December Talking Meme 4 - Crews and Reese

[grimorie]

For Shes-a-voodoo-child: Crews and Reese

There was a time in my life from the duration of 2007 to 2009 where I was enamored with a show called Life, lemme tell you, one word titles that could mean anything is hard to google for, especially when it just started.

How did I start watching this show? I started it because vonniek wrote about the show and I became curious about it, I wasn't interested at first because Life seemed such a generic title for run of the mill procedural show, but it caught my initial interest because of Damian Lewis and I was a fan since Band of Brothers.

And then I started watching.

You have to understand, when I started it, there were several episodes under its belt so all I had to do was download and watch.

Then my life was never the same.

Charlie Crews

I'm going to start with why I like these two individually and why I love, absolutely love them together.

Charlie Crews was a cop, wrongfully accused of murdering his best friend's family with only a little girl, Rachel Seybolt as the only survivor of the massacre. After a decade in maximum prison. A cop in maximum prison Crews was released when they found none of the physical evidence matched his DNA.

Then his lawyer, Constance Griffiths turned around and sued the city of LA and won Crews his badge and an undisclosed amount of money (spoiler alert: it's $50 million) from the city.

No one liked Charlie back in the LAPD, most people think he's out to screw the department and has a hidden agenda.

They're not wrong.

Also, they're not entirely right.

Because Charlie Crews was a good cop and he liked being a cop even though he hates, or grew to hate cops but for all the time in prison being a cop is what he held on to and so when he left prison he ran back into becoming the one person he thought he was and should be.

All his time in prison also made his perspective invaluable, he knew or saw things from a different perspective not only from a criminal perspective but from a perspective of someone who was studying (or a lot of times failing at practicing) Zen.

A book of Zen helped keep Charlie's sanity, it also keeps his enormous well of rage and anger at bay.

Charlie's a dichotomy. He has anger in his heart but he also wants peace, he can't find peace unless he finds the people responsible for putting him away.

I think this best exemplifies Charlie:

Ted: “Charlie, what’re you thinking about ?”
Crews: “I’m thinking about what I want, and what I need.”
Ted: “What do you want ?”
Crews: “A peaceful soul.”
Ted: “And what do you need?”
Crews: “A bigger gun.”

Dani Reese

Dani: " You have no idea how far down this goes do you? You think you’re bad? You think you got a demon inside of you? You don’t even know what that means."

Detective Dani Reese is a second generation cop, daughter to the LAPD's legendary Captain Jack Reese.

She's a cop by her own merit but that's never stopped some people from implying she got into the LAPD because of her father. Dani is also a daughter of two worlds, she's a daughter of an American father and a Persian mother. She grew up in a household where her father forbade her mother to speak to Dani in Farsi and yet her mother still taught her on the sly.

Dani grew up wondering if her father was mean or just plain bad and from every indication it seemed like Dani joined the LAPD against her father's wishes, got pulled into an undercover Narcotics detail before she even finished the Academy (which, in light of the events in season 2 might have been orchestrated), got hooked on drugs and fell so far she had to go to rehab but not before she was able to help Narcotics with their bust.

Her mentor and soon boss to be Karen Davis helped her into rehab where she got clean and Dani was transferred from Narcotics to the the LAPD's Robbery Homicide division.

Robbery-Homicide seemed to be the clean slate Dani was looking for until Davis assigned Charlie Crews as her partner and then she realized, again, nothing in the world is free. Everything has strings attached, and there's really no one she can rely on but herself.

But Dani is tough, she has the cop core inside her, she stapled herself back together and she has loyalty down to her bones, and a sense of justice that doesn't really jive with what's with the law and what's right.

When we first meet Dani she's been clean from drugs for 20 plus months, but she's lying through her teeth about her alcoholism and even considers herself a functional alcoholic, even implying that as a functional alcoholic, as she relates to Charlie through an alcoholic they've detained 'that functional alcoholics work better with booze.'

Dani also said all alcoholics/addicts were liars... which she was since she was going to AA meetings just because it was required by the LAPD, and going to a bar before going to a meeting, or after work.

The only thing Dani had going on in her life was being a cop, the only thing she held on to is being a cop. She likes being a cop, but she hates cops.

Its something she shares with Charlie, but initially when Charlie shared this with her: 'Being a cop is what I held on to.'

Dani noted that it 'sounded like a lot of crap.'

Except for the part that that was exactly what she was doing too.

Crews and Reese

One plus One equals One

Lt. Davis put Dani close to Crews for only one reason, and the reason was so Dani would rat out Crews. Davis thought because Dani owed her, because Dani needed this for her career, that she would give up anything incriminating Crews would say or do so the LAPD will have grounds to kick Crews out of the Department.

