I’m not gonna lie. There are three reasons I decided to watch Day Break, when first it premiered on ABC in 2006: Taye Diggs. Adam Baldwin. Mitch Pileggi.

Baldwin and Pileggi, as Jayne and Skinner respectively, had proven themselves eminently watchable, and I looked forward to seeing them back in tough-guy action—and in suits! They both do suits so, so well. And as for Taye Diggs… how hot is Taye Diggs? Unconscionably so! The man makes having two studs in his ears look positively… well, studly. I will watch Taye Diggs in anything. ANYTHING! (Yes, even Kevin Hill. Don’t judge me.)

Once I started watching Day Break, however, I found myriad reasons beside the incomparable Mr. Diggs and his co-stars to keep watching it. And when ABC cruelly pulled it after airing only six episodes, I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. I was so mad! There were so many other what-ifs to explore! Was Mitch good or bad? Was Adam? Was Taye gonna be okay? I was plagued by questions, and positively enraged that there would be no answers. And they made me learn how to spell (not to mention pronounce) the name of show creator Paul Zbyszewski for nothing! Nothing!

Since I was apparently the only person still wondering what the hell was going on in this mixed-up crazy series (why, people? Why?), the mounting of any kind of Save Our Show campaign seemed as fruitless as a Jerry Doyle bid for the Congress. (Better luck next time, Mr. Garibaldi!) Plus, what would we have sent in to the network? Alarm clocks? Happily, ABC did have the grace to put the final seven episodes of the series up at their .com, and so the 13-episode first and last season of Day Break came to a not-entirely-satisfying conclusion (but at least more of one than at the end of Episode 6, when Jen is in the car with a sinister, shadowy man who has just used the cruel and unusual punishment of one of his own hirelings as an object lesson in obedience. What’s going on Jen? What are you even doing there?)

Okay. The story. Detective Brett Hopper (Taye Diggs) has himself a bad day. He is framed for the murder of an Assistant District Attorney and is eventually thrown in jail, only to be taken from it in the dead of night, thrown on the ground of a peculiarly well-lit quarry, and shown footage of his girlfriend’s execution. This preview is followed by the meaningful sequel of a slice of his sister’s day; Hopper is told to confess to the crime or be really, really sorry. Then he is administered with a shot of something, and when he awakens… it’s the morning again! But not, as you or I might expect, the next morning, but the previous one. He gets to roll over in bed to see his not-dead girlfriend, Rita (Moon Bloodgood), and see the same bird, and hear about the same traffic accident, and before too long Hopper begins to realize that ALL THIS HAS HAPPENED BEFORE! He’s having the biggest déjà vu since Phil the Weatherman, but he doesn’t have time to learn the piano or how to ice sculpt with a chainsaw. He has to find out who killed Garza, who is now framing him, who kills Rita, who sent him the package and what was in it, who is following him, who hurt his sister, who his partner is making deals with, who is the Cigarette Smoking Man…

No, wait. That last one was a different Mitch Pileggi show

Anyway, suffice it to say, poor Brett has it tough. He is a good man in a bad, bad world, and everything and everyone seems to be against him at one time or another. He gets hurt in every conceivable way, and even though the day resets, the injuries are still there! Yep, Hopper’s wounds carry over along with his memories; with everyone else, it’s more feelings. They suddenly wake up with a need to call him, a desire to change their lives, even a mistrust of him, and this hardly seems fair.

Of course none of it is fair, which is usually exactly why I hate these kinds of wronged guy/girl on the run trying to prove their innocence things. Richard Kimble, Angela Bennett, the Prison Break boys, Shia LaBeouf in Eagle Eye; I get so frustrated at the injustice of it all, so furious at the sinister They who are orchestrating this whole web of malevolent lies and that I just can’t take it. I get so stomach-churningly anxious that I feel like I may be closing in on an apoplexy--and I’m not even entirely sure what a one of them actually is.

But watching Day Break, the stomach-churning anxiousness is there, the nearing an apoplexy thing is there… but I like it.

The performances throughout are utterly convincing, especially from Diggs, Bloodgood, Baldwin and Pileggi. Victoria Pratt proves how way too good she was for Cleopatra 2525 and Mutant X (oh, Shalimar--you do have a thing for the bad boys, don’t you?), and Ian Anthony Dale is a standout as an earnest homicide detective who sees through the conspiracy to blacken Hopper’s name.

This must have been a delectable feast of a show for the actors; they get to be the same characters in the same situations (even in the same clothes; seriously, there’s a bigger wardrobe budget on The Simpsons) over and over again, but in very, very different guises. Are they good, are they bad, are they with him or against him? Are they part of the conspiracy or part of the solution? Do they know more than they are saying or is this the last we’ll see of them?

Sadly, the 2-Disc Set of Day Break is the last we’ll see of Detective Brett Hopper. After only 13 episodes of deliriously engaging what the fuck? a new dawn breaks for Brett, his friends and his few remaining enemies, and I won’t deny that there may have been some ranting at the computer monitor as the series ended. Really, Zbyszewski? I demanded, not a little annoyed. Really?

Huh. I guess it was worth learning how to pronounce his name, after all.

SPECIAL FEATURES REPORT

Your pretty standard interviews and episode commentaries by the cast and crew, along with a Behind the Scenes I didn’t watch ‘cause I don’t like those things. In the interview with Taye Diggs, he almost immediately provides what can only have been the pitch for this series: “It’s The Fugitive meets Groundhog Day meets Memento.” Add Sliding Doors into the mix, and I think that almost fits perfectly. Oh, and the DVD box? Has to be the cheapest and worst package design since the complete series Battlestar Galactica box set. (At least with that one, you get a Cylon!)

  -- Rachel Hyland