Tag Los Angeles

SouthLAnd: Taking the Heat

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The greatest SouthLAnd writers have distinctive styles and voices.

This week’s writer, Heather Zuhlke, excels at texture; the connective tissue between characters, between scenes, between themes. She can give you all you need to know about a person, a relationship, a situation, with just a few careful words and moments.

That skill with texture was key to Heat, as this episode was all about interactions; the webs that link one person to another, and how those bonds hold up when the heat, the pressure, is cranked all the way up. Those brief, fragmentary moments were even more important than usual in a show that thrives on an aggressively existential insistence on the importance of the present moment, and the irrelevance of the past and the future.

Whether it was Cooper and the girl who brought him muffins, or Cooper and Steele, or Cooper and the veteran, or Sherman, continuing his alienating trend of being a total dick to everyone except the people who would actually deserve it, or Bryant, desperate to connect with his own son, and instead connecting with the dying son of a gangster via a toy Lego cop — each situation was short, brutal, and revelatory, thanks to Zuhlke’s absolute mastery of character through action. It sounds obvious, since that is the goal of TV drama (of all drama, all writing) — but it’s not. It’s hard to get right even some of the time — Zuhlke nailed every single beat from start to finish.

The acting in this episode was exemplary. As you can tell from the list above, Cudlitz had a lot to do, and he did it brilliantly. Ben McKenzie is fearless this season, utterly willing to throw off Sherman’s idealistic former self in favor of his transition to a hardened, jaded douchebag. Hatosy is great as always, keeping Bryant’s combustibility in check, but only just. He effortlessly conveys the fact that Bryant has much more experience, and is likely a much better cop, than Sherman.

I haven’t mentioned Regina King yet, because she deserves special focus for this episode, which was really all about Lydia’s much welcome return to being an awesomely powerful powerhouse of a woman. From the opening flashback when we see her start to kick the ass of a kickboxer in a street brawl, to her first shot doing insane pushups, through her beautifully depicted banter with Dorian Missick, King owned this episode. She’s a natural match for Zuhlke’s style, able to convey extraordinary amounts of emotional information with the barest of words or gestures. Her joy at her comeback made the ending all the more devastating.

A quick word about that. SouthLAnd excels at dropping you into unknown trouble and making you feel it, instantaneously — the moment contains all you need to know for it to f**k you up emotionally. Earlier in the episode, the show made a rare minor misstep with Mendoza’s story. It could have been the character being too new and unfamiliar, it could have been that we don’t connect with Sherman’s loyalty to him, or it could just be the precise sleaziness of the performance. Whatever the reason, there were only two moments in the arc that truly worked: Sammy gaving the Lego cop to the dying kid (at which point it started raining on my face for some reason), and the very end of the arc, when Sherman is left alone in the hospital corridor — utter isolation that definitely hit home. Those moments aside, that story just didn’t have the emotional power to jump start our feelings.

The same cannot be said for the ending, which was horribly savage in the quietest of ways. Classic SouthLAnd. We didn’t even know what was truly happening. We didn’t need to. Regina King’s heartbreak was backed up by everything that had happened to her earlier arriving in that scene like an emotional freight train — that’s brilliant writing. The moment was flawlessly conveyed, and the previous 40 minutes slammed into you while you were down. King is an extraordinary actress, and why she doesn’t have a truckload of Emmys at this point is beyond me.

The texture that was key to this week’s script was also there in Dana Gonzales’s lighting. While Jimmy Muro is the undisputed master of capturing that Los Angeles light, Gonzales has been quietly excelling in a number of SouthLAnd episodes (most notably, God’s Work). He can harness extraordinary early morning golden hazes (he shot the golf course like an alien planet shrouded in sentient light), and he can wrestle lens flares out of literally any shot — the patrol officer’s badge when Lydia and Ruben walked up the hill to their first case, or the patrol car lights on a cloudy day after Cooper was shot at. Gonzales is a legendary DP.

Heat continued the season five trend of being tighter, more compact. Sometimes, that constricted the emotional responses a little; mostly, it accentuated them. It’s simply the rawest, most real show on TV right now. Challenging, uncompromising, and brilliant.