Except that wasn't what happened.

Except that even though Davis watched Dani grow up and helped her along her career Davis lacked the fundamental understanding about Dani.

And that was, Dani Reese is a loyal person. A fiercely loyal person. And, whoever put Dani as an undercover cop to rat out people she had to befriend knew nothing about Dani, or knew her too well to know what would break her.

Because Dani is an excellent detective, and she has eyes, and she knows a damned good cop when she saw one. In a life filled with mean cops, corrupt cops, and cops willing to sell you down the river Charlie wasn't any of those things.

As for Charlie, the whole time in the pilot he was waiting for the shoe to drop with Dani. He was still fresh from prison, his anger is still close to the surface and Dani could see that.

Charlie knows Dani could see that but it almost seemed like he was helpless in shoving that anger down, he could barely contain his anger.

He also seemed convinced that Dani was going to let him down, he's almost predicting it , especially when Dani all but telegraphed she was questioning him about his motives for returning to the LAPD. He told her a half lie: That he was a cop, and that was what he held on to.

(He didn't know then that it was Dani's truth too, that she was a cop and while undercover, that was what she held on too. Through the drugs, through everything that entailed, Dani held on to being a cop.)

There's a moment in the third episode where a perp pretended to be a lot more hurt than he really was and Dani protected Crews and there was this look on his face, like he didn't expect it, that Dani would protect him.

Ever since he was thrown into prison almost everyone he trusted threw him under the bus, except for his lawyer who fought to free him from prison, and now Dani Reese, who he barely knew.

"Don't protect me." Charlie told Dani, as he admitted that he did draw a knife instead of his official side arm.

And he really didn't want Dani to protect him, because at that moment and for all the moments after he never wanted to drag Dani into this crusade that will eat up his life.

The third episode was also the episode where Davis realized Crews and Reese make good partners.

Davis realized it on the third but it started on the first episode and through the course of the season Crews and Reese began building this rapport, especially in interrogation where they could pick up the thread of conversation or a line of questioning before the other gets to finish. They were, in current pop culture speak, very much Drift Compatible.

Crews and Reese also has the best partner building dynamics I've ever seen and that's including Sherlock and Joan. And all done without even directly addressing it, its all done in the silences, in the pause, in opaque third party conversations.

It starts with Dani's realization that Charlie is a genuinely good cop. He's a cop in the vein that she was a cop, that they were there for the right thing and not necessarily the lawful thing, that they both had the old Western Sheriff mentality over the city the bled for.

For Charlie it began at the moment he realized that Dani was never going to betray him, or leave him, that if he goes too far the beaten path Dani will find him and bring him back. And, when she calls him, he will always, always answer.

And it all starts with a knife. A knife Charlie drew on a perp to keep him at bay, and a knife Dani confiscated with an ultimatum she wanted to make sure that her partner was a cop and not a con, and then several episodes after, after learning each other's methods and foibles, and after Dani used Charlie's own language to save herself and to get Charlie to help. After witnessing her own father storm into the station interrogating her partner, and easily dismissing their Lieutenant from her own office, and after seeing Charlie handle the pressure of being investigated.

And, after handling the pressure on herself after Davis broke Dani's heart by implying she was going to shaft Dani's career by planting drugs in her locker she realized that Charlie really is a good cop.

Dani returns Charlie's knife back to him.

This is all the tip of the iceberg in this partnership where its all about trust even at a distance. Trust and faith from two people who struggled for both.

But most of all the thing that binds them together through all of this is that they are both striving for light. In a world that's piled so much darkness in their lives, that broke them over and over, they are still trying to find that grace, that gentleness that was taken from them.

It's why they prefer the wide open space and driving around the streets of LA, or sitting over a bluff to look over the city in daylight and just talk or sit in silence.

Honestly, I could go on and talk about them for 2000 words more but... uh, there's a word count limit but also, its late. Instead I'd like to recommend two vids that encapsulate Dani Reese and Charlie crews perfectly:

(Fair warning: spoilers up to season 2)

Children's Work by LithiumDoll

You've Got the Love by Starsblazing.

Rest of the December Talking Meme

Comments

[lycomingst]

That was great; made me want to watch the series again. 8 ]

[grimorie]

Glad my post inspired to watch again!

[musesfool]

<333

[grimorie]

:)))

[d_generate_girl]

<333333333 I love this and I especially love that you pinpoint your love of Crews&Reese to the knife scenes, which were both so lovely and so perfectly played. And I agree, these two are among the rare partners whom I love both together and separately.

[grimorie]

Thank you, I really loved the Knife Arc, as I call it because its such a perfect short hand for the way they were building their trust. And this show was such a gem and I loved Reese and Crews so much!