[TV] Awake

The episode opens with detective Michael Britten (Jason Isaacs), who is at therapy sessions with Dr. John Lee (BD Wong) and Dr. Judith Evans (Cherry Jones). Having fully recovered from his injuries, Michael recalls the night that he and his family were involved in a serious car accident. He reveals that every time he goes to sleep, he is conflicted between two realities; In one reality, his wife Hannah Britten (Laura Allen) escaped alive but his son Rex Britten (Dylan Minnette) is pronounced dead at the accident, while in second reality, Hannah died in the accident instead of Rex.

Michael is trying to juggle his lives in the two realities, and wears a red rubber band on his wrist in the Hannah reality and a green one in the Rex reality. In the Rex, or green, reality, Michael has noticed that Rex has focused a lot on tennis lately, as it was his mother's sport. Rex's tennis coach Tara (Michaela McManus) has been talking with Rex lately about his feelings, and Michael may develop feelings for her. In the Hannah, or red, reality, Hannah is trying to write the late Rex out of their lives, wanting to move and try for another child.

Michael has a different partner in each reality. In the green reality, his partner is Isaiah "Bird" Freeman (Steve Harris), while Efrem Vega (Wilmer Valderrama) is a uniformed officer. In the red reality, Efrem is his newly promoted partner, while Isaiah has been transferred to a different precinct. Michael starts to realize that things can transfer from reality to reality, as the clue "611 Waverly," pertaining to a case, is shown to Michael in one reality before it helps him save a girl from being murdered by a quick change serial killer in the other.

Both Dr. Lee and Dr. Evans attempt to diagnose what is going on with Michael. They both see it as a coping mechanism, and both insist that the other reality is a dream. To try to prove this to Michael, Dr. Evans has Michael read a part of the United States Constitution, as if that reality was a dream, Michael couldn't have done so, unless he had memorized the Constitution. The fact that Michael had alcohol in his system the night of the car accident also comes up, with Dr. Lee hypothesizing that Michael has this dream because he feels guilty for killing his son.

At the end of the episode, Michael comes to the conclusion that he wants to live with both of his family members. As he goes to sleep in the red reality, Hannah (who Michael has told about the green reality) tells Michael to enjoy Rex, and to tell him she loves him for her. Then, Michael goes to sleep, transferring to the green reality.

Conception

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Kyle Killen devised the concept of the series, which was originally titled REM. It was described as a "procedural hybrid that centers on the simultaneous and parallel lives of a detective who can't let go of any aspect of his fractured family after a car accident". Killen previously created the American drama series Lone Star (2010), which was cancelled shortly after airing due to low ratings. NBC picked up the pilot episode for Awake in February 2011. Killen stated that the cancellation of Lone Star was a good platform to explore new ideas for a potential television show. "I think it had some things in common with the last series, Lone Star, and when that ended, I think probably some of those questions of duality and trying to make a go of living a life in two spaces was still floating around in my head. So that was something that was still of interest to me, and this seemed like a good vehicle for exploring a lot of that." In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he further elaborated on the conception of the series: My wife is an ER doctor and she once had a patient whose chief complaint was that they were covered in worms. And she went in to to see him [and] it was a 23-year-old guy who seemed completely sane, who remembered his name, what year it was but was totally convinced he was covered in worms and couldn't understand why other people weren't reacting to that. It stuck with me how reliant you are on this little piece of material between your ears and what it tells you is real is what you think is real. I had the idea and been interested in someone who couldn't tell the difference between their dreams and reality. And I think I had a lot of stuff I was still playing with when Lone Star went down. Killen sought inspiration from the dreaming process. Killen said: "the concept of the way your dreams feel real, the way you seem to experience them as something that you don’t blink at until something crazy happens that sort of bursts that balloon. I think I became interested in the question of what if nothing ever popped that balloon? What if you couldn’t tell the difference between when you were awake and when you were asleep? And then I started looking for a way to marry those two ideas up, and a few months later we had Awake." Jennifer Salke, the president of the entertainment division of NBC, encouraged Killen to conceive a concept for a future television series after the cancelation of Lone Star. Within a few week, Killen sent a rough draft of the script to his agent Marc Korman. "It was 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning, and I remember I was so freaked out by the script that I went upstairs to our guest bedroom where my wife was sick with the flu and I got into bed with her," recalled Korman. "I called Jen and said: 'I'm telling you, this script is remarkable. I've never read a pilot like this, and for a guy who has never written a procedural show in his life, he's actually making two cases work." Initially, Salke and Korman looked to sell acquisition rights to Fox. Although it successfully made its way into the lower executive branches of the company, the script was declined by entertainment president Kevin Reilly, who felt apprehensive upon reading it. Gary Newman, chairman of 20th Century Fox Television, opted not to develop a deal with cable television networks. "We read it and really believed it was a network show. I just don't accept that the difference between cable and network dramas is how smart it is." Howard Gordon was chosen as the showrunner for the series. Gordon commended the pilot script at first glance. "I read the pilot, and once I got past my envy, I was struck by the voice," he stated. "So few writers have real voices. Kyle is disarmingly self-effacing; and at the same time, he's disarmingly confident. It's that duality thing: On the one hand, he's open; on the other, he's closed." Gordon later compared the television series to The Good Wife. He said, "With The Good Wife, there are procedural aspects, legal aspects, so many personal stories that they have to decide every week what format they'll do and how they'll fit all that in. With Awake, the question we ask ourselves is, why is this an Awake episode? How do you leverage the unique conceit? In some ways, [the premise] flies in the face of storytelling, in which you usually have a beginning, a middle an and end." The pilot episode was written by Killen, and directed by David Slade. Principal photography for the pilot commenced at Fox Studios in Los Angeles, California.

