BWW Recap: FOREVER Youth is Wasted on the Immortal

The show about everyone's favorite immortal coroner really embraces its subject matter this week. This week's episode purportedly revolves around an "anti-aging" concoction that has the unfortunate side effect of eating holes into the user's brain. But the real theme is Henry Morgan's slow realization that there's more to life than just not dying.

As usual, the best part of the show is the relationship between the main characters. At the start, Henry and his son/companion Abe are discussing their off-kilter relationship. As the death-obsessed, unaging Henry froths with excitement at a scientific breakthrough that may lead to his understanding how to die, the elderly Abe dreams of being able to skateboard like a boy he watches through his shop's window. Abe is filled with the wonder of life, while he physically is an old man. Henry, young and healthy though he might appear, cannot accept the joys of his long, long life. Abe finds this quirk frustrating. Ioan Gruffudd and Judd Hirsch continue to make the odd relationship between these characters interesting, compelling and just a bit bittersweet.

To contrast that domestic unease, in Chinatown, an old man is mugged and his teenaged assailant takes off with the man's briefcase. The man not only chases the thief, but catches him and begins to pummel him, until the man collapses and dies. In the morgue, Henry finds out that the man has the body of a thirty-year old, but his brain is rotting. That caused his death. All he had in his stomach was liquid with some kind of hormonal mixture and a hint of vanilla.

This discovery sends Henry and his "partner" Jo off to trace the man's steps in Chinatown, into a state-of-the-art clinic that sells "youth, vitality and vigor" to its eager clientele for thousands of dollars a pop.

Once again, as seems to be the model with FOREVER, the mystery of the week is pretty flimsy. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to realize that the clinic doctor is a con man and soon to be the next guy on Henry's slab. The identity of the perpetrator comes out of nowhere. The motive is a little thin. But the mystery of the week is really the least important part of this show, which is increasingly a tour of the psychology of life.

It is Henry's obsession with death and the slow drawing him out of that obsession that is the best part of the series, by far. In this episode, Henry is forced to realize that even an immortal life can be wasted, if the time isn't taken to appreciate beauty and to seek for joy. In contrast to Henry and the bereaved Jo, Abe is the person who most embodies like, even though he is in his seventies. Henry comes to appreciate that he needs to be more alive and even begins to realize that he has to help Jo to get over her widowhood. Although it is temptingly clichéd to see a potential relationship between Jo and Henry, I, for one, like the dynamic of friends and partners for the pair (although how the police department allows a detective and a coroner to do field work together hardly rings true) and I hope the show refrains from tampering with that relationship.

And for once, Henry made it through an entire episode without dying. Believe me, that's a victory.

Interested? Here's a preview of next week's show:

Photo Credit: K.C. Bailey | ABC

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