We watched the pilot of Awake last night. (Free download on iTunes!) I follow a number of TV critics on Twitter and all of them have been waxing rhapsodic about this show, so I definitely had to check it out.

Having watched it, I know why they really like it. And unless something changes drastically in the next episode — not even the next couple of episodes, but the next episode; welcome to the reality of TV these days — I can also tell you why it’s doomed.

Awake is the story of Michael Britten, a homicide detective who was in a car accident with his wife and son. Since the accident, his life has split: he spends one day in a world where his wife lived and his son died; then he goes to sleep at night and wakes up in a world where his son lived and his wife died. You can tell which world he’s in because everything is either tinted very slightly green or very slightly red. There’s no mention of what happens if he takes a nap.

That, right there, is why this show is doomed.

While watching the show Darin said, “I got it. It’s Life On Mars meets Traffic. And the main character’s the one who actually died, right?”

I said, “That’s the most popular theory.” I’m not ruining anything for you there; if you look at Alan Sepinwall’s blog or Ken Tucker’s blog, everyone’s guessing that Michael Britten is the one who died in the car crash. It’s kind of like the trailer for The Sixth Sense: the kid says “I see dead people” as he’s staring at Bruce Willis.

“I hope they’ve come up with something better than that then,” Darin said.

The viewing audience has seen more hours of narrative storytelling than were available in the entire history of the world up until a few decades ago. If you present the audience with a puzzle, they’re going to try to figure it out, and they’ve had lots of practice. If you make the solution an easy and obvious puzzle, they’re going to say, “Seriously, that’s all it is?” Because one viewer might be stupid, but collectively they’re pretty damn smart.

So, at the very least, you have to give them a fun ride until you get to the conclusion.

The two most obvious shows to compare this to are Life On Mars and Lost. Both of which dealt with fairly heavy issues (c’mon, a plane crash! these people’s lives were complete messes! how were they gonna survive!) — as I joked when I watched it a number of years ago, Life On Mars really did have the most feel-good ending ever! — and they had puzzling situations that may or may not have resolved to viewers’s satisfaction.

But. But.

Both of them also had a sense of humor.

Which Awake sure as hell did not during the pilot. Oh my God, it was so somber and dreary. Everything was so serious. It was like an entire symphony played in a minor scale. Newsflash: Nobody wants to tune into a show that’s a damn downer in every way every week.

I kept thinking about the scene in Lost where things go terribly wrong with the dynamite, and it’s both shocking and sad, because a character we liked got killed. Later, when Hurley says, “You’ve got some Arzt on you,” it’s both tragic and hilarious. We’re not happy the guy is dead, for crying out loud, but that line was funny.

A guy sitting in not one but two therapists’ offices (newsflash: therapy sessions are a lot less interesting than writers want everyone to believe) being somber and upset about the fact that he’s either a)living in two universes or b)deeply schizoid without acknowledging the humor of the situation is just a turn-off. There’s got to be something else on TV to watch, and what do you know: the entire oeuvre of drama ever is available to us now.

The pilot does give us one intriguing question — both therapists mention something about the accident that Britten knows wholeheartedly is false. So that makes the ride a little more fun. Depending on how we get through the rest of the TV we’ve got stored up, we might watch the second episode.

But if it doesn’t give us some emotional tone other than “Wow, complete bummer” and it doesn’t deal with (and dismiss) the idea that maybe the solution is simply that Michael’s dead (because your audience is smart, dammit), I’m not coming back.

Periodically (like, since 1996) I’ve done these recaps of what Darin and I have been watching, and while it might not be very interesting for you, it’s extremely interesting to me to unearth one of these things. “Oh yeah, Homicide. I remember that show. Kinda. ‘Detective Pembleton will see you in the Box now!'” Or… “Dexter. ZOMG that show got so bad. Is it true they have him hooking up with his sister now (and she, of course, is played by his ex-wife)?”

We still buy all of our TV from iTunes and, with the exception of having (so far) missed out on Homeland, we haven’t felt we’ve been missing anything. I also have no idea what day or network any show airs on any more. If that vision of the future doesn’t strike fear into the hearts of TV execs, I don’t know what will.

