Life, "Initiative 38": Little/big man

Belated spoilers for the penultimate episode of "Life" season two -- plus some non-spoiler-y thoughts from Rand Ravich and Damian Lewis on the season finale -- coming up just as soon as I run for Mayor...

"I need a bigger gun." -Charlie Crews

Sorry for the delay, but I didn't get to finish "Initiative 38" until the weekend, and I've been swamped with 16 other things. In fact, I really don't have the time now to be writing about it, but one of those 16 things was a conference call with Damian Lewis and Rand Ravich to discuss the season finale (which I have not seen), and I wanted to pass along a few of the things that came up, after first offering a brief take on the episode itself.

My comments of the post-Shahi-pregnancy episodes have been on lather-rinse-repeat mode, but there were improvements here. For one, with Gabrielle Union having a few episodes under her belt, she and Lewis are starting to work well together; Crews-Seever isn't Crews-Reese, but then, Crews-Reese wasn't Crews-Reese till at least halfway through that brief first season. For another, instead of stranding Ted in his own disconnected subplot (which Ravich admitted on the call that he hates to do), Ted got to be part of the attempt to find Dani, and Adam Arkin plays well off of Damian Lewis' wife.

Still, the murder case itself was as thin as most of them have been of late, particularly in the resolution. I just don't see how the conversation between the husband and the aide would be enough to nab either one, let alone both, on a murder charge.

But the brief glimpses of Crews (with help from Tidwell, Ted and, eventually, the mysterious Amanda) searching for his partner, and the realization that Roman is behind all of this, has me very geeked up for the finale, whether or not it's the end of the series (the more likely possibility) or just the season (hope hope hope). And speaking of which, a few paraphrased highlights from the call (in which Lewis used his native accent, to my surprise):

• Ravich said that he feels the finale will provide enough resolution to things that, "If this were it (cancellation), if I were a viewer I would not feel frustrated... There's still plenty of room to go on, still plenty of doors to open, but we do resolve a few things."

• Despite Amanda telling Ted that Olivia is somewhere in Italy, we won't be seeing Christina Hendricks again until/unless there's a third season. Sigh...

• Ravich said that, for the most part, the story arc of the back half of the season didn't change once Sarah Shahi got pregnant. The season was always heading to this ending, and they just had to rejigger things to get it to that point while Reese wasn't on camera as much.

• Neither man really has any idea whether there might be a third season. Ravich joked that "Life" might return as a series of 30-second interstitials during Jay Leno's new show.

• When one reporter asked for details on the finale, Lewis and Ravich went on a run of jokes about the "Life on Mars" ending. (Ravich: "He ends up on Mars." Lewis: "We've managed to work in time travel.")

Looking forward to the ending, whatever it is. Unfortunately, between the Passover holiday and the usual timeslot conflicts, I don't know exactly when I'll get around to watching and writing about it, but given the likelihood that this is the last episode of "Life" ever, I intend to write quite a bit more than I have lately.

What did everybody else think?