Is Life the Best New Show of the Season?

Definitely possible. The premiere was good, but there were definite flaws, but the potential was there in spades. With the first full week of major fall show premieres behind us, we are starting to see which shows have that something special to them. Life appears to be the real thing.

The lead character, Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis) will take some getting used to. At times he is too quirky, very into Zen, something he picked up while in prison, and can quote something. But the truth is, you can't expect an innocent man not to do something to try to keep himself sane. This one read up on Zen. This is possibly the biggest flaw of the show thus far, and it barely mattered as you got more into the show.

There's a ton to dig your teeth into. Including:

- The major thread that will be present throughout the show - Who set up Charlie Crews? There are quite a few possibilities as we saw at the end of the show in Charlie's command room in his new mansion where he is tracking his own case. What is clear is that he was set up by someone within the department, which makes him working there very interesting in just about every way imaginable. No one backed up Charlie when he went down for murder, not even his partner defended him. And his wife divorced him while he was in jail. So, who set him up? Was it one person or a group? Was it people he worked with or was it the head honchos of the department? What was the motive? Charlie intends to figure all of this out.

- Charlie's new partner Dani (Sarah Shahi) appeared to be a detective that got drew a bad assignment with her new partner but we soon realized that something must have happened to be punished with this assignment. It wasn't long until we found out a number of things about Dani. She looks like an angel, but she's far from it. A lietentant in the department also asked her if she was "working the steps" which means Dani must have some sort of addiction. We also discover that Dani is the daughter of a detective as well and it looks like the lieutenant who is checking up on her was the partner of her father. A few scenes later, Dani had a one night stand with a guy whose name she didn't know and didn't want to know at what looked to be a cheap motel. When Dani skipped out of the motel room we witnessed a bunch of empty bottles on the table, suggesting that Dani hasn't gotten rid of all her bad habits. Add to all this that, when they were chasing a suspect later in the show, cocaine got on her and she basically freaked out until she could run to a shower to wash the cocaine off her face.

- The same lieutenant that was checking up on Dani, was also trying to get any dirt possible on Charlie from Dani, looking for the smallest thing that would be cause for Charlie to be dismissed from the police force. Then, in the last scene of the show, we discover that this lieutenant, well, she is on Charlie's wall of suspects.

- Charlie appears to have quite a few "dates" with women of questionable morals, which seems understandable under the circumstances, making up for the 12 years of time he lost behind bars. Then we meet Charlie's attorney Constance Griffith (played by Brooke Langton) and from the one scene we see between Charlie and Constance, we know their relationship goes far beyond attorney and client. There is a serious possibility that these two are already in love with each other and just fighting it because they definitely have a connection and awareness of one another.

These are just a few of the things that intrigued me from one episode. Are you seeing the possibilities? I haven't even mentioned that Adam Arkin is playing the CEO convicted of white collar crime, who befriended Charlie in the slammer and now manages Charlie's new wealth (courtesy of his large court settlement for wrongful imprisonment), that Constance wants Charlie to get in touch with his father (Charlie refuses to because he blames his father for forbidding his mother to visit him in prison, which he thinks caused her death), and that Charlie is hung up on his wife and enjoys harassing her new husband by abusing his role as a cop (pulling him over for doing a 40 in a 35 mph zone or some such similar nonsense).

This feels like it is going to be quite a ride and I'm going to stick around and enjoy it.