Anticipating SouthLAnd Season 5

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Rewatching SouthLAnd‘s great and groundbreaking season 4 got me thinking: where could or should the show go in season 5?

In the SouthLAnd, anything can happen

It’s a show that thrives on evolution, after all. In a Doctor Who kind of way, it regenerates with every season. And it does this boldly, fearlessly… SouthLAnd style. From Wednesday to Thursday (Jonathan Lisco’s rather brilliantly low-key titles for eps 1 and 10), the show took some pretty hardcore narrative leaps, and went to darker places than ever before. It was more distilled, its signature intensity crystallized into something even harder and more beautiful. It’s made up of shards that are brutally sharp and reflect the light, sometimes blindingly. I mean this narratively, visually, emotionally, psychologically. I was thinking to myself, how could they possibly do this again, but better, take it further, in season 5?

Then I realized.

The answers lie in what for my money were the two greatest episodes of season 4: Integrity (ep 6, wr. Jonathan Lisco, dir. Chris Chulack, DoP Jimmy Muro), and God’s Work (ep 8, wr. Cheo Coker, dir. Guy Norman Bee, DoP Dana Gonzales).

These two eps broke new ground, pushed the show further and harder: Integrity Check was a new kind of television, using the documentry crew device to access new depth and force, while God’s Work hit hard with powerful soulfulness. They both showed how SouthLAnd can do what it has always done: evolve yet again, and continue to stay hungry and focused.

How, I hear you ask!

I’ll tell ya.

It’s pretty bold though. Fair warning!

One element that the show did seem to struggle with in season 4, and it was really the only element, was integrating the detectives’ storylines fully. That is, making them relevant to the episode in general, and also making them resonant with what was going on in Lydia and Ruben’s lives. It didn’t happen often, but there were a couple of episodes where they seemed detached from the rest of the show, and even from the crimes they were investigating.

But in episode 6, Lisco did something brilliant. He put Lydia back in uniform, back in the patrol car.

Lydia Adams… a future in uniform?

Genius.

What if for season 5, they shifted entirely to patrol officers — and hold up all you angry Regina King fans, I totally mean that she should be one of them! If you look back, there seems to be an irresistible gravity pulling the show in that direction. One by one the detectives transfer out (of the force, of life… RIP Nate). And the show has already shown us that Lydia can handle a uniform and patrol car. It may be crazy, but it might just supercharge the entire season. And I know who I’d want to see Regina King in the car with; I’m sure we all have some good ideas about that.

Integrity Check was a stripped back and raw episode, a more intense, enhanced version of the show that I believe should be the template for season 5. Chulack and Muro took full advantage of the brilliant device of the documentary film crew to really push things forward visually and directorially. Just look at the depth of field and incredible detail of the precise shot composition below — think of that as an analogy of how the storytelling could accommodate a narrower focus:

Cudlitz, Liu, and some gorgeously detailed depth of field… Kudos to Muro & Chulack

But this is a show that thrives on diversity and balance. Underlying its surface immediacy and intensity are deep, soulful grooves of emotion and desire; the overwhelming force of what it means to be human. This show, more than any other, is utterly rooted in character. And God’s Work was the prime example of that.

Michael Cudlitz, Lawrence Gilliard Jr, and about a thousand lens flares courtesy of DoP Dana Gonzales

Coker’s wonderful script was elevated by some of the best directing in the show’s history courtesy of Guy Norman Bee, with Dana Gonzales shooting it all in a combination of a golden hazes and harshly desaturated glares… both reflecting the soul of Los Angeles, and of the show.

Shawn Hatosy and Ben McKenzie in a beautifully directed (and acted) scene

Although I’m proposing a detective-free next season, I must point out that God’s Work was the perfect and best example of how to pull patrol officers and detectives into one powerful, cohesive episode (which should be no surprise since Coker wrote it; he was the first and only writer to pull the entire original cast into one scene in Punching Water). But we could think of it as a goodbye… the best example of integrating the show’s dual levels, and the platform from which everything changes.