Casting

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In February 2011, Jason Isaacs attained the role of Michael Britten, the central character of the series. Gordon summated the premise of the character: "He's a guy who goes to sleep, wakes up, he’s with his wife, goes to sleep, wakes up, and he's with his son. And so — and he's a cop who sees clues and details that crossover from one world to the next, and he uses that insight to solve crimes." Killen thought that the premise behind the series would be relatable to audiences, making it easier to broader his fanbase. "I think there were aspects of Lone Star that were more difficult to get a wider, broader audience interested in," he articulated. "[The main character] was somebody that you couldn’t decide if you liked or hated, and I think that Britten's dilemma is something that we’re not only sympathetic for, but somehow we want him to win. The succeeding month, Laura Allen was approached by producers to play Hannah Britten. Michaela McManus initially received the role, but was later given the role of Tara, whom Allen originally auditioned to play. Dylan Minnette was cast as Rex Britten, the son of Michael Britten. Minnette commended the episode's script, and noted the auditioning sequence was fast. He stated, "The process of getting the job actually went by really fast because the first audition Kyle Killen [...] was in the room, Jason [Isaacs] was in the room, the cast director was in the room and the director was in the room. David Slade. And they were all there, for the first audition and I was like 'Wow! Okay.'" Minnette received the role two weeks after his audition. Other cast members include Wilmer Valderrama, Steve Harris, who both play Britten's partner in both realities; Cherry Jones and BD Wong serve as the therapists of Britten in both realities. Wong chose the role in lieu of his position on the police procedural television drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

Writing

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Killen avouched that writing the episode's script was one of the more difficult processes of creating the series. He and his writing team would often get confused with exchanging and executing ideas for the script; as a result, they created outlines and distinguished them in green and red ink. Slade edited the language to better separate the ideas. "So the things that are initially confusing to us when we are just trying to break story, I think by the time they reach an audience, so much attention has been paid to how to make it clear where you are that all of the little tricks that we needed sort of go away. And hopefully when you see it on the screen, you are pretty instantly oriented as to which world you are in." The complexity of the script of the pilot episode and the show's concept was cited as a potential issue for the series. Salke evaluated the series as a Sliding Doors–like concept. "The implications of this are complicated," Salke opined. "But we think that the viewers will get hooked into the clever mythology in the way the stories overlap and affect each other in very interesting ways." Upon reading the script, Isaacs felt that it was "incredibly hard" and complicated to comprehend. "Do you always know what reality you're in? [...] That's become a [gift]. It was hard but I quite like hard work." Isaacs later suggested that it might be too brooding for mainstream American television, and that it could potential be the "U-bend of scripts". He stated: "Every pilot that’s made comes from some people with amazing prestige. They're all a big word thrown around town and they’re everybody’s favourite project and then no one ever mentions them again. Lots of fabulously talented people, and the head of the network chooses only one. But do I want to move here? Do I want to put my kids in school here? Is that what I really want?" Despite such concerns, Gordon asserted that the concept of Awake was a "fairly gettable concept once you sit down and actually pay attention to it. And whatever learning curve there might be, we hope it’s a shallow one.

Ratings

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"Pilot" was originally broadcast on March 1, 2012 in the United States on NBC. Upon airing, the episode obtained 6.247 million viewers despite airing simultaneously with Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC, and a rerun of The Mentalist on CBS. It acquired a 2.0 rating in the 18–49 demographic, according to Nielsen ratings. It became the highest-rated non-sports telecast on NBC in its time slot in over a year. "Pilot" was the second most-viewed television program in its time slot for the night, attaining significantly higher ratings than Jimmy Kimmel Live but considerably lower ratings than The Mentalist.

