Show: Southland
Premiered: April 2009 (NBC), January 2010 (TNT)
Why Was It Made? Going by NBC's lineup over the last few years, "gritty police drama on the streets of L.A." has to have been the best pitch they've heard in ages.
Why Did I Never Watch Before? The only headline I remember more prominently than the ones about its Sisyphean ratings struggle and austerity-era budget cuts was the announcement of the show's actual cancellation from NBC. True, TNT subsequently picked it up, but who wanted to get involved with a show seemingly in hospice from birth? We've all been down that road before (Lone Star didn't even give us a chance to get attached, but how about Terriers? Sob).
Why Give It A Shot? A combination of things, really. Thanks to the combination of there being so much more incredible TV out there these days (Justified, Breaking Bad, and American Horror Story are currently my jams, but there are many more worth mentioning) and some tough-loving friends on social media, I have gotten much, much better at not watching, to use the industry term, shit. However, this newfound willpower left me with a pretty light schedule, and Southland's January fifth-season start made for a timely addition. Also, the enduring buzz of critical praise despite the ongoing "ratings" and my completely iconoclastic view that Ben McKenzie is "pretty nice to look at" were contributing factors.
In the end, though, it was East Coast Editor Sarah D. Bunting's recommendation, along with a trip to IMDb that let me know that my longtime, outsized crush on Shawn Hatosy would be fed, that made me, if you will, [don't say "pull the trigger" don't say "pull the trigger"] pull the trigger. (Sorry.)
What Aspects Of The Latest Season Would Seem To Invite Further Viewing? Aside from the positively sterling acting -- if the show never garners any acting awards, it'll be as much due to choice paralysis as lack of popularity -- and my newly-discovered affinity for Tom Everett Scott (WHAT?), the show surprised me with how hilarious it can be at a moment's notice, often trusting its audience enough that it delivers acidic zingers with a presentation that's almost blink-and-you'll-miss-it. One of the reasons I haven't traditionally been a fan of cop shows is that procedural writers seem often to forget to make their characters anything more than their jobs, but here, a playfully cutting remark whenever someone does something boneheaded is as reliable as the L.A. sun, and there's something incomparably appealing about real wit delivered in a classic policeman accent. There's also the focus on patrolmen and -women rather than detectives. My favorite running theme is the cops arriving at some domestic scenario that, upon their breathless entrance, they discover clearly isn't worth their time; one memorable example came at the end of a scene in which a large group of women, all knocked up by the same thuggish man, had called the cops to preside over a kind of informal tribunal. If you stay with the scene to the end, you'll hear the defendant say, off-camera, to a random woman just as the cops are leaving, "What are you even doing here? You only gave me head!" Excuse me while I giggle all over again.
What Aspects Of The Season's End Discourage Further Viewing? It's a moot point now, although it's almost hard to believe -- the show was been on the bubble so long that a hapless PA had to prod the sword of Damocles awake so it didn't miss its cue. But on the bright side, one of the benefits of the show having lived under such insecurity is that the ending was emotionally shattering even by Southland's grim standards, and made for one of the most devastating series finales this side of montages set to "Breathe Me." It's so exquisitely painful that it would have been like breaking a stained-glass window to disturb it with another season. A stained-glass window further stained in blood, but still.
Final Verdict: Even with the series a wrap, you should give this a watch; the writing is as pointed and efficient as the characters it depicts, and people who have lived in L.A. will enjoy some bonus realness in with their verisimilitude. Only 43 episodes were produced, which means the fact that it's currently only available on DVD (at least as far as Netflix goes) isn't that onerous. And when you're done, we can kick each other for not watching sooner instead of having to do it to ourselves. What will I watch next January?
Officers Down appeared first on Previously.TV
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