Category Pop culture

SouthLAnd: heart of darkness

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Six episodes in, SouthLAnd isn’t letting up the pace: it’s only picking up speed.

Cop Or Not began with Lydia and Josie investigating a gruesome celebrity murder, while Cooper and Sherman and seemingly half the LAPD were forced to stand guard outside on a street full of celebrity addresses, warding off the paparazzi.

Cheo Hodari Coker delivered some of his finest writing in these scenes. He channeled his inner Tarantino by having the suspect, an actor, tell the detectives that he was starring in a Tony Scott remake of Shogun Assassin, and was being trained by Sonny Chiba. As a devoted believer in the fact that True Romance is the greatest movie ever made, I couldn’t help but love this. Sonny Chiba and Snoop Dogg references aside, this storyline was brutal, laying bare the dark glitz of Los Angeles, and showing us the reality of being a cop in the capital city of Celebrity. Cop Or Not was also notable for addressing the issue of Cooper’s sexuality for the first time since he came out to Ben: it did so in the subtlest way possible, just a brief shot of Cooper getting out of bed, leaving the man he’d spent the night with. The scene followed the SouthLAnd creed: no more, no less than necessary.

It was a strong, fast-moving episode. It hit the streets and ran hard, like Sammy in pursuit of his revenge.

“I’m back, m*therf*cker.”

There can be no doubt: this was Sammy’s episode, just as this is turning out to be Shawn Hatosy’s season.

From the early scene where Nate’s kid asks Sammy, “are you gonna get killed like my dad?”, it was clear that Cop Or Not was heading right into Sammy’s heart of darkness. As Sammy faced up to hitting the streets for the first time in six weeks in order to get the word out that he was back, we saw the terrible forces fighting inside him, thanks to Hatosy’s raw, De Niro-like stillness masking the struggle and conflict within. Or, as his ride-along partner put it, “you got that Sean Penn, crazy white boy thing going for you.”

When Sammy found out that he was the father of Tammi’s baby (“I’m the dad”), it was a gut-wrenchingly simple few moments that floored the viewer. You could feel the immensity of the emotions (finally knowing he was the father, knowing Nate wasn’t there to share the news). The sheer impact of this scene was thanks to the subtle artistry of three men: a typically tight and raw script from Coker, minimal, edgy direction from J.Michael Muro, and, of course, Shawn Hatosy’s acting: emotions roiling up from within, rippling across the surface as he struggled to contain them. Too much for one man; too much for the viewer.

By the time Sammy returned to the scene of Nate’s death, he couldn’t hold it together, and neither could we. When Sammy described the things Nate had taught him, as gangsters appeared on all sides, we felt the beauty and sadness of the things he was saying fighting against the dangerous volatility building fast. Sammy is a bad-ass detective, legendary on the force, but he was coming apart, coming undone; the forces of loss were breaking him. As he faced off against Nate’s killer, cops pulling up on all sides, the emotion overflowed. It was raw in the way that only SouthLAnd can be. “I ain’t goin’ anywhere,” Sammy promised the killer. We can only hope that’s true of Sammy, and of the show itself.

SouthLAnd: “Another f***ing happy day”

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What a season this is turning out to be for SouthLAnd. Each episode is an aggressive evolution from the one before, while still retaining the show’s core truths, values and style. It’s at the top of its game right now. Not that it ever wasn’t — it’s notable how strongly this show started with Unknown Trouble — but this season it’s powerhousing its way through complex storylines and brutal, unflinching character work.

If there’s a theme emerging for season three, it’s this: pitting the characters against the massive disintegration of their values, emotions, psyches and even their lives, in some cases. As a writer, you learn quickly: drama is conflict, great drama is high-stakes conflict — which pretty much makes SouthLAnd the reigning king of Shakespearean tragedy on cable TV. Everything the characters hold dear is f**ked with brutally and relentlessly. It’s like Hamlet with a shotgun and a badge, only the ghosts are real and never go away.

The Winds started and ended with John coming apart in the desert as the Santa Anas grew wilder. A bare, unforgiving landscape for his breakdown. Nelson McCormick directed this  — he’s becoming SouthLAnd‘s go-to director for the “disintegration” episodes, having previously handled Ben’s shattering revelations in Discretion. With a beautifully layered script from Heather Zuhkle, McCormick did an excellent job of bringing us into John Cooper’s complex world.

