"Life" Recap & Review - "Tear Assunder"

Life
"Tear Assunder"

Original Air Date: October 4, 2007

Maty - TwoCents Senior Staff Writer

Welcome to the second episode of LIFE. Flashbacks take us into the present. The flashbacks give us a slice of what Charlie Crews went through and then it’s into our story.

It starts with the death of a new bride. Do we really care about the crime story in this show? Don’t think so. If we did we would watch any one of the many LAW & ORDER programs that litter the NBC airwaves. I would recommend SVU because it stars Chris Meloni who was incredible on OZ. (A show everyone should rent.) So, the husband freaks out and assaults Detective Crews. They take the fight to the pool and eventually he becomes the main suspect. It’s obviously not him. We all know that, and will have to spend an entire episode to learn what we already knew.

Cut to the interviews of the Crews case. Head detective Carl Ames (retired). He believes that Tom and his wife, the murdered, were skimming of the top of a bar they owned together and Charlie killed him for that. He’s convinced that the DNA evidence doesn’t matter.

More investigation.

Then something interesting happens - a young redhead shows up at Charlie’s door. Ted played by Adam Arkin answers the door. We learn later on that this young woman is going to marry Charlie’s father. Charlie hasn’t returned any of his calls. Another mystery.

Investigation continues.

Charlie’s ex-partner invites him to a BBQ and we learn that he has Charlie's old badge and gun for some reason. Also, because he supported Charlie, he was thought to be dirty as well and no one would be his partner. His loyalty to Charlie cost him professionally and personally.

Even more investigating.

Then Charlie, pretending to be a buyer, has set up an opportunity to check out the house where the murders took place. With photos of the crime scene he looks through all the rooms and realizes that the head detective Ames removed something important from the report. It seem that the killer murdered the husband, wife and son, but the youngest girl was safe because she was at a sleep over. It seems her bed was unmade and she was probably there, but left out of the report on purpose.

Blah blah blah investigation. It turns out that one of the husband’s friends got drunk and tried to steal the wedding money and ended up killing the bride. Zzzzzzzzz

Now the more interesting part...

Although Charlie is now out of prison the isolation may be worse. He can be with others but nobody wants to be with him. The exception of course is total outsiders who recognize him as being famous for his case. What’s interesting about him is the way that isolation makes him interact with evidence better than people. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to interact with people he just does it differently. Softer, stranger, then most tv cops. I’m still going to watch because I hoping we start to get episodes that are just about Charlie trying to solve his own case.

I give this episode a C+. The case wasn't as bad as I made it seem, it’s just not nearly the most interesting part of this show.