I hate to sound like a broken record in my praise of Day Break, but almost every episode has been better than the one before it, and tonight’s was no exception. So much happened that I was amazed the writers managed to cover all this territory in the span of an hour.Let’s start off with easily the biggest plot twist of the night: Brett’s mild-mannered sister Jennifer is somehow involved with the conspiracy, too. When I saw Chad get gunned down the second time around, and it revealed that Jennifer was the assassin, I was sure that she couldn’t possibly be acting of her own will. In other words, I had a really hard time believing something as out-of-the-blue as the revelation that she’s really moustache-twirling evil. I thought that I could see her crying as she iced him, and my suspicions were proven correct when the real criminal mastermind — the boss of shadowy guy (who we now know is named Detweiler) — threatened her in his car. Clearly she...
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Hopper returns to Internal Affairs twice in search of the murder book. The first time he's arrested (and Rita's subsequently killed); the second time he pulls a gun on Chad and takes him hostage. His primary demand: that Rita be brought to him. “I get caught, she gets killed,” he tells Chad.
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Hopper gets an unexpected phone call that could lead to some answers as he comes between Andrea and Eddie (Nestor Carbonell), the fired cop who plunged off her deck into a ravine. Hopper also confronts Ava the swimmer about the package containing the hourglass that Garza had her send him, and he learns that Ava sent a package to his sister, Jennifer, as well.
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First off, thanks to everyone who pointed me in the direction of ABC’s official Day Break website (check it out here). I was surprised, actually, by how much the FAQ on there gives away: it specifically outlines the rules the time repeating operates by (if he dies, he stays dead – end of story), and it promises to finish up this day’s plotlines within the first season. I expected that last part, but I thought it was unusual for the show’s creators to let us know this right off the bat. Maybe they just don’t want potential audience members to worry that they’ll be dragging this story out forever. And it’s left deliberately unclear whether or not they’ll explain what’s causing the time repeating, although the other interviews that I’ve read suggest that it’s never going to be solved.Watching this second episode, I’m even more impressed with how neatly the pieces of the puzzle fit together. It’s clever how we see eve...
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I’ll admit it: When I first saw the commercials for Day Break, my initial thought was, it’s Groundhog Day meets 24! My second thought was, can a show really sustain such a cool but very specific premise over the long run? Groundhog Day did a masterful job of filling up a 100-minute movie with every single gag and philosophical insight that its writers could think of, but wouldn’t the well run dry after just a couple of episodes on a TV show?Now that I’ve seen the first two hours, I understand. The neat twist Day Break pulls on us is that there’s enough happening that the show would be interesting even without the time loop. Detective Brett Hopper has to find a key witness on the run, avoid being framed for the murder of a DA, tell his girlfriend and sister to get out of town or face serious consequences, get payback on the sister’s husband for abusing her, and generally figure out who’s behind the conspiracy to frame him and ruin his life. Got all ...
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Hopper fears that Jennifer is mixed up in the plot against him, but must first visit his estranged mother (Jenifer Lewis) to find out the connection. He suspects that his late father's involvement in the Contreras murder is at the bottom of it. Meanwhile, Andrea tries to find Fencik and Buchalter's ties to the plot, and Chad meets Buchalter. The meeting doesn't go well. Tobias Booth: John Getz.
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While trying to track down Detweiler (aka Shadow Man) at an exclusive men's club, Hopper runs into Garza's widow---who implicates him as her husband's killer. But in another version of the visit to the club, he discovers that he has something in common with Surfer Dude. And after Hopper tells Rita that he's going to receive a phone call in 20 seconds---and he does---she realizes that something very odd is happening to him, but he can't explain what it is without sounding like he's insane.
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Brett and Rita head up the California coast to visit her mother. Rita is unaware of Brett's predicament, but she won't be for long. And in another version of the day in question, Brett and Rita wake up in bed as before, only this time he has a bullet in his shoulder. Meanwhile, Brett learns whether he can trust Andrea.
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