The episode could have been subtitled “fatherhood.” Cooper found himself inadvertently becoming a father figure to an abandoned child, in a series of low-key, moving scenes. Later, he aggressively stepped into the role of a missing father to a kid who called the cops because his mom beat him. And finally, he gave his verdict at his own father’s early parole hearing. His father was in jail for rape and murder, and John was as uncompromising as we knew he would be, despite the massive personal cost. Michael Cudlitz gave a heavyweight, authoritative performance this week, shouldering the massive burden of Cooper’s many demons and making you care, painfully.

The rest of the show was taken up with Lydia and Josie pursuing a series of rape cases, and developed their conflicts and partnership in a natural, seemingly effortless way. The two fought over policy, philosophy, technique, and I have to say that as great as Jenny Gago is as Josie, Regina King is a legend. It’s that simple.

The Winds had its moments of comedy too, best of all being Dewey and Cooper arguing over whether one victim “hanged” or “hung” himself. Dewey lost it and turned to Sherman: “Google it, Boot.” Needless to say, Cooper was right.

Of course, we couldn’t forget what happened last week: Nate’s death haunted the edges of this episode, and when Dewey asked Cooper if he was going to the funeral, Cooper responded with, “yeah, another f***ing happy day.”

Which could be the subtitle to this entire series. The Los Angeles streets are tough, brutal, unforgiving, and SouthLAnd does a tremendous job paying tribute to those who serve there.

A wild, feral beauty

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With its most recent episode, “Casey Casden,” the US version of Shameless has found its own authentic voice, blasting its way out of the shadow of the UK version, to which it had been staying remarkably true. The storylines are still for the most part the same, but there are minor, subtle variations, a set of low-key differences that have accumulated and evolved into a unique, stand-alone personality.

The Chicago setting is great: rough, raw, uncompromising in a much tougher and larger way than the original Manchester setting (sorry, Manchester!). When the cops come out with choppers and SWAT teams, it’s just more convincing here.

But that’s not what makes this version, that’s not what really makes it tick.

It’s Emmy Rossum that gives the show its wild heart and lonely soul; her feral beauty strikes at you, demands you notice it. This is the role she was born to play. The character of Fiona is key to the entire show, just as she was in the UK: in this remake, Rossum ups the ante and drags every scene out from under her costars, whoever they are, however brilliant and magnetic, charismatic or compelling they may be — doesn’t matter, because Rossum is providing the soul that Shameless is utterly dependent on. It is a wild ride, chaotic, unruly, beautifully so, but it needs this soul for you to buy into its unhinged brilliance.

Episode 4 was the one that turned the corner, when the show began to hold its own in the face of Rossum’s raw and heartbreaking truth. The storylines had punch and accereleration, and they ratcheted together to move forward hard and fast, deftly and solidly. The family was drawn into the scheme to return a toddler that youngest daughter Debbie had, inadvertently, stolen. Elsewhere, Lip and Ian were trying to steal a water heater, and neighbor Kev was trying to work out how an off-hand comment had led to the quickly-spreading wildfire news of his apparent engagement to Veronica. It was tightly scripted chaos, making its way through the complex character work and reverse heist plotting with ease.

All the storytelling elements dovetailed in just the right way, and suddenly, wonderfully, we saw the true power of the ensemble. Not just the actors, but the writing (by Cindy Caponera), directing (Todd Holland), producing and soundtrack song choices. With this episode, Shameless exploded into life, exceeding the promise of the pilot and the fascinating and entertaining second and third episodes. It came into its own, setting up a more assured trajectory for the remainder of the season.

Southland will break your heart (spoiler)

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It was almost too much. Maybe it was too much. Code 4 came to an exhausting, traumatic end with the simplest of shots but the most raw, devastating moment in the show’s history. It was an absolute emotional savaging for the viewer.

Written by Will Rokos, directed by Felix Alcala, this was the tightest episode of Southland to date. It had everything you would want from an hour of TV drama: the humor was rawer, more visceral; the emotional reversals came hard and fast; the highs were higher, the lows were worse. And that was before the end, when we watched Shawn Hatosy and Yara Martinez come apart in each other’s arms. Just a held shot of the two of them, gasping for air, struggling to breathe with the absolute fact of what had just happened. The death of a partner, friend and husband. Grief is handled in many different ways in television shows. I’m not sure I’ve seen it handled like this, in its most unfiltered form. It was awful to watch, and I mean that as the highest possible compliment.

