Life“Three Women”
Original Air Date: Mar 18, 2009
Brittany Wells – Associate Staff Writer
brittanyw@thetwocentscorp.com
Charlie really wants to know what Reese was doing on Raybourn’s boat. Actually, he really just wants to get some guy to stop trying to kill him in a service elevator. No sooner has he finished brawling – and having a nice chat with – this murder suspect than the elevator arrives and delivers him directly to his new partner, Detective Jane Seever.
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[photo: NBC]
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Life
ReplyDelete“Three Women”
Original Air Date: March 18, 2009
Brittany Wells – Associate Staff Writer
brittanyw@thetwocentscorp.com
Charlie really wants to know what Reese was doing on Raybourn’s boat. Actually, he really just wants to get some guy to stop trying to kill him in a service elevator. No sooner has he finished brawling – and having a nice chat with – this murder suspect than the elevator arrives and delivers him directly to his new partner, Detective Jane Seever.
Investigating the murder of a woman found dead in her apartment, who appears to be the third in a string of victims, Seever and Charlie don’t hit it off that well at all. She apparently has a fifteen-year-plan to become Mayor of Los Angeles. Charlie is probably wondering why he can’t have Bobby back. Their lack of camaraderie is evident when he tells her they need to talk outside the interrogation room, lets her out first, and then locks her out. Reese wants to know who her partner is stuck with. Gotta love that, and the boys insisting she is definitely not Dani. (In fact, I’d be willing to say her character borders on being a canon Mary Sue.)
Crews interrogates his suspect – ex-con John Flowers, who claims that the victim, Sally, was dead when he arrived, and that they met when she wrote him while he was in prison for a jewelry store robbery. He wrote her back – as well as another woman – and a relationship developed. Yet her boss at a local news station has never heard of him, and says the dead woman wasn’t the type to be writing convicts. Not to mention, Seever hasn’t been able to turn up any letters at either apartment, or records of such through the prison. Flowers’ other pen pal turns out to be a God-fearing woman who claims she hasn’t heard from him since his release…so the detectives wonder who he did call, if it wasn’t her and wasn’t the victim. He made a six-second call to a third woman named Nina.
Nina, as it turns out, has a thing for convicts. She’s a writer, and her newest play is based on the real case of Len Lyle Hix, who beat three women to death. She, too, claims she hasn’t heard from Flowers but agrees to keep him on the line if he calls.
But the case has another wrinkle: Seever discovers that the diamonds from the robbery were never found. Talking to Flowers’ partner in crime confirms that he has no idea where they are either, and is genuinely upset that the victim is dead. Apparently, she wrote him too, but only once. This rings suspicious to Crews, who re-reads the transcript to find out the dead woman had previously worked as the court reporter…on that robbery case. Nina brings Flowers into the station, where he says he also is unaware of the location of the missing diamonds. Everyone, it seems, wanted something. The church woman wanted to save his soul, the murder victim wanted the diamonds, so what does Nina want?
Seever turns up a YouTube interview of Len Lyle Hix, with Nina sitting beside him holding his hand and talking about how she wrote him in prison, and eventually helped to get him paroled. What is his connection? Seever wonders if he, too, might be after the diamonds. Sally’s boss confirms that Nina had been around, supposedly doing research for a play, and had talked to Sally but that he doesn’t know what about. But when they confront Len, his alibi checks out. Could Nina have killed Sally? And why did she turn in Flowers – and why do surveillance cameras show her looking happy about it?
They confront Nina, deducing she killed Sally when Sally found her in her apartment looking for the letters. Then she turned Flowers in knowing that in prison, he would need her again – something Len Lyle clearly doesn’t. She tries to run, but Seever stops her at gunpoint. Case closed, except for one thing: who had the diamonds? Flowers’ partner, who has his conjugal visit crashed by Crews and Seever, who find his girlfriend wearing a diamond belly ring. Oops. Not to mention, Len Lyle Hix has been tossed back in jail for a suspiciously vague “attack on an LAPD detective”. Hmm.
Meanwhile, at the FBI, Reese has stumbled onto Mickey Raybourn’s file, including the pictures of him with Charlie. She calls out her new bosses, accusing them of just wanting her to help set up Charlie and her father, but the argument gets nowhere. Charlie, on the other hand, is on the phone to Agent Bodner – also the man who shot him – asking if he still has the bullet that Charlie gave him. Fun times.
I like Gabrielle Union – I still remember her from the short-lived update of The Night Stalker that aired on ABC a few years back – but her character just rings false to me. A 15-year plan to make mayor? She’s in law school too? The ability to multi-task and speed read like nobody’s business? And oh yeah, she used to be an Olympian. She just seems way too perfect to me, and that puts me off her. I’m glad that Sarah Shahi is still involved in the plotlines and not just referenced, but this new character really highlights how integral the Crews-Reese dynamic is to this show. It just doesn’t work, especially with such an unengaging replacement. Here’s to hoping Seever grows on me. What did everyone else think? Let me know below.
I really wish 'Life' features the conspiracy as the 'A' story for a change. I wasn't interested in anything to do with Charlie's case of the week and Gabrielle Union's Seever (which you're right does veer a little too close to being a Mary Sue). I was far more interested in the little time spent with Crews and Reese.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen this week's all the way through yet, but I'm hoping Seever grows on us. Gabrielle Union really is a pretty decent actress in anything I've seen her in, so it'd be a shame to see her wasted like that.
ReplyDeleteI miss Reese too, but I will give the "Life" team credit for keeping her involved in the storyline somehow - and not just having her disappear totally like other actresses who were also expecting. I think her absence only underscores how the strength of this show is these two characters more than anything else. Not to mention, Charlie's not the only one who wants to know what she was doing on Raybourn's boat; I'm curious too...