By Sabrina Cognata

Turns out Life is one of the few premier shows that I’ve had to watch that didn’t make me want to run out and hang myself immediately.  Probably because I think Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis) is cute as hell.  What can be cuter/hotter/sexier than a man falsely imprisoned that gets out and is awarded tons of money and still wants to be a stupid Detective?  Anyways, last week we were introduced to Charlie.  One time cop.  One time lifer for murders he did not commit.  Primetime hottie!

This week Charlie & his partner, Dani (Sarah Shahi) have to figure out the murder of one bloody bride.  Literally.  They find a newly married woman dead, naked and covered by only her wedding gown in her honeymoon suite.  How romantic.  Her husband, Jake, is nowhere to be found and after inspecting the room the duo begin hunting for him around the hotel.  Miraculously, they find him in a cabana by the pool drinking out of a Costco sized jug of tequila, and let’s face it—if you wake up from a blackout and find your new bride naked & dead drinking is probably the best option you have at that point.  After confronting the widower Charlie attempts to calmly place him in handcuffs.  Being drunk out of his mind the husband resists arrest and a full on pool fight begins when Jake chucks Charlie into the pool.  Dani resourcefully uses a taser to electrocute Jake and Charlie and put a cease and desist to their school boy fighting.  Five points for Dani.

Now here is the tricky part, Charlie seems to think he is the master of spotting a criminal from having spent so much time behind bars and he swears up and down he cannot see murder in Jakes eyes.  It’s really a sweet sentiment, but too bad checking out someone’s soul via their eyes is not going to suffice as conclusive evidence, moron.  In the meantime, he is looking at photos from the wedding and trying to figure out what went wrong where.  As they’re interviewing people from the wedding and wedding party it becomes very clear this newly wed couple used to be a couple of party-whores and anything is possible.  The bride’s longtime friend comes to the aid of her widower as his legal representative, but as Charlie and Dani delve further into his background it becomes clear that his interest in the case is more personal—he seems to have been obsessed with the dead woman also.  It turns out this dead chick was quite the minx. 


While all this is going on, Charlie finds the time to continue his detective work on his own case.  I guess when the city has to award you a trillion-gillion dollars for falsely imprisoning you, you can afford to spend all your free time trying to figure out who framed you for murder.  Charlie notices in one of the crime scene photos that his best friend’s daughter’s bed was not made.  THEY ALWAYS HAVE TO BE MADE.  I guess her mother was Joan Crawford or something.  Charlie seems to think the young girl is his key to figuring out what happens next. 

Charlie also gets invited to, Bobby Stark, his ex-partner’s bar-b-que.  The creepy part about this entire charade is the fact that Bobby tells Charlie that his wife really wants to see him.  When Charlie shows up the wife goes mental and tells him to leave and basically blames Bobby’s failed career on Charlie.  On his way out, Bobby stops Charlie and tells him he wants to show him something.  This something is Charlie’s old badge and gun.  Creepily enough, the entire thing is shot like Bobby is either going to confess his crush on Charlie or stab him to death.  Neither of these things happen, too bad cause it could really have heightened the complexity of this show in about two-seconds. 

Charlie, being an existential detective, starts to really take a broad look at the photos and miraculously deduces that the bride’s young friend and bridesmaid knows the secret behind the murder.  Turns out, this girl’s brother had a spat with the bride while he was super hammered and shoved her head into the wall.  She confesses all this to Charlie and Dani while her brother starts to go insane.  Turns out you cannot hide your criminal impulses once your sister decides to send you up the river.  Duh.  It is sort of a long shot, how Charlie figures out that this girl will know who the murderer is and I am not even sure I am buying that it is remotely logical.  Too bad Charlie Crews is hot and I can look past this problem.


Ugh, I super want to like this show.  I think Damian Lewis is actually cute-as-hell and I even sort of like the story premise.  Sadly, I feel like this is going to be one of those shows like Prison Break that has about two good seasons in it, and then once we start to figure out what is going on the stupid writers will get all antsy and try to make things more complex and completely destroy the integrity of the show.  I could be wrong, but I bet you I’m not.