B.D. Wong in Awake

Holy crow, one of my favourite shows, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, is undergoing a lot of cast member changes in their 13th season, airing 2011-12. We learned in May that contract negotiations for Christopher Meloni fell through so he will not be returning in the fall season. In addition, there were rumours that Jennifer Love Hewitt would join the cast since Mariska Hargitay would scale back to part-time. (Within the last few days, it was confirmed that JLH will not be joining the cast.) Then, a couple of months ago, I was watching previews for new shows and saw B.D. Wong pop up in the new NBC show, Awake.

For the past ten years, B.D. Wong has played Special Agent Dr. Huang, an FBI agent resident forensic psychiatrist and criminal profiler for the Special Victims Unit. His insightful analysis of the criminal mind is always the highlight of the episode for me since the way people tick sticks with you longer than the specific crime committed. Quite coincidentally, B.D. Wong will play another psychiatrist in his new show, by the name of Dr. Lee.

From the show’s promo trailer [YouTube], you see that after a car accident, Michael Britten (played by Jason Isaacs) is divided between two realities. In one reality, his wife survived the car accident but his son did not. In the other reality, his son survived the accident while the wife did not. The shifting across realities reveals to him events that precede crimes and helps him solve or prevent them in the other reality. I think that in order to hold himself together and perhaps solve the mystery, he starts seeing Dr. Lee in the “red reality” where his wife survived.

Awake is not quite the kind of show I would watch [yawn, another police drama]. While the procedural nature it will probably take seems to be a formula for success, I wonder about the supernatural element. We shall see.