Life: One
Last night, I had no words. You guys, I just.... I felt like I'd been hit by a truck, only in some good way. That was stunning and fantastic.
Don't come in here if you're going to argue that point with me, I'm not kidding.
Last night, my first draft of this recap looked like this: AS’;LFDKSD’;LJ’GA;LSKDF’;SDALFK’;ASLG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!JJJ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!;LKFJS;D<3<3<3<3POLFKSJOI!!!OMGOMGOMGJJJ>)(SDL;FK’SLK1!!!!!!!!!!!
I know you guys can read Squee, but still I thought would be therapeutic for me to do in English. I calmed down and then I typed until 2 am. Sleepy. Happy.
Finales try to accomplish a lot, but they usually have to lean in one direction or another. Some finales are about plot closure and providing us with answers to our questions. Some are more about character, giving us an epilogue so that we can see the trajectory of each character. We like to imagine what will happen for them in the future, even if we’re not there to see it. Some are (maddeningly) open-ended, giving us a dot, dot, dot as the characters go about the most mundane parts of their lives, “allowing” us to fill in the blanks ourselves. :-P
This one was about revelation. Not of plot and character, as much, but revelation of what the show is, and has been all along, in ways that we (I) didn’t quite see. It was like watching all the elements of the show become clearer, bigger, more colorful. Watching the story turn into a more resonant version of itself. Like animation to reality, as some movies do, only in reverse. Everything sort of bloomed for me.
I. Guys, his name is Roman.
My show turned into an opera before my very eyes! No, in the good way. Or mythology or Shakespeare, whatever. Roman and Charlie are both mortal enemies and brothers! Rayborn is their father! He has anointed Charlie as his successor and Roman is obsessed with dominance and revenge! Hell yeah!!!
I’ve always adored Charlie and Roman together. In fact, I think we’ve talked about how well-matched they are, which is why the Roman episodes are always the best. That Roman loves going up against Charlie because they’re equals, in a way. Charlie is a worthy opponent. Roman is the only POTW who ever really gives Charlie any trouble.
And Roman has is own thang going just like Charlie does. They’re both quirky and legendary and they’ve got powers and minions and fans and swoony girls.
But THIS is just too perfect! They’re not just adversaries, they’re bound together by Rayborn!
Speaking of whom….Holy mother of god, Rayborn FTW! “Found me, huh kiddo? I always knew you were a good cop.”
Charlie: “You always knew I was a good cop? What do you mean by always? How long have you known me?”
Rayborn: “You are a good cop. Because you listen. ‘Always’ means before the killings, the arrest, the trial. I saw you at the academy. You had that look. …There. That look.”
Charlie: “What were you doing at the academy?”
Rayborn: “I knew someday I’d be old. We’d need a younger me to run this thing. I looked at every cadet and I chose you. I was gonna get that Tom Seybolt a little dirty so you’d have to help him out. Now, that family was not supposed to die. You were not supposed to go to jail. But they did. And you did…”
“…But just look at you!”
This is going to sound completely ridiculous, but until Rayborn delivered that line, I didn’t realize that the show loved Charlie as much as I love Charlie. I know, right? But…the pride and awe in his voice! That would have made the episode for me, right there.
Rayborn: “I chose you, kiddo. And I was right.”
Charlie: “Don’t call me kiddo.”
Rayborn: “It’s always been about you, Charlie. Even that animal Roman knows that.”
Then, the confrontations. Part One is really by proxy. Dani is tied up as Roman sees a photo of his dead operative.
Reese: “What is it, Roman? Things not going according to plan? He’s getting closer, isn’t he? He’s out there. But he’s getting closer. And you’re hiding in this basement. Connection by connection. Until he’s right in front of you.”
Roman: “That is where I want him!”
Reese: “Sounds like you’re in love, Roman!”
Ha! That was my favorite line of the whole episode, just because it was completely unexpected, very funny, and had three really awesome meanings! And you know how I love things in threes! First, it reinforces the filial theme they’ve got going between Charlie and Roman. Second, that’s where Dani’s mind goes! Roman wants Charlie here. He must be in love with Charlie. What? Who isn’t? Third, it’s like some slashy Easter egg! I just got a teeny glimpse of Roman and Charlie that way, and pffwahhh! My brain!
Confrontation Part Two, in the abandoned club… Roman, seeing the bullet, again loses his cool a little bit. That’s twice in, like, his whole life.
Confrontation Part Three is at the end, Charlie and Roman in the car:
Charlie: “He calls you an animal.”
