The basic outline of the two-hour pilot is this:
Cop wakes up next to his hot girlfriend, who is the ex-wife of a character played by Adam Baldwin (Jayne from Firefly). Random small things happen which will allow him to recognize the day is repeating later on (like a pigeon outside his window, the traffic report, the score of the Dodgers game, a woman nearly being hit by a bus when he goes to get coffee, etc.). We quickly learn that his life is all sorts of messed up: his partner is being investigated by internal affairs, his girlfriend is getting frustrated he doesn't have time for her, his sister is apparently being beaten by her husband, and, oh yeah, he's being framed for the murder of an L.A. District Attorney.
He's arrested, told that they found the murder weapon in his apartment with his prints on it. He argues against it, and gets a few pieces of information, but in the end he's processed and put into jail without bail. That night, thugs come in, knock him out, and drag him to a rock quarry where a mysterious bad guy and his thugs shows him a video on a little palm computer -- a video of them shooting his girlfriend. Taye Diggs flips out and swears he'll stop them, and the villain just says that if he doesn't want anything unfortunate to happen to his sister, he'll take the fall for the crime. Then they inject him with a needle, and he drifts to unconsciousness as the villain slowly repeats, "Remember, every decision has a consequence. Decision . . . consequence. Decision . . . consequence."
Then Taye Diggs wakes up next to his girlfriend again. He's weirded out, but thinks it was just a dream, until he starts noticing stuff repeating. He also still has the wounds he got yesterday from the beating by the villains' thugs. He tells his girlfriend to go some place safe, then proceeds to try to dispose of the murder weapon, only to eventually be caught by the cops again. It becomes clear someone is watching him and setting him up, but this time he manages to escape because he knows where the weak point in their prisoner escort is. He runs and meets up with an informant who was trying to reach him the night before this all started. Unfortunately, that guy's problems don't seem to involve either time repeating itself or him being framed for murder. Then thugs of the villain show up, kill the informant, and capture Taye Diggs.
Once again they show him a movie of his girlfriend being shot, and tell him to take the fall. They inject him with a needle, and the villain repeats his mantra.
Day three begins, and Taye Diggs clearly knows what's up and what to expect. He is determined to make sure the woman he loves survives, so he takes her out on a road trip up the coast, trying to avoid the whole problem. He calls his partner to tell her what's going on, though so far he doesn't try to explain the whole 'day repeating' thing. Before long, bad guys try to take him in by blocking the road, but Taye Diggs is a bad-ass, and he kills a bunch of them with some sweet SUV-driveby-gunslinging. In the process he gets shot, though, so he and his girlfriend hole up in a motel so she can patch him up (she's an ER nurse). In the process, he tries to explain what's going on, and she only sorta kinda believes him.
Before long, the wheels of the villains go into motion, and thugs go after them. Meanwhile, the cops are cued in to his location by his partner (who tries to cut a deal with internal affairs), and the whole thing culminates in a gunfight at the motel between the three different sides. Taye Diggs' partner is shot and killed, but he manages to escape with his girlfriend. They just keep driving all night long, and finally, at 6:17am exactly, while he's still driving his SUV, the sun rises, and he's in his bed again. This time, though, he has a gaping bullet wound in his shoulder, and no handy bandage to stop the bleeding. His girlfriend wakes up, finds him in a pool of blood, and freaks out.
When Taye Diggs wakes up this time he's in the hospital, being treated for blood loss. He's getting really pissed now, because he clearly thought that the whole time loop was somehow related to him being injected by the villain's thugs, but that didn't happen this time. The same two cops come in to arrest him, but his girlfriend (an ER nurse, remember) ushers them out, then listens to Taye Diggs' story and his plea for her to help him. Before the cops know what's going on, he and his girlfriend have escaped.
This time around, he tries to figure out some more clues. There was a strange voicemail on his answering machine, saying that a package should have been left for him, so he decides to try to get it, though he knows his apartment is being watched. So he and his girlfriend stake out the place, and eventually she volunteers to help him distract the cop who's watching it. Whatever she does, she's effective, and Taye Diggs gets inside, but there's no package, and his mail (which he had already picked up twice in previous days) is missing.
"They must've taken my mail," he says. "I'll have to get it tomorrow."
This confuses his girlfriend, but made me grin. It was good to know that the main character is adapting quickly. Then, the two of them head off into the night, and the episode ends with his girlfriend's ex-husband (Adam Baldwin) calling her and telling her to turn herself in. Taye Diggs hangs up and throws the phone away, saying the call is probably being traced. We cut to her ex-husband, and see that he's meeting up with one of the villain's thugs.
DAYBREAK
