By Sabrina Cognata

LIFE’s quickly becoming my favorite new drama on television.  I love the fact that Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis) is both a good guy cop with a heart of gold & a complete and total insane jerk when it comes to investigating his own case, on his own time.  Oh duality, how you give a character the actual perspective they need to actually seem real and relatable! 

Let’s get down to brass taxes, Crews & Dani Reese (Sarah Shahi) show up to a murder scene in a super rich and elite Los Angeles neighborhood.  A gay man has been shot in the head and his blood and brains are splattered all over his bedroom.  Crews uses his third eye to detect someone in the shadows, below the property line.  WELL IF IT ISN’T A CRAZY VAGRANT, Holt Easley (William Sanderson), THAT SAW EVERYTHING GO DOWN.  I guess being a crazy homeless dude means you also don’t tell the whole truth as Easley slowly gives bits and pieces of what he saw happen to Crews & Reese. 

Initially, Easley tells the detectives he saw the dead man’s gay lover, James, come into the bedroom and shoot the dead man point blank in the head.  Then he says that James went outside and threw his lover’s wedding ring into some weeds where he fished it out of.  Easley’s story doesn’t have exact continuity to it, but neither does anyone else’s.  Crews keeps Easley in lockup until he can finish interviewing the neighbors. 

The neighbor across the street, Gina Borns, says she saw her husband, Drew, emerge from the house immediately after she heard a gunshot.  She says she suspects her husband was the dead man’s gay lover, but never said anything because he treated her right and loved her.  Although she indicates she is not ok with her husband being a murderer.  She then tells detectives that she wants to help them and if she can do anything in her power she will. 


In the midst of this Crews visits his attorney and actual love interest, Constance Griffith (Brooke Langton).  He goes there to question her about the whereabouts of the daughter of the man he was accused of murdering & ask for her social services file.  Crews is convinced she was in the house at the time of the murder and wants to know where she ended up.  He meets another of her clients and immediately dislikes him.  After he gets the man’s name he investigates him and returns to tell Constance that the man is bad news and she shouldn’t represent him.  Eventually, the conversation turns intimate and she admits Crews is her true love, but she’s married.  They talk in the sort of convoluted way writers make star-cross lovers speak and everyone feels badly that Crews is stuck with his 25-year-old pinups with perky breasts and overactive sex drives instead of someone he could actually love.  Gross.

DNA evidence comes back and says that Everly’s DNA is all over the room.  Everly is suddenly faced with prison time and explains that he used the gay couple’s house whenever he needed to clean up.  Then he tells Crews and Reese something he left out before.  He has buried a bag filled with the contents James claimed was taken from his home that belonged to his dead lover.  In the bag the detectives find personal belongings, love letters signed by Drew & a big gun.  Someone’s in trouble & someone’s in it deep.  Crews and Reese conclude that James and Gina conspired together to get rid of both their mates therefore getting both their pieces of the financial pie from their unfruitful relationships.  The detectives call the suspects bluff saying the other party has turned state’s evidence.  Finally Gina cracks and says it was James’s idea to kill his lover and frame her husband.  Case Closed.


I can see how some people would say that Crews is a poorly drawn version of HOUSE, but I think he’s more than that and he’s not nearly as cranky.  I like him and I like that the cases are solved each week as his ongoing personal case is far from being solved but each week we’re introduced with new evidence regarding what actually went on.  What do you think?