HOUSTON – Things are really starting to take shape and the realities are separating more and more clearly in this fifth episode of Awake. The red and green realities threaten to make a profound and drastic split when Hannah decides to get the ball rolling on a potential move to Portland, Oregon from their current home in LA. Most, if not all, of the action in the red reality is family-related this week, while all of the nitty gritty cop stuff sticks to the green. So, what we have here is a split for Michael and an almost equal split for us viewers at home, as the red reality centers on Michael's familial and emotional dealings while the green focuses on the police action. Since I much prefer Detective Bird to Detective Vega, I'm pretty down with this arrangement, although I would hate to see less of Rex as a result. And this isn't to say things will stay this way—we might find ourselves switching back and forth in terms of which reality carries weight in which domain, family versus career. Ya never know with these kooky, krazy dream states!
The story in the green reality revolves around a serial murderer known as the Gemini Killer. His MO is to paralyze his victims, slit their wrists and watch them bleed out, and then once they're dead, carve a Roman numeral "II" into their chests, leaving a $2 bill somewhere in or around the person as his calling card. Michael finds a body that matches the style of the Gemini Killer whilst on a run one sunny afternoon in LA, thanks to a dog with blood on its mouth that happens to bark at him. The problem is, this Gemini dude is supposed to be dead. Agent Santorum from the FBI is called in, as she is the resident expert on the Gemini Killer and the person who supposedly shot him to death a while back. She thinks this is a new copycat killer and that the only people who would know about the $2 bill detail are people with access to the case file, AKA police officers. She tells the chief to look into any recently disgruntled cop with a psych istory (sound familiar?). Michael, on the other hand, is convinced homegirl just shot the wrong guy and the real killer is still out there. (SPOILER: he's right, she's wrong.) So, he and Detective Bird are on the hunt for this serial killer guy, and here's where our realities start to bleed together in a rather confusing way.
In the red reality, Michael finds an invoice from Mountain Top Moving and Storage, a company Hannah has hired to move them to Portland. Say what?! We're moving to Portland? At least that's what I imagine Michael is saying to himself as he broodingly reads over the invoice… Then, in the green reality, as Michael is looking for places the Gemini Killer could be hiding, he happens upon a deserted warehouse belonging to, you guessed it, Mountain Top Moving and Storage. So, obviously he has to go check it out. And wouldntcha know it, the killer had been hiding out in that very building! But things get a bit tricky, as Michael has no way of justifying his search of the building when there were tons of other deserted, sketchy looking, potential-serial-killer-hideouts in the area. He can't be honest without sounding like a nut job, so he just kind of takes the hit and once again deflects it as "a detective's hunch." Meanwhile, in the air vent, it appears the killer is listening in on the convo and hears Santorum mention she thinks there's something fishy about Detective Britten, and things really just snowball from there. The killer makes a call from Britten's house, implicating him, so Santorum and the Creepy Chief detain Michael for questioning. Then the real Gemini Killer abducts Santorum, using her FBI badge to get into the restricted area of the park where he killed his other victim. Meanwhile, back at the station, Michael and Detective Bird are having a heart to heart as to what's really going on with Michael and how he has all of these "hunches" that turn out to be the key to every case when they figure out that Santorum has to be the next target through some handy dandy clues Michael picked up in his other reality (putting another point in the "HOW DID YOU FIGURE THAT OUT?!" column for Detective Bird). They spring into action, finding Agent Santorum just in the nick of time but just missing the killer himself. Don't worry, he comes back later.
So, back to the red side. Dr. Lee hypothesizes that Hannah's covert moving tactics might indicate some trouble on the marital front, and he explains how many couples' marriages don't make it through the loss of a child. In other words, if Michael doesn't move to Oregon he's essentially giving up on the marriage. Cool advice, BD Wong. This move could also mean a serious physical break in Michael's realities, which up until this point have shared a lot of key elements that make going to sleep in one reality and waking up in another, feasible. If Michael's in Portland in one reality and in LA in another, neither the shrinks nor I can predict how that will work out. Only time will tell!
In the final moments of the episode, Michael gets a call from the Gemini Killer, who doesn't know how, after a decade of evading any and all law enforcement, Michael was able to get within 20 feet of him twice in but a few days. So, this guy broke into Michael's therapist's office (how?!) and, after getting the low down on Michael's perpetual dream status, has decided they are kindred spirits. More phenomenal news for Michael. We then see that crazy killer guy is on his way to Portland which could mean (read: definitely means) some prolonged connections down the line.
Let's see how Michael's psyche fairs when it's split across state lines!
Thanks for reading, and as always, thanks for watching KPRC Local 2!