“Awake”, UBIK, Number Six and Owl Creek Bridge

Last night, I watched the final episode of the NBC drama series Awake.  Although the show’s ratings dropped from its decent premiere twelve weeks ago, I gave the show a chance, based on its provocative premise.  Follow along with me here.

The show’s premise is that Los Angeles police detective Michael Britten and his family are in a car accident.  His son is killed, but his wife survives.  And then… when he goes to sleep… he wakes up and finds his son is alive, but his wife has perished in the accident.  Two worlds, and he can’t figure out which is real and which is a dream.

Yeah, it’s a genre series, all right… based on a premise that was, like most television dramas, supposed to have a five-year story arc and a long shelf life.

But ratings for the show plummeted, to the point where NBC simply burned off the rest of the episodes with little fanfare.  And for fans of the series, there was something more disconcerting about the show’s demise.

Would the series end without explaining how or why Detective Britten is experiencing two realities?

Fans came up with several different theories – Detective Britten is in a coma, Detective Britten is dead, the whole thing was a mental mind-scramble…

And fans of “genre” television wanted a satisfying conclusion.  And it’s tough to get a satisfying conclusion when the premise is so difficult to grasp or comprehend.  Do we have an explanation that raises more questions than answers, like the mystery of who was “Number Six” in the 1960’s drama The Prisoner?  Or why a detective from the year 2008 suddenly finds himself in 1973, with a final explanation that both the 1973 and 2008 realities are themselves fictional constructs, as in the ABC cop show Life on Mars?

Mind you, I watched every episode of Awake.  Detective Britten would find clues in one reality that would help him solve cases in the other reality.  He had two sets of partners, two mental therapists, two different over-reaching arcs – but was it real or was it a half-life, similar to Philip K. Dick’s excellent sci-fi novel Ubik, in which life and existence is scrambled to the point where no one is sure if they are alive or dead.  Sort of like Inception or The Matrix, only this was created in 1969 and reading this can still warp your mind today.

But back to Awake.

As the show progressed, both of Detective Britten’s realities merged into one unanswered question – what happened in the car accident that killed members of Det. Britten’s family?  How did it happen?  Was Det. Britten at fault, or did something more sinister and nefarious occur?

And at that point, Awake became more surreal.  Like The Prisoner, there were symbolic references in Awake that hinted at the car accident, but those references may or may not have been red herrings or MacGuffins.  Some of the references were silly – one episode featured a penguin – while others were maddeningly cryptic.  If you stuck with the show for its entire run, you could watch an episode and say, “Damn this is getting good,” or you could say, “Damn it’s just a police procedural with a gimmick,” or you could say, “Damn is that Fez from That 70’s Show as a cop?”

Yep, yep and yep.

The problem with genre shows like this – where a mystery is created in the first episode and we spend the entire series run trying to solve it – is that if the show gets cancelled, the series has to wrap everything up to some level of satisfaction, or the few fans the show had will feel like they were cheated.  And when Awake was not renewed for a second season, the fans wondered if the mystery behind Det. Britten’s two worlds would ever be solved.

Well, it was.  And it took a visit from Owl Creek Bridge.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is an Ambrose Bierce short story that was, in the early 1960’s, made into an Oscar-winning film.  You can watch the YouTube clip and see the entire movie; or you can just read this paragraph and know that the entire film takes place in but a few moments in time.

It was all a dream, a fantasy, a hallucination.

And in the case of Awake, both of Detective Britten’s realities – were in fact dreams, and the reality was that, in the final four minutes of the series finale, Det. Britten wakes up, walks downstairs to his kitchen, and finds his son and wife very much alive, as if the car accident never occurred.

The entire run of Awake – the premise of two realities, the whole police procedural as mental examination – was a whole night’s dream.  It’s deus ex machina, it’s Tommy Westphall’s snowglobe, it’s Pam Ewing hearing the morning shower.

Was it the best ending for the show?  Was it a satisfying ending?

I suppose the better answer is that this ending was the only logical way that Awake could end its broadcast run – while still satisfying the few loyal fans the show had.  Tie everything up in a last-minute bow, give Det. Britten a happy ending, and thanks for watching.  And after watching other genre TV shows end with less-than-satisfying conclusions – Twin Peaks, Lost, Dollhouse – better that Awake end with a “god out of the machine” conclusion that almost screams, “And they lived happily ever after.  You’re tuned to NBC, where we broadcast America’s Got Talent on nights when we’re not showing Law & Order: SVU.”

Maybe I’m wrong on this.  But I’ll stand by my opinion.

And resolve myself to the belief that if the show lasted a second season, someone would have screwed up the premise to the point where any conclusion reached would have not satisfied the viewers.

Right?