1.9 6 A.M. I’ve commented previously about how New York plays a major part in Forever, like it’s an extra uncredited character. In 6 A.M. they take that analogy a little further, by using New York’s associations with Jazz as the connection, while trying to make some interesting parallels about being passionate about the music of your youth. A young man declares he’ll prove an injustice and ends up barbequed in his car for his troubles. He’s the son of a failed jazz musician, and all the clues lead back to a famous track, 6.A.M., that’s attributed to another long-dead performer. As with a few of the previous murder mysteries, this story is less about the actual resolution of the crime, and more about the journey. Especially, how it relates to Henry and Abe, and their widely different musical interests. Amongst the sleuthing, gory autopsy stuff, and time-lapse of the Big Apple, Lorraine Toussaint (Lieutenant Joanne Reece) gets to insert her dry personality into proceedings, and poor Lucas (Joel David Moore) is treated like the bore he’s becoming. Like a familiar piece of traditional jazz, there’s a comfortable slippers aspect to proceedings, where you know things will work out in the end, if only we give them 42 minutes. Where things sort of unravel is when you start thinking about the dates and times that the story infers, and they just don’t add up. Lucas tells us that the evidence-critical tape pre-dates 8-track, which I recall was the mid-sixties. And, the jazz flashbacks are set in the mid-fifties. One might reasonably conclude that 6 A.M. was written in roughly 1960. That would make his daughter 54, or 25 years older than her brother. And Tia Dionne Hodge who plays Ella isn’t remotely that old even if her IMDB bio leaves her exact age out. As if to highlight how little thinking went on about how these things fit together chronologically, Jo hands Henry a copy of Izzy’s driving license, declares he’s 29, where the birth year on the document states he’s 31! That’s pretty sloppy. So while I really liked the ideas behind 6 A.M., those behind Forever need to try harder in the historical beats, rather than just trying to wing it, jazz style. Read Billy’s review of the previous episode, The Ecstasy Of Agony, here. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
