Something Special (Installment 1): "Man in a Blizzard"

This is a new segment I literally just came up with to categorize this little oddity I stumbled across today. I won't be doing regular installments of "Something Special", but I'll certainly use it to highlight other treasures like this that don't fit neatly into the preconceived categories I dabble in on the site (films, music, books--honest I'll review on soon, etc). The link will take you to Roger Ebert's summary of this gorgeous 4-minute short film shot during the blizzard that hit New York over Christmas. It's full of sublime black and white imagery, subtle editing and set to the perfect musical accompaniment. It's a beautiful seashell on the rock-strewn shore of YouTube and other garbage video sites. Watch for yourself; maybe it's not as mesmerizing as I think it is, but if you have time to watch another video of some kid french kissing concrete right after his skateboard introduces them to each other, then you certainly have time to watch something like this. I tried embedding but the widescreen format was cut off by the page layout, so

Watch it Here

TV Episode Review: V “Serpent’s Tooth”

Well, it looks like maybe I was wrong about the show runners deciding to pursue a more aggressively B-movie shtick for the show’s second season, which is enormously disappointing.  “Serpent’s Tooth” marks a depressing return to season one levels of meaningless running about and inane plot progressions.  Forgivable offenses (we’re still watching, aren’t we?) I suppose, but the stripping away of the more graphic elements that gave “Red Rain” a sense of panache are not only absent, but conspicuously so.  Given ample opportunities to produce some poorly CGI’d shock-and-awe this week, the camera turns away from them time and again.  Anna consumes a rat on screen, but it looks absolutely silly, and then the truly gruesome moment is hidden from us completely (Note to V producers:  when your storyline gives you the opportunity to become the first series in history to portray a woman regurgitating a rat into a baby’s mouth, you should not shy from that historic opportunity).  They aren’t even content to give us a look at the aftermath—the baby with a blood smeared face would have bought this show stacks of credibility akin to Scrooge McDuck’s money vault.  They also continue to deny us a good look at the monstrous V-baby by giving it a good coat of human-seal before we get a look at its true form.  The scene itself was hilarious looking, but compared to what it could have been in terms of tone and eeriness, laughter isn’t the first reaction.  Okay, it is the first reaction, but not the strongest.

"Make it stop.  Keep your damned 'soul', but just make it stop."

“Serpent’s Tooth” centers loosely around a bombing plot that may or may not be organized by the Fifth Column (I got the impression that the group behind it might be someone else—or is the Fifth Column just a very disorganized collection of splinter cells?) that is seeking to destroy V installations and visitor sites by blowing them up via bombs strapped to extras who really relish in overacting their roles.  The stupidity of the bombing executions meshes nicely with everything around them, and it certainly helps the utterly inept FBI officials tracking them down that the plotters themselves are so moronic.  The attack is coordinated via an iphone app countdown clock, but the one target they don’t reduce to rubble the first time is anchorman Chad Decker, who could probably use his own dimples as a bomb shelter.  They immediately restart their countdown clock, which makes little sense—if there’s only one remaining target, what are you synchronizing?  And why does he have to be liquefied at the same moment as other targets anyway?  The clock’s only purpose is as a poor plot mechanism to ratchet up tension (which also assumes viewers aren’t sort of eager to see Decker reduced to a walking red paint bomb).

The scenes of “chaos”  surrounding the first round of bombings is equally laughable as people scurry to “get away” from the bomber, who reveals himself by opening up his trench coat like an escort service stripper to reveal himself before detonating it…a few dozen yards from his target.  I won’t pretend that these scenes are ever handled particularly realistically in the action genre, but this one was particularly weak in execution:  As William Avery prepares himself to kiss the world goodbye, people scatter to get away from him by repeatedly running in front of him in both directions, thereby putting themselves much closer to the point of detonation than if they ran in any other compass direction than that one.  And if the panicked dead-to-be in the foreground didn’t distract you too much, you might have noticed the people who are fleeing into the V visitor center, including one man who slows down for a moment to close his umbrella.  Phenomenal.  Words fail me.  But beyond such trivialities is the wonderful realization as the scene reaches its “explosive” climax that Avery is detonating his payload so far from the intended target that at best he’ll break a few of the windows when all he had to do was run through the same open door pedestrians were fleeing into and he could’ve brought the whole building down.  No wonder the Fifth Column can’t make any headway—it wouldn’t surprise me if some of the other bombers were found with their shoes on the wrong feet and hot dogs in place of dynamite sticks.