Hatosy in particular was astonishing, delivering an aggressively compelling and forceful performance throughout, culminating in his flawless portrayal of Bryant’s emotional disintegration.

The way Code 4 was directed by Feliz Alcala was almost ethereal in its quiet intensity. The opening flash forward was haunting, just Sammy shaking, lens flare, a barely moving camera, and then the scream. By the time we reached that moment for real, the knowledge of what it meant was almost unbearable, and when the moment continued, even though we desperately didn’t want it to, it was emotionally horrific. Alcala stayed close to the truth throughout, and we felt it. One key example: as the helicopter flashed the spotlight on Nate, moments before the end, he held up four fingers, signaling “code 4,” no further assistance necessary. Such a simple moment, made brutal by what followed. Southland excels at such simplicity and poetically retroactive impact.

Will Rokos wrote a tough, unflinching script, finding time amongst the darkness for the funniest moments we’ve seen in this show, which of course made the ending much harder to handle. The writers have done an amazing job this season, and have consistently pulled off an extremely difficult trick: not only have they kept the show subtly serialized and moving forward, but each episode is perfectly constructed as an entry point into the Southland world. That means new viewers could join at any point and be able to jump right in. The writers have encoded each episode this season with enough information to key the new viewer in to the relationships, but they’ve integrated it so carefully that it doesn’t interfere with the flow of the show for regular viewers. It’s a clever move on the part of the producers, and it’s working. Ratings are up, and Code 4 (and the wonderfully loyal fans) prompted Southland to trend for the first time on Twitter. It seems very hopeful that this means good things for the show’s survival and renewal by TNT.

But Kevin Alejandro will be sorely missed. Southland‘s loss is True Blood‘s gain. Alejandro was such a great part of the fabric of Southland, and did tremendous work. Kudos to him for making Nate Moretta such a compelling, soulful, and popular character.

Southland: “Discretion” is advised

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Season three of Southland continues to go from strength to strength. After last week’s complex, multilayered, full-cast episode comes this week’s Discretion, a more dramatically compact, but much richer hour.

From the opening flashforward (“not every cop bats a thousand”) as Ben was hurled into the plate glass and we freeze-framed on the image of him amidst thousands of shards of exploding glass, this episode made its intentions clear. There was only one question to be answered: would Ben be able to control himself now that his mother’s rapist was back on the streets?

With a more stripped down cast, Discretion mined deeper levels of conflict and richer character nuance. Jonathan Lisco’s script was a gift for all of the actors this week. Everyone started the show at odds, in conflict, snapping and driving back and forth at each other as the narrative took us ever closer to the seemingly inevitable confrontation between Ben and David Morgan, the man who years ago attacked Ben’s mom, knocked out Ben’s teeth, and set him on course to become a cop. It was compelling storytelling throughout. Lydia sparred with her still-new partner Josie. Sammy argued with Tammi via phone, while testing his friendship with Nate (what a great pair these two are, and what great work Shawn Hatosy and Kevin Alejandro do together). And Cooper was pissed at Sherman from start to finish, with room for some great training officer moments. Michael Cudlitz had a great episode (he is batting a thousand this season), Shawn Hatosy did awesome, heartbreaking work, and Regina King gifted Lydia with more layers and nuances than ever before. They all had great scenes to tear into.

But it was Ben Mckenzie’s episode from start to finish, and he owned it. From his pent-up, barely contained rage at the beginning, through to his stalking of Morgan, and the brutal beating he hands out to the perp who sends him through the plate glass, McKenzie just gave us his Emmy episode. And that was before the crushing final scene, which was classic Southland: incredibly quiet on the surface, but driven by heartrending truths like dark, powerful currents. McKenzie killed it. If you thought last week’s ending hurt, it was nothing compared to what was effectively the complete dismantling of Sherman’s whole moral structure and the foundation of his actions and beliefs, in a few devastatingly quiet seconds. Southland has never been so simultaneously  low-key and gut-punching as it was in the closing moments of Discretion.

This episiode had the force of Ben going through that window, and emotionally speaking it ended like that opening freeze frame: thousands of emotional shards hanging motionless in the air. A horrific, shattering moment for Sherman.