Life - TWoP Forums p100 peepsRfun2eat: Also this was pages ago but people were comparing it to the only other show that I have actually told other people about was Veronica Mars. Reading the quote below made me realize just how much the shows are alike:
LIFE isn't really a cop show. It's about finding meaning in your life again after you've been destroyed.
...Of course it could turn out that Dani is his key witness but against her own father. And for as much as she hates her father she can't really hurt him. So that would make Dani = Logan; Charlie = Veronica; Ted = Wallace; The lawyer = Duncan huh ok this all works; The fruit (that we see Charlie eating every episode) = Back-up.

Finding the Zen in a TV detective | BostonNOW:
BN: What drew you to Charlie?
DL: I had no real reference points for this genre. The cop shows I grew up with were different but the ones I remember being most enjoyable were character driven, like Colombo, Kojack, Rockford Files, Magnum ... I found Charlie Crew's ability to deal with his past through deflection and humor, using these devices which I found to be humorous like his Zen ways, trying to apply that to his life and his anger control, to be interesting ... I don't think he's a very good Zen master (laughing) ... I thought it was an interesting point to start out from, having such a dark, bleak backstory, having experienced something that I hope most of us never experience, but approaching life with such optimism and joy, a sense of every moment being lived intensely and fully. I enjoyed the contradiction there, I enjoyed that he had found an antidote to his experience. He could be bitter, he could be vengeful, but he's not, he chooses to be open and enthusiastic.
BN: One of the things that make the show stand out is the pacing.
DL: It was always the intention to make it a character driven piece - it is an ensemble piece but it follows Charlie's story - the idea being that we should enjoy him and want to know what he's doing each week, and to that end they have the crime of the week along with the bigger over arcing crime, which is who set him up. The episode that is on Wednesday ...
BN: It's the one titled Farthingale, right? It's a fantastic episode.
DL:I'm glad to hear that. They wanted to steer away from just a regular procedural ... That's what drew me, I didn't want to be a part of just a regular procedural. This has an emotional life a lot of shows don't have and it also has, apart from this conspiracy thriller theme, it has something "other", something more poetic, and Farthingale, so far out of all the episodes, best presents that. It's very visual and almost dreamlike. The series when at its best has a dreamlike quality. It doesn't need to be naturalistic.
BN: Fans watching the show are getting to know Charlie but also wondering, "who was he before he had this terrible thing happen to him?"
DL: He is changed by an event is his life that enables him to have a rebirth. He comes out a radically different person. I think before he went to prison you can imagine he was just a regular Joe. huh. He went to the police academy, came out and wanted to be a career cop, have his two kids and a dog, own a house in the Valley with his beautiful wife. He was going to have a nice, ordered, and fulfilling life.
This terrible thing happens to him and he goes away to a maximum security prison for what he thinks is going to be for life, gets out after 12 years, and is altered radically by it. He's changed and he's changed for the better. after the end. the afterward. I don't think they should avoid the darkness of his story - I think his life there will always be with him - but the way he chooses to live after is a positive affirmation of his life. He wants to get the best from life, he wants to see the best in people, and in some way that gives him a childlike quality, sometimes a naivety. It's a choice he makes and I think that makes him kind of heroic.
BN: Can you give me a preview about what to expect for the rest of the season?
DL: Well you were just saying we were concentrating a lot on character, and we have been, but there's some very, very big revelations coming up in episodes 10 and 11. Before we get mid-way through the season you'll have some pretty satisfying answers about what happened to Charlie, who's behind it all, how high up the corruption goes, and start to get a sense of what was at stake.