In no particular order:

• The Simpsons. Yes, still. It is SO HILARIOUS this year. There was one episode that made me go, “GAH, they have lost their MINDS,” but the rest of them have been so funny all season. “The Book Job”!
• The Good Wife: Darin’s been watching this for a while and I started watching it with him. Basically: Alan Cumming. Also: really good writing. But mostly Alan Cumming being extremely awesome.
• Modern Family: It’s amazing how funny they make such ordinary situations. We watch this with the kids.
• Doctor Who: Well, duh. Matt Smith is The Man. The whole family watches this.
• 30 Rock: Alec Baldwin is probably certifiably insane in real life, but MY GOD he is ridiculously talented. He could read the ingredients of dishwasher detergent and I would laugh so hard I would cry.
• Community: Craziness, banality, hilarity, and wow, am I going to miss this show. The kind of chemistry Danny Pudi and Donald Glover have is unbelievable.
• Futurama: This show misses the mark more often that it hits it, but we’re still fans. I’m not sure what that means.
• Sherlock: Benedict Cumberbatch is also The Man. I’m not sure what it means that The Man keeps showing up in Steven Moffat shows.
• Leverage: This is our “Put something on that requires absolutely no involvement whatsoever” show. If we have nothing else in the queue, or we’re tired but don’t want to go to bed, we watch this.
• Chuck: Or rather, we would watch this, except the current and final season isn’t on iTunes. Why they wouldn’t put a show nerds would love on iTunes, I have no idea. Eventually I’m going to forget to keep checking iTunes. Alas.

Eventually we’re going to watch Game of Thrones, The Wire, and Treme. We’ve bought them, we just haven’t watched them. Whenever Darin says, “You want to watch The Wire?” I feel myself tensing up. This blog post from A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago speaks to me.

(Wow. Looking at that list, I’m quite surprised: I thought we watched more one hour dramas than we do. I can’t think of what I might have missed, however.)

Darin also watches Mad Men (is this still a thing? it was cancelled about 14 years ago, right? ’cause it hasn’t been on in forever*), Justified, Louie, The Killing, Children’s Hospital, and Family Guy (current winner of the “Easiest way to make Diane flee from the room” award previously held by Curb Your Enthusiasm). Yes, he watches more TV than I do: he stays up later, and when he can’t sleep he watches a few shows. When I can’t sleep, I play Civilization IV.

Darin watches Glee with Sophia and Parks and Recreation and Burn Notice with Simon. I used to watch Burn Notice, but the overarching story arc got so drawn out and so complicated I just…lost interest, Bruce Campbell or no Bruce Campbell.

Darin also watches Batman: The Brave and The Bold, Star Wars: Clone Wars, and Adventuretime with the kids. They asked me to watch Adventuretime with them once. It was the weirdest and most off-putting thing I’ve seen in a while. “You like this show?” I said. They told me I’d watched an exceptionally weird episode. I was not convinced.

We are also re-watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer with the kids, who enjoy it a lot (except when Buffy and Angel or Xander and Willow start kissing (we’re in the third season, natch)). It’s amazing how many of the episodes and how much of the dialogue has stayed with me after 14-15 years. What a fabulous show this was, and they did it on a budget of some baling wire and gum.

It’s ridiculous how hard it is to find a show all four of us can watch together. Most family shows are either moronic (we watched a few eps of No Ordinary Family until I said, “I can’t take it any more, this is too stupid!”) or have really inappropriate stuff that is completely unnecessary. If anyone has suggestions for family fare with two kids who are smart but are still, y’know, kids, let me know. I would love to come up with an idea for a non-moronic family show: I’d be fabulously wealthy.

(And yes, I know we could get Homeland and the new series of Sherlock By Other Means. If someone happened to drop a DVD with those shows on them at my front door, I would not say No. But Big Media can figure out who’s torrenting what, and it’s not worth the tsuris for me to do it.)

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*I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this, but yes, yes, this was sarcasm. I know it hasn’t been on and why.