Critical Response

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The pilot episode was well-received by television commentators. Rachel Ray of The Telegraph called the installment "impressive", while Tierney Bricker of E! Online commented that he "instantly fell in love with the storyline of one man living in two realities in order to stay with the people he loves." NPR's Linda Holmes asserted that "Pilot" laid the foundation for several emotional storylines, ultimately evaluating it as amongst the strongest showings in recent memory; "This is a richly interesting narrative, and it's worth watching closely, and if you do that, it's entirely digestible. It's also beautifully acted and written, packed with genuinely vexing questions about grief and dreaming, and—of all things—thoughtful." Holmes added that it was very engaging in contrast to similar television shows. James Poniewozik of Time noted that while its concept seemed melodramatic, the episode "focuses unflinchingly on the subject of loss, yet manages to be not a downer or painful to watch, but moving, absorbing and even hopeful." Poniewozik affirmed that the telecast effectively solved the issues that were raised about the series. He wrote, "Awake handles the confusion problem well: yes, it takes more concentration than a Law & Order, but it’s no Inception in its twistiness. Michael himself needs to hold on to markers to anchor his sense of reality—for instance, he wears a red and a green wristband in the existences in which his wife and his son are alive, respectively—and those help us follow along too." Reuter's Tim Molloy avouched that the episode was the "best new show of the season": "Despite the most complicated narrative since ABC's Lost kept skipping through time, Awake makes a fast, emotional connection that gives viewers an almost immediate stake in the lives of its compelling characters." RedEye journalist Curt Wagner stated that "Pilot" was well-written and perfectly acted, and BuddyTV writer Laurel Brown called it a "great episode". In his A grade review, Todd VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club said that the episode was a "great piece of televised art", describing the script as "witty, warm, and soulful". He wrote, "David Slade's direction conveys the emotional world of the show so well that you could watch it on mute and grasp most of what’s going on. In particular, Slade's use of color—of reds and greens and blues, meant to boil the show's complicated premise down into a visual aesthetic—is so wonderful that a whole article [...] could be written about how he suggests places where realities overlap and intertwine, just through placement of a red scarf. At the end of the episode, you'll leave feeling like you've seen something unique and wonderful, something worth watching every week in an increasingly crowded television landscape." "Pilot" was highly anticipated by Los Angeles Times journalist Robert Lloyd and Cinema Blend writer Kelly West, with the former observing that "it promised to be one of the year's best and most interesting new series." West said that "Awake is certainly a must-watch and intriguing TV for those in the market for a well-written, well-executed drama with a twist." Some commentators were less enthusiastic than the general consensus. Writing for The Washington Post, Hank Stuever felt that despite having high ambitions, the pilot episode was slow and drowsy. Critics lauded the casts' acting, specifically Isaacs' performance. VanDerWerff concluded that the casts' acting were "delicate and almost perfect", while Wagner felt that Isaacs epitomized the lead role and could easily captivate the audience; "his touching, solid work grounds everything. He shows viewers what lengths one man in pain might go to hold onto those he loves. And it's heartbreaking." Denise Duguay of the Montreal Gazette thought that Isaacs evoked a reservedness and ambiguity that attracted viewers to his character. Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter echoed analogous sentiment, writing, "He perfectly conveys a man struggling with two horrible options." Poniewozik iterated: "Isaacs is utterly compelling: mature, soulful and wearied. Literally, he never gets a rest, and must deal in one reality with a son acting out from rage, in other other with a spouse who is moving on at a different pace, and in different ways, from him." Although Stuever opined that Isaacs failed to engage the audience, he praised the performances of Wong and Jones; "Jones and Wong [...] are excellent and even vaguely sinister as the dueling shrinks." Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly was keen to Isaacs' acting in the episode. "It helps enormously to have Isaacs playing the lead. This actor knows how to convey a gravity that contrasts well with the series' airy concept, but he avoids becoming heavy and morose." West summated that the cast "really couldn't be better on this series"; "Isaacs [delivered] a stellar performance as the intelligent detective, and loving father and husband who’s just trying to make sense of what’s going on and probably not entirely regretful to be experiencing a split reality. Both Wong and Jones are fantastic as the curious therapists. I already wish there were some way we could see these two on screen together. Meanwhile, Laura Allen and Dylan Minnette also deliver strong performances as Michael’s wife and son respectively. As do Wilmer Valderrama and Steve Harris, who play Michael’s partners.