The rest of the episode concerns itself with Anna’s nefarious, for reasons I don’t entirely understand, plot to get Ryan back on the V’s side by using his human-coated monster baby as a tool to manipulate his emotions.  Which, Anna confirms this week, are seeping into the Vs via the human skin they wear.  I heard her mention this last week, but I assumed she was speaking metaphorically.  Nope, it turns out that our emotions—which this episode goes to great pains to posit are the evidence of a human soul—are apparently housed in our skin and are extremely contagious if you wear a skin suit for too long at a stretch.  Even, apparently, if that skin suit is entirely manufactured on board an alien ship for the purpose of disguise and applied via an aerosol can.  I’m largely in the dark about other viewer reactions to this show, but if you aren’t questioning the writers about the quality of their writing based on stuff like this, then I beg you to explain to me in the comments section what it is that I’m missing.  Until then, I’m going to assume I’m reading the show correctly, which would mean that the show’s theory of humanity is that the emotions come from the soul which is housed in human skin and which will appear in skin even if it is artificially created and never actually belonged to a living human being.  Part of my brain just died.  Also, souls apparently function something like nuclear reactors because Anna’s big revelation after researching all of this is that souls are what “give humans power”. 

This episode also marks the show’s saddest attempt to examine serious thematic elements.  Since those thematic elements largely centered around the soul conversation above, you can imagine how it all went.  The cross cutting between Anna’s moment of revelation about the human soul and Father Jack’s encouragement of Ryan to believe he possesses a soul of his very own were painful to watch.  This might represent the first time in decades of television that a show has actually portrayed characters coming to the conclusion—through the least nuanced dialogue possible—that the soul is both a blessing and a curse with straight faces and earnest efforts to sound genuine and amazed.  I’m not counting the Lifetime network in that estimation. 

Toni V. Sweeney--you should sue them for stealing your title.  And thank them for making your work look better by comparison.

 
So it was a big step backwards this week and without much hope moving forward.  Ratings don’t seem to be getting any better for V, but it’s not likely to get pulled during the course of this season.  But it might still be time for some drastic changes behind the scenes—it’s not unprecedented (Flash Forward being the most obvious parallel) for a show to rid itself of poor performers and replace them with better writing/producing/directing talent.  If ever a show could use such a house cleaning, it’s V.  A genre show with the potential to be thrilling and fun and gross and fast paced shouldn’t be hemorrhaging viewers like blood from an exit wound in a prime time slot.  Hopefully next week will surprise us, but is anyone really holding out hope of that anymore?  

Overall Rating:  4.8/10

Great Quotes, Interesting Moments, What Not and Occasionally What-have-you:

