs and LOLs.

Reese has a better idea in tracking Nancy's computer instead, which leads them to her. Nancy is now a stay-at-home bookkeeper for her mother, which Crews rightly intuits as a sign that she's been in hiding since her rape. She has cause to worry - she didn't press charges because Rick threatened to kill her. For that reason, and because it's the worst kind of rape, the "he-said-she-said" variety, she turns Crews and Reese away.

Worried Rick will come after Nancy or get hammered and rape someone else, Reese stakes out his home. Equally worried, Nancy goes a bit further and draws a gun on him in the street. Fortunately, and a bit coincidentally, Nancy stops right next to Reese's car, and Reese gets her to put the gun down. Rick drives off like a scared rabbit, and Reese takes Nancy in. Obviously they're not going to lock her up, though. Crews helps convinces her to press charges this time with his Zen outlook on life, although he unintentionally finds himself talking about his time in prison instead of Nancy and Rick.

Not knowing where else to look for Rick, Reese goes back to her AA meeting. There she's accused of spying and misusing the group, but she spots Stacy, the young woman Rick was talking to at the first meeting. Stacy is smitten with her new sponsor, so much so that she's willing to risk going to a bar on a date with him. Reese removes her from temptation by getting there first and arresting his skeevy ass.

In custody, Rick trots out the defense by many sleazebags like him, claiming that Nancy was stalking him, and that she cried rape after consensual sex. Then he makes bail.

We all know where he's going next, don't we"

Reese gets home from grocery shopping and is surprised by Rick, wearing a white mask that makes him look like a Nip/Tuck villain. Rick defies audience expectations here, though - he wants to kill her, not rape her. He's willing to use her own gun, but he'd rather force her to drink herself to death with the vodka in her fridge. Reese downs glass after glass, but she has enough presence of mind to call Crews with the cell phone in her pocket and leave it on. Crews and Davis, who were on stakeout together (more on that later), rush to the scene and call for backup.

Before she dies, all Rick wants is for her to open up about her past. And eventually she does. It seems strange at first that she's willing to give Rick what he wants, but since she still has Crews on the phone, my feeling is that her confession is meant for her partner's ears, not her captor's. Reese admits to a hardcore heroin addiction, even once shooting up while a man in the room with her was blowing his head off. (The lover we heard about in Episode Five") Rick, clueless as he is evil, can only wonder why she was in AA then.

Before Reese can further enlighten the nimrod, Crews and Officer Stark come bashing in. Rick turns his head, allowing Reese to clobber him with the vodka jug. (Great hand-eye coordination for a drunk woman her size.) Crews helps her stay on her feet while he takes her outside, and we can feel the bond between them growing stronger.

And the last moment" Danni Reese stands before the group and says, "I'm Danni, and I'm powerless."

Det. Crews is trying to understand what Roman Novikoff meant in Episode Five when he told Crews to ask his partner (we don't know whether he meant Stark or Reese) about the Bank of Los Angeles shootout 15 years ago. Finding himself sharing a car with Officer Stark and his new partner, Crews brings up the stories Stark told ad nauseam when he was a rookie, including the Bank of Los Angeles robbery when five bank robbers were killed and there was "blood in the streets". Stark claimed he was in the middle of the shootout, but now he looks oddly uncomfortable when it's brought up.

Later, Lt. Davis attempts to hold a press conference to promote lower crime rates, but she's interrupted by an older woman and her rotund cameraman. Apparently the woman wants to complain for her Web audience that someone has been crapping on her front lawn at night, and that the police won't do anything about it. Crews helps her hijack the press conference by promising that he and Davis will solve the case by the end of the week. Davis looks thrilled with that eccentric Crews and his soft spot for the underdog.

The real reason for his gesture becomes clear, however, when Crews and Davis stake the woman's home out. In between learning that Davis is married (even though she doesn't wear a ring) and a believer that Halloween is wrong because kids are "begging" for candy when they can buy it themselves (I wonder how many times her house has been toilet papered), Crews twice brings up the Bank of Los Angeles shootout. The second time, he discovers that Stark has lied about his role in the incident. Like every other uniformed officer, he was on the barricades four blocks away from the bank while a SWAT team moved in.

(Coincidentally, the SWAT team was on a training exercise a block away when the alarms went off. Hmmm.)