Can the show be soulful without detectives? It can. It just has to bring that soulfulness in via more focused means. Regina King’s eyes, Muro’s and Gonzales’ lighting, the brillliance of Lisco’s ideas, the ferociousness of Chulack’s directing, and the brilliance of Guy Norman Bee’s helming.

And, of course, the incredible, peerless cast.

I loved the show when it had the full cast spread out over patrol and detective work, but I’ve loved it even more as it became streamlined, faster-moving, more raw. I know whatever direction the writers and producers take it in, I’ll continue to love it. I can’t wait to see what they come up with, because from writers to producers to cast to crew, this is the best team in the business. They’ve earned our trust and loyalty a thousand times over. These are just the humble musings of a fan; I don’t doubt for a second that wherever the producers choose to take us, season 5 will be utterly surprising, and utterly brilliant.

SouthLAnd: “Thursday” — Moment Of Truth

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SouthLAnd excels at forcing its characters into moments of truth.

Time slows down and a crossroads opens up before them: will they walk the righteous path, or sell their souls?

This entire season, Officer Ben Sherman has been following a path that lead him to the deadly decision: what kind of cop is he going to be? Each choice he’s made so far has taken him deeper into the darkness. By the end of God’s Work, he didn’t recognize who he was any more. Without that self-knowledge, his moral markers were gone, and no matter how hard Sammy tried, Sherman really had gone past the point of no return.

And in this episode, writer Jonathan Lisco and director Chris Chulack went full Taxi Driver to make sure Sherman went all the way over the edge.

Lisco’s script was flint-sharp and ruthless. Always an extremely emotionally and conceptually precise writer, here Lisco was even more ferocious with his dialogue and action. Every line had urgency; every beat ratcheted you closer to the end. The scenes were sharpened to deadly points and lethal edges. Such was the intelligence underlying the script that by the time Lydia walked into that hospital room where the burned child lay helpless, no dialogue was even needed as Lisco and Chulack gave us one of the single most upsetting images we’ve ever seen on this show.

SouthLAnd will devastate you with an almost casual ease.

While Sherman was off choking hookers for information, Cooper had to endure Tang’s frankly unendurable “last day on patrol” smugness. Much as I can’t disapprove of any reference to Nicki Minaj’s far-too-awesome Superbass, it was tough to watch Tang torturing that kid. If ever a Cooper “hey numbnuts” was needed, it was here. Likewise with getting Cooper to take her picture in front of the Hollywood sign. So the showdown near the end where Cooper lost it on her was a great SouthLAnd moment. Cudlitz deployed his emotional gravitas to punishing effect, while Lucy Liu gave it right back — she has done a tremendous job this season, holding her own scene for scene with an unfussy, powerful, stripped-back performance.

It was an episode of heavyweight performances.

Regina King broke our hearts, again. She does it so well, so simply. “What we do, it’s hard enough to not let it get to you… now it’s like it’s going in too deep. And if it is, where’s it going?”

Shawn Hatosy did incredible, soulful work. Even confined to a hospital bed at the start, and a deckchair by the pool at the end, he harnessed his “raging bull” energy and radiated it throughout both scenes. I pointed out a few weeks back that Hatosy has a unique way of prowling around a scene with restless, hungry energy; as SouthLAnd superfan Deb @bluegrassbabe3 pointed out today, even when Hatosy is sitting down, he’s still prowling; such is his presence. He’s a great, great actor.

But there’s no doubt that the episode belonged to Ben McKenzie. His portrayal of a man whose soul is being steadily stripped away was bleak, raw, understated and unflinching. He showed us an officer who shattered his previous self, and now has to find his way through the fragments of what he used to be. By the time that the episode closed with Sherman sitting back at the pool party as the Stones’ Street Fighting Man played on the soundtrack (spot-on song choice, and only the fourth or so time the show has used a song), it was as though he was settling in to his new existence. I’m not sure what’s more terrifying/devastating — that he lost himself to the darkness, or that he’s actually getting comfortable with it. Either way, it’s brilliant writing, setting up some great Bryant/Sherman story possibilities for season five.

