Static Zombie

Day Break

I'm a sucker for time travel stories. I think I'm attracted to the attention to detail such stories require, especially when traveling into the past and back. The beauty of it is that as a viewer, I'm willing to let the screenwriter define whatever rules he wants to, and I'll believe the universe works that way. Is time fluid and mutable? Is time fixed, with the effects of time travel already incorporated into our view of history? Does a new timeline branch from each decision point? Can you visit the same point in a timeline more than once, or do you only get one shot? How much energy is required? How much mass can you take with you? Who remembers what? Are changes instantaneous, or do they ripple forward? I don't much care what the screenwriter decides, but I love watching for the minute details that indicate he really thought through all the ramifications.

Day Break is ABC's mid-season replacement to allow Lost to return uninterrupted in the fall, and it hasn't fared very well in the ratings. That's a shame, because the series-- I should say mini-series, since it was designed to be 13 episodes and out-- is doing some very nifty things with its high-concept premise: what if a man had to live the same day over and over again until he got it right? The idea was famously tackled in the movie Groundhog Day, but where that Bill Murray vehicle mined it for comedy, Day Break plays it straight. Police detective Taye Diggs gets framed for murdering a district attorney, and the people responsible are sufficiently connected that they can murder his girlfriend, threaten his sister and her children, and pluck him from a prison cell in the dead of night to try to coerce his capitulation. Not a very good day to be living again and again.

We don't know why this is happening to him, but right away some rules are established. Each day is a complete reset for everyone but him. Not only does Diggs remember everything that happened in the previous loop, but he has to live with the physical after-effects too. When he gets beaten up in a quarry, he wakens with bruised ribs. When he gets shot in one loop, he wakes up bleeding from the wound in the next. Brute force is therefore not a solution-- whatever he needs to do to break the pattern, he'll have to do it carefully.

Cleverly, each episode's title (not shown onscreen, but visible in the Tivo data) is of the form, "What if he ___?" and the episode plays out the answer to that question. What if he just ran away? What if he let his girlfriend go? What if he could change the day? That last question shaped the most recent episode, in which Diggs helps his partner out of a jam and, at the start of the next loop, receives a phone call from her that he never got in any previous loop. Is this the way to break the cycle? Will he need to fix all the broken pieces of his life in order to crack the conspiracy?

Day Break is a tight, nimble serial, and the qualities that elevate it may also spell its doom. Viewers have already rejected serialized crime dramas this season, and Day Break requires diligent attention and loyalty. It's impossible to understand what Diggs is doing unless you've seen what he's already done. That's fine for a 2-hour movie, but it makes it hard for a 13-hour serialized program to pick up new viewers along the way. Day Break may be one of those shows that is best experienced on DVD, where you can watch multiple episodes back-to-back (as I did with the first 4 hours-- thank you, Tivo!). Fans of serials like Prison Break or 24 should not let this one slip under their radar.

Posted by Peter at December 4, 2006 02:38 PM