'Life' ends -- at least for now

As it ends its season Wednesday night (April 8), NBC's cop show "Life" finds itself once again in limbo. The show's modest ratings, and the big schedule changes looming at the network, put it on the bubble for renewal again.

Like his main character, though, creator Rand Ravich is trying to maintain a Zen attitude about "Life's" chances. "You know, it's a crazy time in television. NBC is kind of figuring itself out," he says. "And those questions are certainly above my pay grade. But I do feel like I've always felt ... that creatively, we get tremendous support at the studio and network."

He also says he doesn't know how things will shake out when NBC implements its Jay Leno-at-10 schedule in the fall, joking that "we're going to play as, like, little tiny 30-second spots ... in between Leno and ['Today']."

What Ravich and "Life" star Damian Lewis do know, though, is that viewers who watch the season finale will come away with answers to a number of questions about the conspiracy that put Crews behind bars -- whether the show returns next season or not. Lewis and Ravich talked about the end of the season on a conference call this week; here are some highlights.

What can you tell us about the season finale?
Ravich: He ends up on Mars.

Lewis: That's what I can tell you about it, yeah. We all go to Mars. Finally we've managed to work in some time travel into the show, which we've been dying to do. ...

But things -- plot lines that people have followed the whole way through in terms of Charlie's own story come to a very satisfying conclusion on the one hand, whilst one or two of them are left unresolved, also in a satisfying and tantalizing way, on the other hand. In fact the last show concentrates almost entirely on that element of the story.

Ravich: Certainly last year we didn't know whether we were coming back as well. And so this episode leaves us at a very satisfying place, I think, emotionally and plot-wise for all our characters, where if this were it we would not feel ... I mean, I as an audience viewer would not feel frustrated. So there's still plenty of room to go on, there's still plenty of doors to open, but we do resolve more than a few things.

And really Crews' journey inward about searching for himself and searching for what happened to him opens him up to relationships with others. So ... he finds something on the inside and something on the outside in this episode.

Is the show done when Charlie figures everything out?
Ravich: No, the show isn't done, because of what happened to him -- and really we've gotten back to that -- what happened to him on that day 12 years ago and what happened to him in those 12 years of prison. And perhaps we did stray a little from that in midseason, but those are things that will be with him forever, and he will take that into every single situation.

And the conspiracy, the exact things that set him up and sent him there are resolved on one level here, but it does go beyond that. And so in an immediate mechanical sense, the conspiracy itself can go on certainly from this. But also, what happened to him will go on forever.

How did Sarah Shahi's pregnancy affect the storytelling this season?
Ravich: Sarah's pregnancy got us to the same place where we were going to, but we just had to take a different path to get there. ... We'd always intended on ending up in this place, with these characters in these positions, acting out these emotional arcs and with this energy, anticipated in this way.

But her being pregnant [meant] we just had to sit down very quickly and figure out a different way to get there. ... Once that drops on your plate you kind of throw a lot of things out the window and it allowed us to shake things up a little bit and be a little more free-thinking. But it only changed the production in the structure of it. I mean, the show [would have been] different if she had been in, you know, in a non-pregnant way. But the overall story and the overall direction stayed the same.

Are there things you still want to achieve with this character?
Lewis: There are so many -- Crews is so multifaceted. It's actually pretty satisfying playing him as it is. I think the more he is able to journey inwards ... and be at peace with himself, then there might be opportunities for some kind of more long-lasting human connection with other people -- because he's pretty -- he's a pretty peripatetic kind of character. He doesn't settle in one place for too long.

And I think it's always important just to keep revisiting the darkness of his character, the impact of the experience of being 12 years in a maximum-security prison. We have a commitment on the show to keep it light [and] entertaining with a comedic touch. And that's worked fantastically, and it's a lot of fun to play. But keeping those [darker] moments alive, I think, would be important.