•  We seem to discover in this episode that Earth is the only place they can cross breed and that Anna is infertile, that litter of dead soldier puppies not withstanding.
• That makes Lisa the key to everything, but she's betrayed Anna!  Will the plot convolutions never smooth themselves out?
• So though Erica felt the need to slice open her own palm last week to extract blood for a blood test, all she needs from Tyler is a spot of toilet paper from a razor nick.  I had really hoped she'd take the scalpel to him too.
• I don't have any problems with whoever the young lad is playing "the scientist" who discovered the skeleton, but to whoever cast him:  You're HILARIOUS.  Did he make this "discovery" while building a sand castle in his sand box?
• The show opens with another great shot of the ship over the city--they should just cancel the show and recoup some of their losses by having the CGI team release a 12-month calendar:  "Cities Under Siege:  Cityscapes and Lizard Ships".  I'd buy it.
• Note to the props department:  When the dialogue reads "we recovered this photo from a security camera, but the resolution is for crap", you probably shouldn't have the corresponding photo be as crystal clear as a facebook profile photo.
• Ryan's baby looks a bit like the baby from the cover of Notorious B.I.G.'s first album.
• The recovering of Joshua's memories makes the same sound as an Imperial Probe Droid.
• "They're willing to kill humans to save humans--That's crazy!"  Father Jack is endlessly amazed by these strange creatures called "humans".
• Baby torture isn't a real good place to go if your show is already struggling.
• Hope for next week as evidenced by the preview:  Two words:  "Skin her!"

TV Episode Review: The Cape “Pilot”/”Tarot”

The television and film landscape is so covered in superhero series and films that the whole genre could be reclassified as an out of control species of weed—and in many cases I wish it were treated as such.  So it’s not entirely surprising that NBC was open to the idea of a wholly original superhero concept that they could overproduce and overhype and unleash on a viewing audience that seems (this genre has to get old soon, doesn’t it?) hungry for it.  What did surprise me somewhat is how fully The Cape embraced its status as a comic book concept—to an excess, if anything--when to do so might turn off some casual viewers who are up for a new action series but don’t want to feel like they’re watching it alongside LARPers and The Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons.  I know that’s not a fair standard, but the networks certainly know about such specific demographics and about how to market their products, so it says something about their commitment to this concept that the show contains an oft-referenced comic book by the same name within its storyline, introduces no fewer than three comically-named villains within the course of its first two hours, adheres like a leech (one of several in “Tarot”) to the plot points of the superhero origin story, and even models its episodes after the brief, fast paced, serialized storytelling of action comics.   

The Cape opened its run with some very frenetic pacing as we learn about some big changes coming down the pipe for Palm City’s police force just before Chess (James Frain, who is excellent but will probably never get the chance to play a non-villainous character) kills him using the cool L-9 chemical explosive that does, um, something, to make you both die and explode if you sit inside of a locked SUV with it.  We also meet Vince (played to mixed effect by David Lyons), who will become The Cape, but who at first is just a super boring, super thinly developed comic book cliché.  One who the show apparently wants us to associate with Clark Kent/Superman since his musical theme is almost shamelessly similar to the original Superman’s and he even pulls up to work in an antiquated red pickup truck just like Clark’s old man drove back on the farm.  It’s a reference meant to play subtly, but what modern cop in a super-slick cityscape like Palm City is puttering to work in a Norman Rockwell era red pickup truck? 

We are also introduced to an odd little feature of Palm City early in the story when we meet a mysterious broadcaster/blogger named “Orwell” (apparently series creator/writer Tom Wheeler took AP Literature but didn’t appreciate understatement as a literary device) who basically Big Brothers the whole city but only exposes the villains.  Not that they get a trial, or anything, but Orwell totally knows who the bad ones are. 

The show only took an hour to do exactly what I was afraid it was going to do by introducing the face behind the Orwell broadcast to be a hero, and a very leggy, attractive one at that.  “The Dark Knight” propelled a lot of discussion about a scene where Batman uses a form of illegal spying to see what everyone in the city is doing, all in the name of the greater good, of course.  This show seems to be content using an identical conceit (Orwell somehow owns a near-magical computer that can apparently do whatever she wants it to with the click of an imaginary button) on a permanent basis to help The Cape find who he needs to find and jam cell phone services when he needs people to stop texting and pay attention to the road, or whatever other emergencies might present themselves.  This seems problematic, and by way of comparison, even “The Dark Knight” seemed aware of the constitutional violations it entailed, as Morgan Freeman’s character vocally disagrees with the idea and vows to resign if it continues.  Here, however, we’re meant to take Orwell’s glossy-lipped smile and verbal reassurance that she only picks on the bad guys of the city as more than enough sexy, steamy justification for what amounts to the violation of every citizen’s privacy.  Not a great start for the character.

