February 12, 2007: What If She's the Key?
First thing's first: did anyone have problems with this episode being edited out of order? The show seemed out of sequence when I first tried to watch it: Immediately after Brett was running out of the courthouse, it cut straight to him finding Margo tied up in some remote location. I realized pretty quickly that I wasn't so out of it as to miss an entire plotline and figured that it was a problem with the episode itself. Sure enough, towards the end I got another mixed-up sequence that explains what happened to Brett from the time he was threatening Uncle Nick to his freeing of Margo. At least I know now that I wasn't going crazy. Did this happen to anyone else? It's possible that it was a one-time glitch that caused the wrong act to play after the commercials. Hopefully it's been fixed by now.
Just about everything we thought we knew about our characters changed yet again tonight, and I was happy to realize that their motivations are always surprisingly consistent with how we've seen these people act in the past. The writers have thought out this story line to a remarkable degree so that nobody is pulling a 180 at the last second and being revealed as the master villain, even though he or she had been helping Hopper all along.
In this case, I think it's safe to assume that, based on the ending to this episode, the head of the conspiracy is... (dramatic pause) Barry Colburn, the crooked lawyer. He's clearly the one controlling Tobias Booth and calling the shots for him. The twist ending also implies that the ever-helpful Spivak is also in on the scheme to frame Hopper somehow, although it's not clear how; all we know for sure is that he had been subpoenaed in an upcoming trial involving most of the other major conspirators. Since Colburn mentions having an inside man in the department, maybe he meant Spivak (or Chad, although that would seem too obvious since we've known about that connection all along).
And just as crucially, we find out Rita's deep dark secret, which she's been hiding all this time. It's actually pretty disturbing: she attacked and accidentally killed her father with a flashlight in order to protect her brother Billy, who was on the receiving end of one of their father's drunken rages. She was still married to Chad at the time, and he helped her avoid the police and get rid of the body. That's a pretty grisly secret for a couple to hide from the world. Maybe the strain of knowing what they had done eventually took a toll on their marriage?
I'm not quite sure I believe that an ace lawyer and Shelten's police connections are all that you need to cover up a murder, but I guess it's all a part of the film noir attitude that
Day Break is aiming for, where nobody is purely good and we all have dark secrets that we'd rather not face. When Rita finally confesses all of this to Brett, he in turn reveals to her a secret he'd been keeping: His father didn't get killed in the line of duty. He committed suicide. It's interesting to realize the thematic link that the writers are drawing here. Just as Brett Hopper's day is repeating itself endlessly, trapping him in the same situations over and over again, so too is the past repeating itself in the present: The tragedies of Brett and Rita's parents are coming back to haunt them. For Brett, the case that destroyed his father's integrity and drove him to suicide is now ruining his own life. It's a clever little way of showing that this story is all about karma, and the realization that even if we're trapped within the same period of time, our past mistakes will catch up to us eventually.
Other noteworthy mentions: I laughed out loud at Brett's cheesy one-liner, "Consequence, bitch!" as he shot Detweiler, although I'm glad that this show doesn't stoop to having our hero yell out a catchphrase every time he takes out a bad guy. I think it worked this time mostly because Detweiler's "Decision... consequence" mantra has been set up as the show's unofficial tagline. Also, has anyone else noticed that it's become incredibly commonplace for a thriller TV show to have a scene where the good guy (in this case, Brett Hopper) is eavesdropping on a meeting between two bad guys (in this case, Booth and Uncle Nick) and then suddenly the hero's cell phone goes off and alerts everyone in the nearby area that they're being spied on by someone in the bathroom stall/broom closet/telephone booth/etc, forcing them to hunt down said hero? I keep seeing this plot device used over and over again. When are people going to learn to set those things to vibrate mode when they're doing their espionage work?
Just one episode left now, and more than anything else, I'm curious to see how Brett will be able to right every wrong and resolve every story line within the span of 24 hours. He knows just about everything that will happen during this day now, but is that foreknowledge really enough for him to save Rita and bring down the conspiracy in one fell swoop?
