Life, "Mirror Ball": The big bapple

Spoilers for last night's "Life" coming up just as soon as I try to avoid making a Sharpie reference...

Since Crews spends much of "Mirror Ball" trying to give Reese a nickname, I may as well come up with my own moniker for this type of episode, which featured a lot of good comedy, very little conspiracy arc content (they could have easily deleted the interlude of Crews studying Roman's photo without affecting anything else), but enough Zen qualities to feel like an episode of the show. "Life" Light? "Life" With Laughs? Doc?

I wouldn't want this level of wackiness every week, but when they do them from time to time (see also "Evil... And His Brother Ziggy" or "Badge Bunnies"), they can be almost as satisfying in their own way as the more epic episodes like "Trapdoor."

All the running jokes were working well in this one -- "Bapple?," the uncapping of the Sharpie, Doc, Patty the redhead's split personalities with and without the makeup -- and yet the case felt very much like a "Life" case, and the use of some of the greatest hits of the hair band era (particularly the epic piano intro on "Sister Christian") in lieu of the show's usual indie pop soundtrack was a nice touch.

I only have two complaints. One is my ongoing cringe reflex whenever the show uses too much of its cheapo green screen tech, as it did both during the opening car scene and in the montage of Jude wannabes showing up at Crews' doorstep. The other was the lame fakeout of Tidwell saying "You know I love you" to his bottles of booze as he poured them out. Reese's realization of what he was doing, and why, was a very nice moment -- one of the few that had me more than tolerating this whole relationship -- and yet the fakeout soured the taste of it for me. Tidwell's enough of That Guy that he might have some kind of running monologue as he poured out the liquor, but to use the exact words that would give Dani the wrong idea was just dumb.

Oh, and I almost forgot: big props to them for casting Patrick Fabian in a murder mystery and not having him be the killer for once.

What did everybody else think?