Throughout the episode, Chris Chulack directed with a ruthless eye, as Jimmy Muro gave us a bleakly lit, cloudy, steely L.A. Chulack’s visceral style was honed to an even sharper edge than usual. If Sherman went racing round a corner, the camera would steadily follow him, like a shark, deadly and unstoppable. Everything was stripped back to an absolute purity of purpose. There were no skateboarding interludes in this episode. Just a ferociously relentless commitment to the truth.

Which is what this show has always been about. It’s why we love it.

It’s why SouthLAnd is one of the greatest TV dramas of our time, of any time. It’s why TNT has to renew it for an extended season 5. It’s why Warner Bros. really, really needs to release a deluxe Blu Ray box set with extended directors cuts, commentaries from writers, cast and crew, behind the scenes and the like — trust me, WB and TNT, if that box set comes out in enough time for new viewers to watch all four seasons prior to the season five opening episode, your ratings will be extraordinary. Can you imagine The Walking Dead or Game Of Thrones or Mad Men not being on DVD?

Exactly.

It’s been an amazing season four. The writers, the cast, the crew — they’ve all excelled themselves, raising the bar yet again, like this show always does. SouthLAnd is better than its ever been — which is rare for a fourth season. It’s rolling hard. And it leaves no doubt that season five would be the greatest yet.

Thank you to everyone involved with the show. I was fortunate enough to meet the cast and crew in L.A. recently; they are an incredibly smart, humble, hardworking, talented bunch, all utterly commited to making this show the best on TV.

It’s working.

I can’t wait to to tune in next year and hear once more, this is A36, show us handling.

SouthLAnd takes a “Risk”

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It’s a testament to the unmatched greatness of SouthLAnd that in its 32 episodes to date, it has raised its quality bar to a dizzyingly brutal degree.

When this show blows up and comes at you, it’s identical to none.

So when the occasional scene doesn’t quite get it done, you feel it. And, brutal truth (SouthLAnd style), there were some scenes in Risk, early on, that felt somewhat more perfunctory than usual, that didn’t seem to grab us emotionally, or propel us forward. Some of the dialogue didn’t zing like it normally does, and moments that should have been impactful felt discarded too soon.

But it all came together brilliantly at the end, when Jimmy Muro wreaked havoc at the intersection of Elysian Park and Sunset. Those final few scenes with Lydia, Ben and Sammy were a devastating gut punch followed by a massive right hook to the head that left you on your ass seeing stars.

Like only SouthLand can.

Muro was truly the MVP of this episode: the climactic car chase/shooting/traffic collision was as off the hook and heart-poundingly, breathlessly visceral as anything the show has ever done. You thought Cooper’s throat-savaging was intense — you weren’t even ready for the crushingly sudden, shocking action here.

Time and time again, the show has shown us that all cops live in constant state of unknown trouble — anything can happen at any time. SouthLAnd will slam your expectations off the street and total them as quickly and easily as the SUV took out Sammy’s patrol car. This scene was a masterpiece. Most of the time, the show likes to obliterate its characters’ belief systems with brutal emotional collisions: this time it did it literally, totaling the patrol car in a devastating, terrifying way. It took your breath away and flooded you with adrenaline.

It left you shaking.

Give Muro any and all awards you can find please.

He did great work with Risk: the backdrop to Lydia and Ruben’s case — that mountain range of cranes against the steel sky — was beautifully, almost philosophically, bleak and austere, and fully deserved the multiple shots and angles. It was absolutely a commentary on the action: a sense of hopelessness, of things never changing.

Elsewhere, Muro found numerous ways to give us glimpses of downtown L.A. through the mid-afternoon haze, like a monster looming through the mist. And he broke out what felt like lesser-used angles for SouthLAnd: putting the camera on the outside of the passenger side looking squarely in on the driver, or hanging out the back window to look along the left side of the car during extended driving scenes. These were new textures to the show’s visual language, and they worked. He also gave us the sheer rush of skateboarding down an empty road at 40 mph — from the unfiltered clarity of the lens to the endless blue sky. It was a simple moment of euphoria.

But nothing can compare to the simpler shots of Regina King doing her finest, rawest acting of the season to date (so good and so distressing that it really messed with the viewer), and that car crash — and unlike what happened after Integrity Check, this time the promo for next week gave nothing away, leaving us in agonizing suspense about Sammy’s fate.