But that’s all heavy handed complaining, and the truth is there was quite a bit of fun stuff in this episode.  What was starting to look like an overly serious dramatic opening takes a pleasantly weird twist when Vince finds himself suddenly in the lair of Max Malini and his “Circus of Crime” where we meet Max (the scene-energizing Keith David throwing himself into this three-ring circus with gusto) and his entourage of oddballs who have mastered various carnivalesque skills from escape and disappearance to being small but still throwing a wicked punch to looking like a young Michelle Pfeiffer.  We meet them in flashes as Vince regains consciousness after laying underneath an explosion, and the scene doesn’t quite play right—what should be disorienting and disconcerting plays just a touch too cheesy and contrived  For one thing, if you want to use a little person to disconcerting effect you should be studying episodes of Twin Peaks, not using the B-list version of Vern Troyer clad in leather punching your hero in the face.  The show nicely recovers with the odd little circus crew when we see them in action later in the episode.  The bank heist scenes are handled playfully but convincingly and have an interesting visual style to the; the show seems very confident in creating montages for quick and effective storytelling.

 At times, it seems to develop its characters more effectively through montage than dialogue.  The sequence where we watch Vince become The Cape is enjoyable and has a couple of nice touches that feel fresh in a genre that’s getting pretty stale.  Particularly enjoyable are the stories Max shares from the Circus and Carnie Hall of Fame about previous experts of deceit, escape, cape flinging, and so forth.  They give the supporting cast an interesting and unique background and mesh nicely as a simple explanation of what it is that Vince is learning as he whips his CGI cape around (an effect that isn’t quite convincing but comes so close that it manages a couple of “wow” moments despite the flaws).  “Tarot” manages to cram in yet another enjoyable montage as Vince becomes the true superhero on his own (as all superheroes must—this show ran the full marathon of superhero origin story at a sprinter’s pace, to mixed effect) while dodging and catching (I know, just deal with it) knives being fired from an automatic pitching machine and sampling random poisons just to see what it feels like to almost kill yourself.



"JK--I'm totes alive!"



It’s unfortunate that the climactic first test of The Cape’s newfound powers, once the stickiest-of-the-icky spider silk cape is returned to him by a reassured Max, comes off so disinterested in itself.  Cain isn’t the most exciting of characters to begin with (though his murder organization, “The Tarot” holds a lot of promise) and the brief knife fight in the kitchen doesn’t really feel like payoff for the two hours we’ve spent with these characters, nor does the random shooting and running around that leads to a non-standoff with Chess himself.  The episode leaves you feeling like there’s a lot of potential here, but in a myriad of directions, including down.  I did enjoy the laugh at Max’s fake death—a nice little sneak attack there; I just had time to be amazed that they killed off one of the best characters on the show before he popped back up.  It’s a moment suggesting this show might reveal a very unique tone and personality, but there are a lot of wrinkles to be ironed out of The Cape before that personality either reveals itself, or disappears in a puff of brownish smoke. 

Overall Rating:  7.3/10

Great Quotes, Interesting Moments, What Not and Occasionally What-have-you:

