Crime of the Week

A particularly gruesome case - two Iranian-American college students are found inside a convenience store freezer with gunshots to their foreheads. The words "GO HOME" are written on the freezer doors. Three masked men with guns left the white clerk alone, and they didn't touch the cash register, but they did abduct a third Iranian-American. Hate crime, right?

Well, no. But the crowd outside in this mixed white/Persian neighborhood certainly seems to think so, and a riot is only prevented when Officer Stark takes down a white man wielding a tire iron. Stark's really been Superman since the last episode, hasn't he? (Personally, I'd say Stark has grown more likeable since the first episode, and I wouldn't mind if his attempts to renew his rapport with Crews aren't due to an ulterior motive.)

With several government agencies descending on the investigation - apparently Homeland Security gets involved whenever an Iranian person is killed these days - Crews and Reese reveal that the murder victims were honors college students with a pot business on the side. This jibes with Lt. Davis' contention that it's always about "the drugs and the money". The mother and sister of the kidnapping victim, however, are sure their straight-A son isn't involved with drugs.

Compared to the victim's mother, we have the mother of the killer. The convenience store owner, Mary Ann Farmer, confirms from video footage that her delinquent son is one of the shooters. Evidently he's got some anger towards Mom, or he wouldn't have done the deed in her shop. The two mothers eventually have a loud confrontation, where Farmer claims she'd sacrifice her own life to save the boy's.

The case becomes more complicated during a search of the student's apartment. Everything looks clean, but cryptic references on his computer to a special file and "Fara Level 10" lead Crews to the video game console. Fara, it turns out, is the kidnapped princess in the video game "Prince of Persia", and the logical conclusion is they need to beat Level 10 to find the file. An adult computer hacker, it seems, lacks the mad gaming skillz to pull it off, but the victim's sister does it instead. I guess video games really aren't just for boys any more.

It turns out that the missing student kept the books for the murder victims, whose drug business was much more extensive than thought. Which means he knows where the money is. And aha, the kidnappers want his files in exchange for him. Now it's all clear.

Except . . .

There's a fine line between teasing an episode and spoiling it. In commercials leading up to this episode, NBC emphasized that the key to the investigation was the kidnapper's mother. It's over halfway through the episode, and so far nothing's happened to make the commercials true. So I'm sitting on my couch and thinking, "There's a twist coming up now with the mom."

Bingo. Thanks, NBC, for killing the surprise factor.

On further investigation, it turns out that the abductee was also investing Mary Anne's savings for her. In fact, they were lovers as well. Something she neglected to tell police. Something her son certainly figured out, though. Crews and Reese go to her house, only to find her and her car missing, and one dead kidnapper. A second murdered kidnapper was discovered earlier, which means either the son wants all the money for himself - or it's personal. Guess which one.

Since the son needs a wire transfer to get the cash, the police are able to track him down to a local bank, where we get our first look at Jeffrey Farmer. And he's got scaaary eyes. He's also got a gun pointed at his mother and her lover, but the abductee panics, and Jeffrey threatens to kill him right there. Crews and Reese arrive, however, and Crews does his usual armchair psychiatry. Jeffrey wasn't telling his Iranian victims to go home, he wanted to go home himself. He wanted his mother's love, and he envied the other man for having it. (I'm still not sure if they were trying to make this into a creepy Oedipal thing.) A police sniper takes Jeffrey out, and the crisis is over.

In case you hadn't noticed, I wasn't crazy about this episode. Next week should be better, though. Previews show that Detective Ames, lead detective on the triple homicide Crews was charged with, has been murdered. Guess who the prime suspect is. Guess how excited Lt. Davis is to prove it. (Guess who's about to come back from New York City after a two week absence with a new haircut.)

As for the Writer's Guild strike, NBC has confirmed that Episode Nine will be airing November 21st, and the show will be switching to repeats after that. NBC has ordered four additional scripts, but there's no telling what effect the strike will have on further production, or on the ratings, or on the show's future.