I have to stop there. First, even the tense of the verb is brilliant. Not “he called you an animal”, that one time when he said it to me, just an hour ago. Which would have been accurate. But “he calls you an animal.” Whenever he talks about you. Because I know him. I talk to him. We’re close. I know what he thinks of you. He always calls you an animal. He calls you an animal when he talks about you to me. Which is a whole bunch, little brother. He never loved you. You’re not a person, you’re an animal to him.
I have another thought, but first I have to type the whole exchange…
Charlie: “He calls you an animal. Rayborn. He calls you an animal. But it’s not so bad because I’ve seen him with his dog and he loves…he loves that animal so…it’s not so bad.”
Do you remember the angel episode? Where we first met Roman? Roman keeps dogs. And he punished the boyfriend of the dead woman by keeping him in a cage like all of his dogs. Right in the midst of all his dogs, in their own cages. Likening someone to a dog is Roman’s humiliation of choice. Brilliant again.
Moving on…
Roman: “I’ll need his account numbers, foreign and domestic. Keys to safety deposit boxes. Combinations to home and office safes. You will give me these things.”
Exactly. This is classic Roman. He does not respond to your words. He has his own agenda. If his agenda is met by responding to your words, he will respond to them. Otherwise…he is conducting the only conversation being had and you are welcome to join it.
Unless you are ONE PERSON and that is Charlie…
Charlie: “Sure. But that’s not what you want. What you want is what Rayborn gave me. You want him to choose you. You want what he gives his dog.”
PUNCH. Roman punches Charlie. Charlie has just taken over the conversation. That’s the moment Roman loses.
Charlie: “One plus one equals one…”
Roman: “What are the numbers.”
Charlie: “You wanna know how I got through 12 years of prison?”
Roman: “Your Zen?”
Charlie delivers a fatal blow to Roman’s throat.
Charlie: “Like that.”
Then Charlie releases Roman’s slaves, like the conquering hero that he is. Turns their world on a dime. Uh, probably: “You fellas do speak English…” Hee.
II. I am Spartacus. Bond. James Bond. I’m Batman.
Charlie has had an iconic quality about him from day one. We’ve talked about that a lot. How they shoot him, from very low or from above. The lovely rotating shot on the cliff in What They Saw. How he stands; that big damn hero pose DL tried on in Band of Brothers; it’s perfect here. How he walks. Those fantastic old-school shots of him driving in the car, sunglasses just right, the colors and resolution seeming poised to morph into animation at any second. And they certainly give him enough hero stuff to do. In addition to the victim of the week, he’s saved or defended Connie, Dani, Rachel, Ted, Bobby and now Dani again.
I even felt a little Excalibur coming from his car this week, with all the cool shots and Charlie’s lament, “I just got it back!” The two of them eating burgers in the back of Bodner’s minivan only served as hilarious contrast to Charlie’s cooler car.
Slowly, over the course of this season, the other characters have shifted into a posse. So much that, last week, one of my hopes for this finale was to see a slo-mo rockstar walk, the flying V, with Charlie, Dani, Bobby, Ted, Seever and Tidwell. (Somebody had to have a long coat, I didn’t care who.) In the finale, they are aligned and work seamlessly together.
In the first scene in the station, Bobby calls to Charlie as he walks out of the office to avoid the senior officers who will shut him down. Bobby, presumably, wants to know where Charlie’s going and how he can help. Charlie walks to the elevator, veers to the left to avoid the cops… The camera follows the cops off the elevator immediately back to Bobby. He’s standing in Tidwell’s office, already stating the party line: No one knows where Charlie is. He’s on board. Later, he warns Charlie to ditch the car, he drops Charlie’s phone into the trash, he takes the handoff of Tidwell’s phone to provide a dead end to the officers tracking that phone back to Charlie, all avec adorable sarcasm. Tidwell, Amanda, Seever and Ted all work together perfectly to support Charlie as he pursues Roman and avoids the LAPD.
Because I’m now talking about character iconography, I’m chuckling at Ted’s lines from way back. “Am I Robin? I’m not Robin, am I?” “Am I Alfred?” Ted got it; I didn’t, really, until just now. J
And I said a couple weeks ago that Amanda reminded me of The Natural, a movie so heavy with symbolism and metaphor that some people found it overbearing. I loved it; a friend of mine had had enough and walked out of the theater before the end. (The end being the part where the home run ball hits the stadium lights and sparks illuminate the dark, make the bad guy squint in terror, and rain down upon the hero like the glory of God. *g* It’s probably good that she left.) Amanda’s dress, her manner, her lipstick are beautifully femme fatale. And her toys are the perfect complement.