• Scales is an odd villain—he seems like a retread of a million other villains and is made even stranger by the fact that he has no back story (he’s just scaly, that’s all we get?), but maybe they’ll fix that with time. 
• Chess is not much better so far.  Why is his name Chess?  Why is he wearing The Rocketeer’s jacket and a lizard mask?  Internet digging reveals that his contact lenses are a rook and a knight, but that really doesn’t come across well on screen—I don’t know if that’s fixable, but it just looks odd as it stands right now.  Don’t they do screen tests anymore?
• I thought it was a nicely savage touch that they attach Chess’s mask to Vince’s head with a nail gun when they frame him—these are the little touches that give me hope for the show. 
• Why does Vince go along with the bank robberies so easily?  Yeah it hurts Ark, I guess, but doesn’t it hurt citizens much more (even if they’re federally insured, it’s inconvenient and flat out horrifying if you happen to be in the bank when the Circus rolls into town).
• I’m hoping that this show has the wherewithal to explore the parallels between super heroes and circus freaks as an actual thematic idea, because I love the potential there.
• Who is Orwell?  She curiously says “No one special” when asked, but that only makes her back story more suspicious—Chess’s offspring perhaps?
• Best line of the night:  The shop owner who witnesses The Cape in action reacts perfectly to the cheesy superhero name:  “The Cape?...Well, you work on it.”
• “Where’d you meet her, was it an online thing?”
• The other comic visible on the rack where Vince gets his copy of The Cape is called Bad Lass.  I wouldn’t read either title.
• Did Chess literally design an evil plan called “Siren” by spinning a bunch of virtual objects like a roulette wheel (which has nothing to do with the game of chess besides the pattern they briefly take)?  Because if he did, this character’s persona needs a LOT of work.
• Regarding the Tarot secret society of killers:  “Cain is their poisoner.”  I like that there are positions in this secret society.  I’d most like to meet their stabber, bludgeoner and decapitator this season.
• I will make a joke at some point during this season about what this show is “Cape-able” of.  And that wasn’t it. 

TV Episode Review: V “Red Rain”

It’s too early to be certain, but I think V’s producers and writers may have had an important come-to-Jesus moment during the off season.  The show’s first season was a near-perfect storm of awfulness:  poor casting (Tyler is easily the most unlikeable teenage character in modern prime time television—and he isn’t written to be that way) terrible dialogue and plotting, unimaginative set design, poor CGI, and a lot of build up to no satisfying payoff (I don’t care about Anna’s kids, I wanted to see a V in its exposed form).  That’s a lot to fix, even with a long summer and fall to grind away at things, but I have to give V some credit for returning with something of a smashmouth attitude for the season’s premiere.

“Red Rain” certainly had no interest in slow-burning any of its storylines.  The red clouds deliver their ominous payload in the first half of the episode, we discover that the Vs have been here before and apparently wreaked other havoc, we witness Tyler’s face melting off like he looked into the Ark of the Covenant (which that kid would totally do—he’s such a self-righteous little goon), we get a look at a preserved V skeleton, we discover that some of Anna’s soldier babies survived, and that she will kill them just to be rid of those rascally things the humans call “emotions”, Ryan gets a look at his grotesque hybrid child swimming around in a Bacta Tank, and we get what we (I) have been waiting for all along:  the forced removal of the human suit from a V to reveal their true form, at least a little bit more than we saw last season.  That’s a LOT of creamy middle for a Twinkie of a show like this. 

Alas, it was only a dream.  Still, it was wonderful for a moment, wasn't it?

So the question becomes whether the writers have rethought their approach to the materials and realized that, at their very best, they will only be putting out B-movie type material with this show and so they might as well go for broke with the violence and gore (Anna’s spiked dragon tail looked pretty silly, but respect the show for dragging out a scene where a V is endlessly bludgeoned, splattering blood on the faces of everyone around him, complete with grisly sound effects way past the point where most viewers would say “okay, I get it” and then has half of his human face off just to scrape the icing off the cake, so to speak).  If the writers have, in fact, chosen this route, this show might become the kind of appointment television it tried to be through a different route last season.  For those with short memories, it failed.  They may have just wanted to come back with a bang, but this episode seemed to represent a shift in tone for the show towards reckless mayhem and everything-but-the-kitchen-sink plot twists (phosphorous is raining on everything to impregnate all the humans and Anna calms their nerves by explaining that the Vs just decided to fix global warming by coating the Earth with a substance no one knows anything about?  Tell me without laughing that the writers don’t know what direction they’re taking this show.). 

