The Steps

- Season 1

(2010)

Meet Charlie Madison - small-time Los Angeles PI, fugitive from justice, recovering alcoholic... our hero. Charlie starts off the first episode of the series forgetting exactly where he is, and ends it forgetting the cardinal rule for any man trying to lay low while his extensive legal troubles blow over -- never do illegal surveillance work for someone you don't know.

Charlie gets details from Gary about his supposedly wayward fiancée, Tamara Jenkins. Desperate for cash, and against his better judgment, Charlie agrees to Gary's terms, and even after a drug-fueled encounter with the Tremont Tavern bartender calls into question Gary's entire story, Madison can't help but chase down what appears to be a relatively easy and harmless score.

Sure, he's financially flush for the first time in weeks, but Charlie can't shake the nagging feeling that something about Gary stinks. He finds Tamara Jenkins, working as a coolly professional owner of a south side Art Gallery, as cryptic as she is beautiful; and later that night, he makes the shocking discovery that tells him he's in much hotter water than he ever could have suspected.

When confronting Gary with what he knows about the previous night's homicide yields only an icy dismissal, Charlie is desperate for an honest soul to connect with. That turns out to be Doris, a regular at Charlie's recovery meeting and a sober member for over 21 years. Whether her effort to reach out is strong enough to keep him sober is another matter altogether - one which he'll soon be hard pressed to ignore.

Los Angeles Assistant DA Timothy Simpson is in Chattanooga for business, not pleasure. He feeds Detective Phipps, a local homicide detective assigned to the bartenders case, some information from an anonymous tip that he hopes will land Madison in custody. If Charlie can keep his head on straight and out of the bottle, he might be able to think his way out of his sticky situation but thats a pretty big if.

Apparently, it's Charlies one-year sober birthday, so he honors the occasion with a cake, a candle, and a heartfelt expression of his honest gratitude to his fellow drunks in recovery. What follows isn't exactly what the program might recommend. Tamara proves herself to be the dangerous player Charlie always suspected she was, and a haunting memory at the end of his long night knocks him out cold.

Phipps starts taking a keen interest in this interloper from Los Angeles that Simpson told him about, and confronts Charlie with some pointed questions about his whereabouts on the night of the bartenders murder. Scared as hell, Charlie turns to one, then another member of his recovery group for guidance and help. But his presence on Doris front porch is no more welcome than it is in the city limits by the Chattanooga detective.

The life of a drug-dealing bartender without a car is complicated. You start your day diluting product and getting high. You walk to your supplier to pay off and re-up. You drop where you've been told to, you stash where you think is safe, and you get to work in time to start your shift. Maybe you end your day with some light reading. And the knock at your apartment door could be the last one you ever hear.

After strangely taking a chip for 90 days sober shortly after celebrating his 1-year birthday, Charlie decides to give Doris' son Jorge a ride home. It turns out to be a mistake that drives Doris into a vicious rage, while Simpson's attempt to prod Phipps into an investigation of Charlie appears to have hit a dead end.

Charlie meets Phipps in a surreptitious location in the dead of night, and their conversation hints at an underhanded collusion that defies the normal rules of surveillance and law enforcement. Later, confronting him on a dock alongside the Tennessee River, Doris asks for some straight talk from the troubled fugitive, and Charlie's emotional attempt to answer her drives Season 1 to its breathtaking climax.