Finally, and I say this with love, the finale sort of marginalized Tidwell to the helpless girlfriend, wringing her hands, pleading with the hero to save her lover. I love Tidwell and I don’t think this diminishes him one bit, it just emphasizes the sweet part of him over the badass part. His line, at the beginning, demanding that Charlie “find her!!!” made me want to hug him. And (selflishly) his role in the finale also gets him nicely out of the way for Charlie and Dani’s story to come to the forefront again.
All of this is even possible because the show is so stylish in the first place. A gritter, more fly-on-the-wall show can’t do this kind of thing. Life can.
III. And in the end, it’s love. John Oxenberger
I expected Roman. I expected a gorgeous and satisfying trouncing of Roman by Charlie. I expected the glorious posse that helped him do it. I knew they’d get Dani back. I figured Bodner and Amanda would help and Rayborn would be alive and that we’d find out what his role was in the whole thing. I knew all of that was waiting for me, and it was even better than I had hoped.
What I did NOT expect was to end up gasping for air at the heat between Charlie and Reese. And once again, I’m not talking about sex. It’s them, so it’s actually better than sex. Apparently there’s a word for it.
I was SO not expecting it that I sort of didn’t trust my own instincts when I saw that scene in the car. Charlie is back in his car, riding the long road to the rescue, and listening to the Zen tape.
“What we learned as children, that one plus one equals two, we know to be false. One plus one equals one. We even have a word for when you plus another equals one. That word is…”
Charlie rips the tape out of the deck.
My gut told me what it thought, and this is my gut, deconstructed. a) He’s the hero, the warrior. On his way to do battle with the evil and save the girl. b) He stops the tape. Why? He can’t be distracted. He doesn’t want to hear what’s on that tape. c) What distracts the warrior? Sentiment. Emotion. It fuels him, but he can’t have it in his mind when he goes into battle. d) Since he stopped it before the last word in the sentence, he must not want to hear that word. e) The word is a word that means the same as “you plus another equals one.”
Duh.
But really? This is Crews and Reese we’re talking about. What I had been saying all season was that Crews and Reese didn’t have the traditional will they/won’t they thing that most couples on TV have. They weren’t stealing glances at each other. The show didn’t put them in tight quarters and make them smell each other. They weren’t in contrived situations where they were forced to sleep in the same room or take their clothes off for some reason. (wait…yeah, they did do that one.) The show wasn’t trying to create the standard UST. She was sleeping with Tidwell. He was still hung up (ish) on Jennifer. They didn’t act jealous. They didn’t seem like they were hot for each other…
BUT, what I did say in this journal, week to week, was that what they have is so much better than that. It’s this incredibly synergy. They have a perfect meeting of the minds when they work; a rhythm they get into. They care a lot about each other. They cherish their partnership. So much so that he’s talking about it all the time and she’s almost childishly defensive about it - denying it or grudgingly admitting that she…doesn’t dislike him.
And, since they’ve been apart, they can’t seem to deal. She’s leaving notes for Tidwell about how to work with Charlie and he’s calling her on the phone every ten minutes. He keeps trying to replace her with people or parts of people and he fails. They can’t seem to function without at least talking to each other. And, two episodes ago, they both concluded that what they know is not what they see, but what they believe. What they believe is…they believe in each other.
Duh.
So I knew what the word was. Maybe I just couldn’t quite trust that the show was really giving that to us. But, you know, Life loves us. Yes it does.
Duh, deux:
Bodner: “Sippy cup.”
Charlie: “How long you been married?”
Bodner: “Twenty years. Still love her.”
Charlie: “Where’d you meet?”
Bodner: “In the bureau. We were partners.”
No Duh, it’s like music now…
Charlie and Roman face off in the Garden of Oranges for the exchange.
Roman: “You for her.”
Charlie: “Me for her.”
Isn’t that beautiful? It’s very Life, with the repetition and the rhythm and the simplicity.
Then, as they pass each other during the exchange, Charlie and Dani’s hands reach for each other, not quite connecting. Like Dani’s hand reached for Charlie’s face during the drug/shower scene in the pilot.
Reese: “What was his plan, getting in that SUV?
Bodner: “His plan was getting you out of that SUV.”
And then Dani’s face, and then Charlie’s face, when they see each other again, as the Zen tape finishes.
“We even have a word for when you plus another equals one. That word is Love.”
We even have a word for what we will feel when NBC cancels the best show they have. That word is not Love.