The Sixth Inception: An Analysis of Awake Episode 1.01 by Pearson Moore

Wife in red, son in green. Does a widower mourn in the harsh blue-green light of day, or does a husband seek refuge in red-hued dreams to assuage guilt for a son’s death?

The premise seems simple enough, and ought to suffice for rich examinations of the unending complications of the human psyche. Awake poses a dilemma, nothing more. In one state we have red wife Hannah; the confrontational shrink, Dr. John Lee; the conniving, untrustworthy partner, Vega. In the other state we have green son Rex; the warm, inviting shrink, Dr. Judith Evans; the always-faithful partner, Freeman. Only one state represents reality, the other state purely a dream. At the end of the season—or the series—we will find that Detective Michael Britten mourns his son, or has buried his wife. That’s the single mystery of this series, and each episode will provide clues leading to the final decision point in this dramatisation of psychological dilemma.

Perhaps a choice between the red-hued warmth of a wife’s embrace and the blue-stained chill of a teenage son’s love-at-a-distance is the only pivot point in Michael’s life. Detective Britten will wake one morning with green wrist band, flick Dom Cobb’s tractricoid top into a steady spin, find it still spinning at the end of the day, and realise his son’s tennis games were naught but the hope and prayer of his delusional mind. Perhaps.




Writers’ Trilemma

Awake can proceed in one of three directions, it seems to me. Michael’s struggle with split-reality could serve as nothing more than the latest spin on the dead-horse genre known as the procedural. Britten becomes the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of the Law and Order/CSI-SVU/NCIS crowd. Better than House and The Mentalist, because he broods and issues commands no one understands not in just one world, but in two realities. It’s like having Columbo and his neatnik twin brother—both in the same episode, both solving crimes, both in certain ways blind…

The second possibility is the construction of a multi-layered psychological mythology. Awake, if it follows this thread, becomes the grand mystery ending with therapist, wristband totem, loved one, or detective partner solving the grand dilemma and allowing Michael to give up false dreams and accept full reality. He will no longer need totems, because he will be inhabiting the real world.
If the writers choose to navigate either of these two streams their course is clear and none of us will require navigational aids to keep up with the story. But if they choose the third stream—the wild, turbulent, exciting third stream—we will be in for a real treat. It is this Third Way that I wish to address this morning, in the wee hours following this first episode of a most intriguing television drama.

Three Strata

The wristband totem brings to mind the five-level dream world of Inception, but the structure of the first episode, with its dueling psychologists, causes me to think on the parallels to an earlier film dealing with altered states of consciousness. While Inception sought drama in rich, five-tiered depth, the 1999 film I’m thinking of found depth in the simplest of ideas.

I am not at all convinced that Awake is aiming for an Easter egg-laden mythology akin to the polar bear-infested jungle we knew during our six years on Jacob’s Island (LOST). This evening I performed the due diligence one would expect of any LOST fanatic. I analyzed the critical Constitution speech: Article I, Section 2 of the United States Constitution, starting at the 78th word, ending with the 109th word, exactly 31 words, beginning with “The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several states…” I compared this to the two parking stalls, #572 and #611, exactly 39 units apart. No correlations. No numeric motifs of any kind. No “$23,000 reward” for apprehension of fugitives. There is simply nothing in the numbers—so far—that jumps out at me. Episodes later in the season may betray trends established in this episode, and we will have to be open to these possibilities.

What I saw in this first episode reminded me, more than anything else, of the strange reality that faced another psychologist, Dr. Malcolm Crowe, as he tried throughout the movie to come to terms with a child’s Sixth Sense. It was not what I saw, though, so much as what I didn’t see, that took my breath away.

We never saw either of Michael’s partners with either Hannah (Michael’s wife) or Rex (Michaels’ son). We never saw the psychologists with anyone other than Michael. In fact, we saw only one person (other than Michael) who was present in both realities and behaved the same under both red and blue-green lighting conditions: Detective Freeman. Going further, we gleaned solid evidence of crossover between the two worlds only in Michael’s police work—with one glaring exception I will address later in this essay. On the one occasion in which Rex may have at least run into one of Michael’s co-workers, Coach Tara volunteered to drive Rex home so that Michael could proceed immediately to the crime scene—thus averting any connection between the Rex World and the Police World.

What I’m suggesting is the possibility that as many as three separate strata, and as many as six different psychological conditions, may be co-existing in Michael’s reality. The Police World may be distinct from the Therapist World, and the Loved Ones’ World(s) may be separate from either of the two (or four) other worlds. Michael spoke of wanting to act as a bridge between Rex and Hannah, but he is already the single bridge between the Police, Therapist, and Loved Ones’ worlds.