Crews and Davis eventually discover that the cameraman is the phantom crapper, because the woman treats him like a dog. "Poo on you!" he tells her. Ah, the poo is truly mightier than the sword. Their role is cut short, however, when the call from Reese comes in. Stark is among the officers waiting there when Crews arrives, because he heard the call over dispatch and wants to help. After Reese's rescue, a guilty Stark comes clean to Crews and admits that he was on the barricades during the bank shootout. Crews reassures him that he was in the middle of it that night.

It's a beautiful day for Ted until he passes a bookstore and sees his picture in the window. Or rather, multiple pictures gracing the cover of copies of a new hardcover book called "Earley Warning" by Winston Chambers. Returning later, safe behind sunglasses and hat, he buys a copy, once he's dodged every attempt by the clerk to get Ted to engage in a transaction that would involve revealing his name.

Skimming the pages later, Ted is initially outraged. "Didn't do that . . . didn't do that . . . okay, did that . . . did that . . ." Ted has always been defensive about his guilt, claiming that he didn't really do anything wrong. This is the first time we hear him admitting things.

We learn during a parking garage confrontation that Winston Chambers was his old partner, and that consequently he's guilty of the same things that Ted is. Winston replies, a trifle smugly, that he "didn't get caught", although it wasn't his idea to call Ted in the book "white-collar trash". Ted shoves a miniature baseball bat under Winston's chin, but instead of hitting him or his car, Ted draws on Crews' philosophy and forgives him instead. (Way to avoid a parole violation there, Ted.)

- Not to diminish Nancy's suffering, but when she tells Crews and Reese "I died that day," did anyone else think of Princess Buttercup"

- I didn't think Stark's tales of courage under fire made a whole lot of sense. Most police officers surely knew the facts of the shootout, and sooner or later Stark's baldfaced lies would have reached the ears of other cops who knew better. I can't imagine why he thought he'd never be found out.

- A bigger question regarding Stark is WHY Roman brought this up to Crews in the first place. So Stark was on the barricades. Big deal. As I see it, there are three possible answers. One, Roman wants Crews to doubt his fellow officers, and exposing Stark as a liar might do that. Two, there's more to the story than Stark's tall tales. Like some of the $18 million found its way into his pocket. And three, it wasn't Stark that Roman was talking about. This possibility grows more tantalizing when we see the previews for Episode Seven - and a photo of Officer Reese goes up on Crews' wall. Wuh-oh.

- The theme of the episode, of course, is about power. Power is always an issue when it comes to rapists and victims, but our main characters think about their own pasts, and how it can render them powerless even now. Reese fights with her addictions, Crews burdened by his memories of prison and his need to uncover the truth. Even Ted is powerless to do anything about the book about his life. Rather than let himself be controlled by rage at the unfairness of being castigated in print by someone who has no right, however, Ted is able to forgive. He does a better job than Crews did just one episode, in fact, when he beat the man who attacked Constance.

- I liked how Crews becomes more jocular, more jovial, when he wants to swap stories with Davis about the Bank of Los Angeles shootout. Like he's just another "good old boy" cop who wants to shoot the breeze, not a determined detective trying to uncover facts. It's a great use of body language and speech patterns.

- The commercial segment halfway through was disappointing. Crews' ex-wife Jennifer is featured talking about Rachel Seybolt. Apparently Child Services took her away, believing a new name and a new city was best for her. Nothing we didn't know before.

- Constance didn't appear in this episode. Judging from what I've learned, however, it looks like she'll be returning sooner than expected. I'll be keeping that under my hat for now, though.

- If Rick looked familiar, you might recognize actor Jeffrey Pierce from ABC's "The Nine", where he played psychopath bank robber Randall. If he looked REALLY familiar, you might have seen him just last week as Dylan McCleen in NBC's "Journeyman".

- The episode was directed by John Dahl, known for directing movies like "The Last Seduction" and "Red Rock West".

Now that we've had several episodes to get to know Crews, we get to spend a lot more time with his partner Danni Reese, and judging by the writing and Sarah Shahi's acting, she's definitely worth getting to know.

Let's not forget Adam Arkin, who gets to have plenty of screen time without sharing the scene with Crews, and on the other hand Robin Weigert, who gets to have meaty one-on-one interactions with Crews for the first time. I will make this clear - this is NOT a one-man show. Ignore the rest of the cast at your peril.

I love a show with great writing and the occasional twist. And the writing is anything but "powerless".