I suppose the coming weeks will reveal quickly whether they’ve really changed the show’s paradigm, but there’s much to be discussed about this episode in the mean time.  I like that the show chose to open with its bread and butter—it excels, for whatever reason, at capturing great looking shots of the V ships hovering over cityscapes.  I know that’s like claiming that a single Saltine cracker constitutes “bread and butter” but hey, they do it well.  The opening shot (which turned out—obviously—to be a dream sequence) revealed the ominous ship hovering over an apocalypted (new verb—take notes urban dictionary) street where cars seem to have been parked hastily at odd angles so everyone could get out of them and lay down on the ground in uncomfortable positions.  And everything is bathed in an unpleasantly bloody redness.  It didn’t look real, but it had a certain look to it that certainly garnered attention.

Unfortunately, the rest of the episode mostly fell into the bad habits the writers on this show refuse to break.  The dialogue was as utilitarian as ever.  If you’d like to audition to write for the show, just make your script conveys simple plot points and unneeded observations clearly and repeadetly.  Like so:

Erica:  I have to get in there to get the information we need to continue to defend the 5^th column, which of course is the only hope to stop the Vs.

Ryan:  It could be dangerous.  You should be careful and take a weapon with you.

Hobbes:  I will stay out here because there could also be danger out here.

Father Landry:  We have to hurry.  There is a time limit on how long we have to accomplish our task.

Music Score:  ominous, ominous, ominous, ominous, ominous, violin crescendo into commercial annnnnd CUT.

I think I may have actually plagiarized some actual lines from “Red Rain” in there, so hopefully I’m not violating copyright law.  The show becomes exhausting as it beats us over the head with plot points and character development thrown at us sloppily and repeatedly with dialogue.  Tonight’s most laughable moment (if not the above scene when they go to visit Dr. Watts) would probably be Ryan’s standoff with Anna when he declares that his motives are “Something you’ll never understand…LOVE!”  Good Lord, does this really allow you to hold down a writing job in television?  I deleted several more lines of sarcasm here in the name of professionalism, but suffice to say I’m genuinely appalled by the quality of the screenwriters here. 

The rest of this episode is comprised of one ridiculously foolish reveal after another; the biggest being the revelation that some researcher who looks too young to pledge a fraternity has actually been hiding his super-secret research lab containing a mostly-intact V skeleton inside of a public university in the middle of a big city.  Makes a ton of sense.  Disregarding completely that he has managed to be the only person to enter this giant laboratory at a university for years, I’m charmed stupid by the idea that this guy made a discovery unparalleled in the history of modern anthropology, biology, or other X-ology, (where “X” represents anything you can study scientifically) and he just locked it up in a lab because he couldn’t figure out what the frakkin’ thing was.  The presence of the wholly-non threatening looking skeleton does allow for Erica to deliver the episode’s most melodramatic moment when they wonder aloud why the Vs would release phosphorous into the air.  “For breeding,” she murmurs breathlessly as she stares with horror at the skeleton’s jawless face.  Speaking of which, whoever is in charge of creature design on this show so far should be kicked to the curb immediately (maybe they can get a ride home with the screenwriters).  It has been dull at best and laughable at worst—most often it’s both, as with the skeleton which seems to have more common lineage with a sloth or maybe a steam shovel. 

The episode leaves us with plenty to wait for (I’m purposely avoiding the synonym “anticipate” which might imply eagerness or excitement) next week.  Erica may already be phosphorous-prepped for lizard impregnation, Anna and her daughter continue to play a masterful game of checkers as they attempt to outwit each other (I still stand amazed that this incredible race thought of inserting cameras into the fabric of clothing but have no cameras on their ship, even though they are inviting human beings to wander it freely and knowof the 5^th column), and Anna apparently has a few choice words for her mother, who lives on Dagobah but does not appear to possess any Jedi powers.  So, see you next week, I guess.