The homicide investigation takes up a great deal of this week's episode, not leaving much time for Crews' mission. But what we do learn is important.

Since the end of Episode Five, both Crews and the audience have been pondering why Roman Novikoff urged him to ask his partner about the Bank of Los Angeles shootout. Since Reese was just a teenager at the time, Crews assumed Roman was speaking of his OLD partner, Officer Stark. But that well seemed to come up dry.

However, Reese overreacts to an offhand remark made by Stark about the Bank of L.A. while they're sharing an elevator with Crews. She clams up about it afterwards, but you can see the wheels turning in Crews' head - even though Reese was 12 when the shootout happened, maybe Roman meant his current partner after all.

Crews is able to access confidential police files about the Bank shootout during his homicide investigation. There he discovers that Reese's father Jack was captain of the SWAT team that took out the bank robbers.

And this makes him suspicious enough that he puts a photograph of Reese on his wall, connected to a blank square that will eventually hold a picture of her father.

Meanwhile, the weekly Mastercard "Uncovering the Evidence" commercial features documentary footage of Stark confirming that murder victim Thomas Seybolt was a childhood friend of Crews, and that he was stealing money from the bar. Stark also states that something was really "wrong" about Seybolt, as if he was more than just a thief.

In case you hadn't noticed, this was Green Week on NBC. Life's small contribution to the cause was Crews, who told Ted that he woke up from a dream wanting to buy a solar farm. Ted is initially against the idea, but research into "photo-diodes" reveals that it might be a good investment after all.

Ted decides to drive out to a promising farm, but he's forced to bring someone along. Olivia, Crews' future stepmother, was supposed to meet with him, but Crews is too busy with his case to make the time. (We're sure he's really broken up about it.) So once again, Ted finds himself spending the day with Olivia.

And the day turns into night, as Ted discovers as they're about to leave the solar farm that A. they're out of gas, and B. he can't get a signal on his cell phone. And apparently walking somewhere for help is out of the question, because - well, because they don't.

Night leads to a confession from Ted that Olivia makes him nervous. He won't say why, but Olivia can see from the expression on his face that it's because he's attracted to her. (Either that, or because she's the redheaded Dolly Parton.) Olivia favors him with a bizarre, high-pitched song from her childhood. I'm not sure, this may be some kind of courtship ritual practiced by Californians.

And then they're "saved" by electric workers the next morning. Whew.

- You can't fault his paranoia, considering he's keeping the books for drug dealers, but doesn't it seem a little time-consuming to have to beat ten levels of "Prince of Persia" every time Amir wants to update their numbers? (Maybe he was a big fan of Cloak and Dagger when he was younger.) I also thought it ironic that of all the games this Iranian-American man picks, he picks "Prince of Persia". You're serious?

- Sarah Clarke, who played Nina on "24" and Mary Ann Farmer in tonight's episode, seems to be making a career out of playing deceitful women. Granted, Farmer wasn't a criminal, much less a traitor, but telling the police that she was sleeping with the man her son abducted? Coulda been helpful.

- The lengthy video-game sequence, I found off-putting. I have nothing against video games, but this seemed more like a commercial than a part of the story. Or this is the idea of some NBC network honcho in marketing, thinking this will pull in younger viewers. If that's the case, "Sports Night" has never looked more prescient.

- Overall, I thought this episode was a bit disappointing. I didn't think the twisted relationships connecting the mother to the son to the victim were explained all that well. (Wait, the son wanted his mother's love? Wasn't he the one who turned away from her? Wait, I'm confused.) The computer hacker is about to catch Crews breaking into secure computer files, but when he enters the room, Crews is gone. What is he, Batman? Ted's alone time with Olivia seemed contrived.

- If one out of every seven episodes of Life is going to be "a bit disappointing", I'll take those numbers. You can't get a great episode every time. You can only hope to minimize the bad ones, and maximize the good ones. At least you can count on your actors to work with what they're given.