Life – Oooh, Mrs. Garrett says a bad word and Charlie’s conspiracy goes sideways

Let it be known that the end of the first decade of the 21st Century will be known as the era of Charlotte Rae’s return to television. Oh, you may not know it because her hair is shorter (and whiter), but this 82-year-old actress has been popping up on some popular shows over the last year or so. Previously, she had a small recurring role on ER where she played a sweet old lady who baked pot brownies.

This week, she popped up on Life. At first, Rae’s character seemed like any other senior citizen swindled by hundreds of sleazoids who prey on our aged population. As we soon learned, she had a deeper, darker secret that she was keeping from Crews and Reese. That, and she had a potty mouth.

Not that she uttered one of the seven dirty words you can’t say on network television (which is probably only four or five right now). In fact, the word she spoke — prick — isn’t really dirty at all. It’s the context she used it in, calling a murder victim who swindled her out of a roof a “thieving prick;” that made it nasty. And funny, which was probably the writers’ goal in the first place.

As the mystery unraveled it wasn’t too much of a shock that Rae’s character, Mrs. Ford, could use this type of  language. Especially considering the darling son that doted over her had a tendency to rip people’s tongues out when they slighted him. It was his, er, slightly elevated temper that made him the prime suspect in this week’s case. None of us fans fell for it, though. As we know from watching endless hours of criminal procedurals the big bully is usually innocent in favor of the geek who grills chicken and ribs in his roofing storefront.

Meanwhile, back at the Conspiracy … things took a sidelong turn for Charlie as he tried to make further headway in determining who set him up for murder. The turn was courtesy of Mickey Rayborn, and not because he gave Charlie some important evidence about the Los Angeles Bank heist as well as other things (which we will hopefully learn about at a later date). Moreover, it was Mickey’s apparent demise that turned Crews’s mission upside down.

Sadly, even when you are cleared of a triple homicide people still think you have a killing instinct. So, when Rayborn was declared missing and the deck of his boat was found coated in blood guess who they immediately fingered? Riiiggghhttt! Now, not only does Charlie need to find Mickey (or his remains), but clear his name once again. Sigh … nothing is ever simple for Charlie.

My guess? Either Rayborn faked his own kidnapping so the others in his little cadre wouldn’t know he spilled the beans to Charlie, or one of his bank heist partners ended Mickey’s life a bit earlier than he wanted. In a more far-fetched scenario, Rayborn may have eaten the rest of Charlie’s fried scorpion, choked, cut himself with an exposed paring knife, bled out, slipped, rolled on the deck, and fallen into the water. What? It could happen!

In other news, I’m excitied about next week’s episode of Life, which pairs Crews up with his old parter Stark while Reese does some work for the Feds. Hopefully, this means the Reese-Tidwell storyline will take a break for a brief 42 minutes before making us feel icky the week after.

Clacked by Richard Keller
on Feb 20, 2009 @ 09:05 EST5EDT