I am not suggesting that Michael will awake (!) one day to find that both wife and son are alive and that he is dead (à la The Sixth Sense). What I am suggesting is that Awake may be more complicated—or simpler—than we currently believe, and that the core of the series may have nothing to do with the mystery of which reality is real and which is the fanciful construct of a mourning or guilty soul.

Compartmentalisation

If I am correct about the presence of more than two realities or psychological constructs, I expect we will begin to see crossover between the Rex and Hannah worlds, or the Dr. Lee and Dr. Judith Evans worlds. Rex will communicate something about Hannah that she had never shared with either her son or her husband, or Dr. Lee will provide some bit of incontrovertible proof that Hannah is alive—something Dr. Evans (the psychological protector of Rex’s World) will be unable to dispute. I expect delicious, inexplicable events along these lines because we are already seeing them in the apparently opposed worlds comprising Michael’s police work. This will not provide relief from the psychological befuddlement, but will actually exacerbate the problem, since we will see no evidence of any possible reconciliation of the two worlds from any of the evidence provided.

What I foresee, then, is something along the lines of koan—a condition that cannot be logically explained. I expect to see this because if the point of this series is not the dead-horse (and boring) procedural investigation and solving of crimes, and it is not aimed at the development of a mythologically rich world consonant with the theme of psychological maladjustment, then the series must be geared toward something else entirely, and something for which logical dead ends are not problematic. If the writers are boldly attempting the Third Way, koan is not a problem, it is a way of exploring ideas much richer than those associated with simple dilemma. The destruction of the present state of compartmentalisation, in such a case, will not bring us to resolution of the dilemma, but instead it will lead to even richer paradoxes that defy any logical approach.

Engagement

Engagement is an important theme in an excellent current television series, Game of Thrones. I believe the theme may become important to the development of Awake.

That Michael may be suffering a severe form of psychosis as a means of dealing with pain or guilt or some complicated mixture of these could prove interesting—at an arm’s length kind of way—for a few episodes. If this is all the writers seek, they could have accomplished any meaningful exploration of the idea in a two-hour movie. There is a story there, but not a great story. Similarly, if Michael adjusts to his split-reality, there is a story, but not a memorable or unique story. The first season of Awake will be its last, and no one five years from now will recall more than vague, nostalic little anecdotes from a failed attempt at serial drama. “Yeah, they used a one-word series title, just like ‘Lost’. Didn’t do ‘em any good, though.”

This series, it seems to me, will have to concentrate on the problems that are the result of his multi-tiered psychological construct. If Awake is to become a great series, it will have to make those problems not only relevant, but vital to every single person watching. The supreme state—a groundbreaking series—will be achieved if the questions posed by Awake become so compelling that we can no longer speak of ourselves as mere observers, that we are obliged to consider ourselves participants in the drama. Drama becomes metadrama, and Awake becomes integrated into our collective culture and our individual psyches.

The foundations for one of these vital themes, I believe, has already been laid in tonight’s episode. Michael’s problems do not revolve around psychosis. The evidence so far presented tends to support the conclusion that the locus of Detective Britten’s suffering is not an inability to face reality, but an inability to deal with multi-faceted reality. To put this in plainer language, Michael’s real problem is that he does not engage.

Lack of engagement is something Michael shares with just about every husband and father watching the show tonight. Even those of us fortunate enough to live under the same roof with a wife and son (as I do) rarely make time for common meals or friendly discussions with our spouse and children. We might as well inhabit different psychological realities, entirely separate from each other, for all the time we give each other.

When Michael is with his son, he’s thinking of his work. “I’ll see you at home. I won’t be late, I promise.” Oh, the next scenes—in which Michael worked late and broke his promise—struck home. I spent my son’s childhood in the lab—sometimes until midnight or later. Sometimes, for stretches as long as a couple months, I came home when my children had long been in bed, and I left for work again long before they would wake.

When Michael is with his wife, when she is trying every trick she can think of to get him to fully engage with her, he instead withdraws.

Hannah: So, what do you think [about getting pregnant]?
Michael: I think we should think about it for a while.

Michael does not share his wife’s dreams. She survived the accident—or he wishes to believe she survived—but he will not share his most intimate thoughts with her. He certainly must have a reason for wishing to avoid confronting her request with his inner reservations, but rather than engaging at least to the point of honestly expressing his misgivings, he tries at all costs to avoid the issue. “Let’s think about it for a while.” That is, let’s talk about something else, and by then maybe you’ll have forgotten about this unpleasant lark.