Let’s be clear: SouthLAnd will kick your ass. Every time. Because it’s a beautiful, brilliant show. When it’s flawless, nothing can beat it. Even when it doesn’t quite get there some of the time, you know it’s gonna sock you upside the head by the end, and when it does, there’s nothing you can do about it.

TNT, you gotta renew this m***erf***er. It’s truly phenomenal television. You knew it when you saved it from NBC. You knew it when you gave us this amazing season 4.

You still know it.

So please — give this show a 20-episode season 5, and incredible things will happen. SouthLAnd is your Mad Men, your Walking Dead, your Game Of Thrones.

Treat it that way, and it will become something unprecedented in TV. Even more than it is now.

Respect to the cast and crew: bring on that season finale!

Random observations:

  • Kudos to Chitra Sampath for contributing the “she didn’t say the safe word” elements of the  S&M domestic dispute — adding the perfect spin to one of the show’s more awesomely insane highlights.
  • Some of the other situations were kinda beautiful in their oddball charm — who couldn’t love drunk golf ball guy?

Californication: “…the truth is what you need to finish this song…”

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In Love Song, the sixth episosde of Californication‘s fifth season, creator and showrunner Tom Kapinos wrote a soulful, wistful and melancholic look at missed opportunities, love and authenticity.

Samurai Apocalypse (portrayed with insane style and panache by RZA) ordered his Santa Monica Cop screenwriter Hank Moody to write lyrics for budding songstress Kali. As Hank forced Kali to delve deeper into her memories, he got lost in his own, giving us black-and-white flashbacks to the moment when Hank and Karen first decided to stay in L.A.

(Whenever Kapinos shows us Hank and Karen’s past, he writes scuffed and dirty emotional riffs that move you. These episodes are rock-n-roll ballads, bluesy guitar solos, romantic, whiskey-soaked tales of all that could have been, and all that might yet be, if no one f**ks it up.)

As Hank re-lived this moment in time, while drawing lyrical inspiration from Kali’s increasingly painful memories, the theme became abundantly clear:

What makes your writing truly yours, what makes it really sing… is you.

Your soul. Your authenticity. Your truth. Nothing less than the absolute revelation of what you really, truly, need and want. Getting to the truth of who you are and why you do what you do. What drives you, what do you dream of? What makes you want those things, and what will you do — and give up — to get them?

Find the truth about who the f**k you are and how you fit into this world. Because you do fit into this world, even if you don’t know how yet. Some people know right away. Some take thirty years, some fifty or more. It’s OK. Your life is all about you, m***erf***er. Act accordingly.

Nothing you write will be good until you inject yourself into it. It’s what Dave Grohl talked about at the Grammys when he said music isn’t what happens inside a computer. He wasn’t ranting against technology itself, against any of the tools of making music; he was ranting against soulless music, which can just as easily be made with a guitar as an iPad. And the flip side is true: soul will always come through, must always come through, however you make your art.

Consider two extraordinary and seminal albums: The White Stripes’ Elephant, and Massive Attack’s 100th Window. The first made only on equipment dated pre-1963 (it’s a Jack White thing), the second made on laptops and in digital worlds, with songs and textures that couldn’t exist before 2003.

Both have beauty and soul, in different ways: Elephant is rough, heavy, pounding and wild, while 100th Window is hypnotic, evocative and dreamlike. Both are true and truthful, and it doesn’t matter how they were recorded or how we listen to them: the souls of the people who created them shine through, make them real; making them connect.

Whether you write poems, stories, novels, songs, or scripts, you need to make them yours, write them your way. Quentin Tarantino kept getting told that True Romance wasn’t written properly, that this wasn’t how scripts are done. He said, f**k you, because this is me and this is mine. Then he made Reservoir Dogs, and Tony Scott shot True Romance, and then came Pulp Fiction. Tarantino-esque became its own literary style and took over pop culture. All iconic & unique writers do.

Ultimately, being a writer, being any kind of artist, is all about you being authentic. That will shine brightly; the rest will follow.

So find your truth and finish your song.

Then let the world hear it.