Adam Baldwin

Uneven ’Day Break’ fails to illuminate

There are days - and stories - you just want to end.

The story driving Day Break is neither original nor sensible, but it is, at least, potentially diverting: A cop is doomed to keep reliving the same day until he can figure out who’s framing him for murder. That’s not a bad idea. But it’s an idea for a movie, not a weekly series - even one that is scheduled to run only 13 weeks.

That’s the plan, anyway: ABC wants Day Break to fill this Wednesday spot until Lost returns in February. Unfortunately, spend two hours tonight with this murky, muddled serial, and you may already feel as if you’ve been trapped in this day for an eternity.

Which means, I fear, TV is once again wasting the charms and talents of Taye Diggs, an appealing actor who still seems to be one good role away from superstardom.

Here, he’s Detective Brett Hopper, an L.A. cop who wakes up to find he’s framed for the murder of an assistant district attorney. He scrambles to absolve himself, hindered by his bitter ex-partner (Adam Baldwin) and aided by his current partner (Victoria Pratt).

Alas for Hopper, his first try at the day does not go well, and he’s dragged off to a quarry by the head of yet another of TV’s shadowy, all-powerful secret conspiracies. (These people are so overworked, they need to unionize.) "For every decision," he’s told, "there’s a consequence" - the worst of which is the murder of his girlfriend, Rita (Moon Bloodgood).

Then he wakes and the day starts over, with Hopper now determined to change his and Rita’s daily fate. He, however, is the only one whose memory and physical ailments carry over from one day to the next, which cumulatively has to hurt.

Hopper’s first do-over is fairly entertaining, as he discovers that every decision does indeed have a consequence, and that progress on one front can make things worse on another. But by its third variation, the show has already exceeded our interest in a trick that just grows more confused and tiresome with each grim repetition.

Nor does it help, of course, that the show has all the logic and character development of a video game, with Hopper trying to get from one level to the next. And like a video game, the show gleefully kills and maims characters at will, only to have them bounce back.

Yet despite its attempts to manipulate time, timing may be the show’s fatal flaw. In a season in which people already have shown a lack of willingness to commit to crime serials, Day Break is too late and too much. It’s hard to imagine how anyone who doesn’t watch every episode could possibly figure out what Hopper is doing, because they won’t know what he has already done. And this is a show ABC thinks can hold the place for Lost?

Gimme a break.