Thematic Prioritisation

If engagement is a central theme, which is not at all certain yet, it could provide a basis for reducing the importance of the psychosis theme. Michael’s resistance to psychological reconciliation could be seen as a subset of his greater failure to engage. Most of us who have assumed the burdens and joys associated with marriage and parenthood know that disengagement, absentee parenting, and loss of intimacy between husband and wife are not problems unique to Michael’s unusual situation.

All of us have had to deal with most or all of these issues at one time or another in our married parental reality. Even those who have never had children or have never married are painfully familiar with loss of intimacy or other forms of disengagement. At the primal level of our identity as human beings, we need to engage with each other. Awake could become a means for all of us to confront ideas and situations around the notion of engagement. Other themes could explore equally vital aspects of the human condition and force our closer involvement (engagement!) in the series.

A False Dilemma?

Hannah is bathed in warm yellows, oranges, and reds. At times tonight both she and Michael seemed to glow. But her words, actions, and behaviours were anything but warm. She wants to move. She can’t deal with the “empty room upstairs”—Rex’s bedroom. She wants to get pregnant, and right now. She wants to go on a trip. She doesn’t want to hear about Rex, and has fits—dry-eyed fits—whenever Michael begins to talk about him.

We might reasonably interpret Hannah’s disposition as that of a grieving, mourning mother. But the first impression I took away this evening was quite different. It seemed to me that Hannah was not so much grieving as competing. Rex is the sole focus of Michael’s attention in what she understands as his dream world. She is not a part of his dreams—only Rex is. Making matters worse, she will without question be aware that Michael is becoming increasingly distant from her. He doesn’t want to leave the house, doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to travel, doesn’t want to get pregnant—in fact, he shares virtually none of her dreams.

There’s something strange about her reaction, though. We can understand her behaviour as a combination of grieving and self-interest, as I tried to portray her words and actions in the discussion above. But why was she not crying over Rex or Michael’s dreamtime obsession with Rex? There’s something entirely unnatural about that reaction. Hannah’s condition, in fact, does not seem to be consonant with any of the states we might expect of a mother who has just lost a son. The strangeness of her behaviour again seems to point to the possibility that some reality other than Michael’s psychological bifurcation into splintered reality and unreal dream state may not be the true condition forming the basis of Michael’s world.

Two other events give me pause. The first was Michael’s wristband experiment, in which he intentionally left the green band on his wrist when he retired in the Green/Rex World. When he woke, he found not a red wristband, but no wristband, and the green colours and harsh intensity of light all around him seemed to indicate he continued to inhabit Rex’s World. I was surprised when Hannah appeared. The lighting clues are subtle, and I may have misread, but I am going to be paying close attention to clues in brightness and hue as the series progresses. Again, though, the result of Michael’s wristband experiment seemed to scream the possibility that something else—something unrelated to a decision to invoke a split reality—is at play in Michaels’ reality.

Finally, I note the very peculiar event on the final morning we witnessed, when Michael passed by the small television. He was puzzled or shocked or dismayed or in some other way unpleasantly transfixed by the demonstration or protest he saw on the small screen. What was the significance of this demonstration? Why did the director take pains to show us Michael’s concern with the events on the television? I saw in the televised demonstration no obvious connection with his police work, and no direct correlation with anything in his personal life. Yet Michael was practically mesmerised by the display.

I have no answers, but many questions. Why did the director choose a vantage point that prevented us from seeing the car’s final resting place after careening down the cliff? The implication is that there are important aspects of the accident that remain unknown to us. But what could these things possibly be? Is the name Weaver important, or was it chosen merely for its symbolic importance (weaving threads between the two realities, and so on)? Do the numbers 611 or 572 bear any significance? Is Waverly an important name? What of Weaver’s identity as the “costume killer”? Is this a simple indication again that Michael is carrying out his own costume party in his mind, or is Weaver’s ever-changing wardrobe indication of some deeper connection to other concepts as yet undiscovered?

I have no answers, but I am intrigued. I will look closely at next week’s episode, and I promise to share with you at least some of my thoughts. Until then, don’t forget which wristband you’re wearing!

Pearson Moore
4:23 a.m.
March 2, 2012

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Pearson Moore is the author of LOST Humanity and LOST Identity and the editor of LOST Thought. Widely considered one of the leading authorities on the television series Lost, Moore was Featured Speaker at the 2011 Lost Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, and he has written over one hundred essays on the show.