Awake , NBC’s new fantasy crime drama, just had its pilot episode leaked uploaded online by NBC, two weeks before it airs. You can watch the entire 43-minute opening episode below! For nothing! Legally!
Serving pilots up early is not a new tactic to NBC. Earlier this year, the channel also made the opener to musical drama Smash available early for public consumption.
However, this remains a relatively novel marketing technique for the industry as a whole. The benefits seem pretty obvious. Create a buzz online, have word-of-mouth perform its magic, and let the TV critics (who, as it happens, love Awake ) file their reviews even earlier than normal, leaving more time for people to read about it before the big TV debut. It makes one wonder why this is only happening now.
Awake , which already has a biggish marketing campaign and a pretty juicy timeslot, focuses on police detective Michael Britten (Jason Isaacs). The series opens with a violent car crash involving Britten’s wife Hannah (Laura Allen) and his son Rex (Dylan Minnette). From this point, the bereft police officer shifts between two realities: in one, Rex survived while Hannah is dead, and in the other, Hannah survived but Rex did not.
Throughout the first season, Michael attempts to keep both his wife and son alive, which leads to him living a ‘double life.’ Strange links also begin to appear between the two realities …
Anyway, see what you think of the pilot episode (embedded below). If for some insane reason you wish to wait for the TV version (maybe you plan to watch with family, I dunno), Awake premieres Thursday, March 1st at 10:00 on NBC.
