Day Break

I am in the process watching the concluding episode of Day Break. This was a short lived series that ABC put on during Lost's midseason hiatus. It was meant to save the viewing public from the horror of Lost reruns. But Lost reruns, Lifetime movies of the week, and a test of the national broadcasting system all seemed more popular choice for viewers time than Day Break and it was quickly canceled. Yet that was not the end of the show. ABC kindly put every episode of the show that was produced on their website for free viewing. All 12 of them. Here is the neat thing though. What is available is unlike most quickly canceled serials. It is a complete story. Beginning, middle, and end. There is a real conclusion to the drama. All of the main plot lines are resolved by the last episode. With every episode available for viewing one after the other, Day Break becomes one 13 hour miniseries. A decent one at that.

The actual content of Day Break isn't half bad. It is easy to see why ABC thought Lost fans might like this show. It has a large cast of intersecting and overlapping characters, a vast and mysterious conspiracy, and central sci-fi twist. The main character of has show has to repeat the same day over and over again until he accomplishes some undefined goal. The one feature of the repeating day gimmick that I most appreciated was the choose-your-own-adventure nature of how the days played out. Just like the old Scholastic Readers, different decisions were available at each major plot points. Sometimes the decision chosen landed you on page 89 and a spot in a prison cell. Sometimes a decision would you past the point that landed you in jail but two more decisions later and you are back on page 89. You get to keep trying again and again until you figure out how to avoid dreaded page 89 or some other dead end. Besides the joy of seeing a childhood book come to life, it can not be understated the satisfaction it brings to actually get a honest to goodness satisfying conclusion to one of these mythology-laden mystery serials. Something we can't say for sure that we will ever see with Lost.

Day Break will certainly disappear from ABC's free viewer soon and will only be available (maybe) on DVD but, for now, makes for a very pleasant distraction. Especially during summer reruns.