IN REVIEW: AMAZING STORIES (S1 – EP4) – Signs of Life

Synopsis: When her mother awakes from a six-year coma, teenage Alia struggles to reconnect with this stranger who can’t remember her old life.

The Story

When Alia’s mother awakes from a six-year coma. She finds that her mother Sara has changed and become both distant and secretive. Added to that Sara has awakened from the coma and is able to speak fluent Spanish. Things get a little more complicated when Wayne comes into the picture who is supposedly an old friend of Sara’s, which Alia does not remember having met. As things unfold it becomes obvious that Sara’s body has been taken over by a completely new personality and is planning something with Wayne also turns out to have awoken from a coma.

The Acting

Sasha Lane puts in a superb performance as Alia who is key to this story having the impact that it does. The scenes that Lane shares with Michelle Wilson who plays her mother Sara are brilliantly performed by both actors. Wilson does a great job of showing us the distance between this mother and daughter as well as a touch of personal conflict as the entity within Sara gets flashes of memories that Sara has of raising Alia. Josh Holloway also lends this story some intrigue as the mysterious Wayne and does pretty well to keep the mystery going even though I had pretty much figured out what was going on a good 35 minutes before the plot reveal.

Overall

‘Signs of Life’ does a mixed job of telling its story, but the pacing of the story was rather mixed with things being rather slow one minute and like speedy Gonzalas the next. All the actors played their parts well. Particularly Sasha Lane and Michelle Wilson who have a lot of screen time together. We also get a nice guest appearance from ‘Star Trek: Enterprise’ and ‘Bosch’ actor Linda Park who plays the Doctor who treats Sara.

Overall. I feel I have seen stories like this done a little better than this.