HOUSTON – This week's episode of Awake sure was heavy on the police action stuff and disappointingly light on the what's-the-real-story-with-Michael-Britten's-accident-that-killed-his-entire-family stuff. We were making such progress after last week's foray into hallucinations and schizophrenia, and it feels like this week we've kind of veered off course.
The one clue we do get into Michael's car accident is thanks to a mysterious speaker box at Ricky's Tacos. I know. Bear with me. At the top of the episode, as Michael is ordering his burrito to go, a voice tells him that the key to figuring out what happened with the car accident lies in the Westfield case, which Michael was investigating just prior to the accident. So our slightly brain damaged detective goes on the hunt and visits the Westfield building in both the red reality and the green reality. And what does he find lurking in a drawer in this deserted building, you ask? Why, a Ricky's Taco bag! Forget Westfield. It's Ricky's Taco that holds the key to unraveling the mystery surrounding the deaths of his loved ones. Seriously. Burritos.
But Thursday's episode focuses mainly on the two crimes that need solving in both the red and green realities. In the red, a three-year-old missing person's case is solved when a body turns up in… wait for it… a block of concrete! Cue racist comments from a fat white guy about Mexican immigrants working on construction sites. Moving on. In the green reality, a young girl, Sabrina, jumps off a building after having sex with Tim the Loser Classmate, and tests show she was raped before she died. So… Suicide? Murder? Back to red. When Detectives Vega and Britten go to inform the brother of the Deceased Cement Guy that he is no longer missing but, in fact, dead, Michael notices a tiger tattoo on the brother's shoulder that matches a parking sticker on the car on top of which Sabrina fell when she jumped/was pushed/we still don't know what the deal is. Michael takes this knowledge from the red side to the green side and, upon further investigation into the tiger parking sticker, discovers Sabrina was really itching to have sex with someone she once trusted, be that an ex-boyfriend or a dorky classmate who seems nice enough. What could this mean?!
Back to red. Ominous Suit Man (who was clearly involved with Michael's car accident in some sinister way) returns and is not happy that Michael has been visiting the Westfield buildings. Clearly these buildings are important. We will not discover why during this episode.
Back to green. Turns out, Sabrina was four months preggo when she died, and those tests that indicated rape also indicate a pattern of sexual abuse. That, paired with a confession from Sabrina's sister that their father sexually abuses them, exonerates Tim the Loser Classmate and closes the case. Back to red. Thanks to some excellent vocab words from Dr. Lee (Pentimento? Really? Jeez not all of us majored in art history, ok?), Michael discovers that the brother of Deceased Cement Guy had not only killed his brother and buried him in the concrete, but then stole his identity and has been living the American Dream of being semi-poor but totally-greencarded. Case closed.
The episode concludes with both shrinks telling Michael that the strange voice from the Ricky's Taco speaker box was his subconscious trying to keep him from moving to Portland and severing the ties between red and green realities. Both agree that moving is an important part of the "healing" process, and that the separation will eventually illuminate which reality is "real" and which is a dream. Then, in the red reality, Michael informs the chief he's leaving LA and resigns. This makes Creepy Police Chief happy.
Unfortunately, previews for next week's episode indicate it won't have too much to do with Michael— enough pussyfooting around, let's get to the good stuff, people!
Thanks for reading, and as always, thanks for watching KPRC Local 2!