Overall Rating:  6.0/10

Great Quotes, Interesting Moments, What Not and Occasionally What-have-you:

• Apparently Erica is under the impression that blood tests are performed by cutting your own palm open with an unsterilized scalpel.  The FBI really needs to raise their standards.
• The woman at the FBI office actually feels the need to wonder aloud whether the bloody red clouds that have been milling about for four days might be related to the Vs presence. 
• V trackers can do parkour!  They aren’t very good at it, but they can do it even though it slows down their escape, if anything.
• I love, love, love that Anna tells the people of Earth that the horrifying rain of bloody redness they just suffered through without warning or explanation was just some harmless stuff that will cure global warming for us.  And no one seems troubled by this; if anything the protests seem to subside immediately.
• I love how the simplest plans continue to work without a hitch on this show:  Erica gets back onto the V ship by telling a security guard that Tyler’s mildly nicked head requires V super-medicine and he immediately ushers them both aboard (and Erica gets to come simply because she says so in an authoritative voice—apparently alien rent-a-cops aren’t any more reliable than human ones!).
• I’m no expert, but does it make any sense that a massive phosphorous shower wouldn’t have any visible or negative impacts on anything that might reveal its purpose is more nefarious?  Or, to put it plainly:  If raised phosphorous levels is enough to make humans into walking vacant apartments for alien lizard spawn, how are we expected to believe that it won’t have any other visible effects on the environment, flora, or fauna which would completely give the Vs away?
• For anyone worried, I will continue to review this show even though I complain endlessly—I love to hate the stuff I hate, and I love equally the wonderful little moments it delivers every once in a while.

TV Episode Review: Southland “Let It Snow”

Southland returned with a fairly low-key episode to start its 2.5^th season (are we really counting TNT’s back-end of the abandoned first season of the show as a complete season unto itself?).  The cold open involved a fairly non-compelling car chase which becomes an even less compelling foot race before the show’s trademark freeze frame with voice over kicks in to let us know that good police often get frustrated with the legal system’s limitations and find that they have to “improvise”.  Usually these openings are episode-specific, but I’m holding out hope that this is a thematic through-line for this season; it always makes for compelling television to see how good law enforcement finds ways to beat its own system despite the limitations and bureaucracy.  Some of The Wire’s best moments simply involved Lester and McNulty and the rest of the team growing wide-eyed as they discovered a loophole in the system allowing them to get what they needed.  Having said that, this show’s strengths have been mainly in the form of a very stylized documentary shooting style and richly developed relationships between the main players.  This season certainly opened with a recommitment to those elements; what layers they add atop of that remains to be seen.

But since it’s here for at least an episode, let’s look closer at that improvising.  As the “Let It Snow”s conclusion reveals, the improvisation in this case involves Detective Adams (Regina King, continuing her solid work on this show) and her new partner (who is pretty uninteresting and unlikeable so far, and I mean both the character and Jenny Gago’s performance here) skipping the whole DNA evidence process in favor of ramming a car off the road in order to apprehend a fleeing rape suspect.  He’s most certainly guilty, but when the opening voice over promises “improvisation” from a group of cops who have been portrayed as intelligent, resourceful and whip-smart, I expect something a bit more clever to wrap up the premiere.

For example, the great moment where Officers Sherman and Cooper respond to a gunfight where an officer has been wounded by turning their squad car into a mini-fortress by stripping all the cops available of their bullet proof vests and placing them over the passenger windows of the vehicle to create a shield allowing them to advance on the shooters with full protection and an escape plan for the wounded officer.  It’s a highly original moment for a cop drama and was especially compelling in that the simplicity of the plan seemed completely feasible, logical, and representative of the sort of thinking a seasoned police officer might do in a high pressure situation.  If the other A-story regarding the rapist had some sort of clever work like this, the episode would have been a lot more compelling from start to finish.  Instead I found myself saying “where’s your dog?” to the rapist a few seconds before Adams bothered to ask the same question. 

Sadly, the episode seemed to drag from time to time.  The opening minutes felt especially labored; it’s odd that instead of using a “previously on” catch-up technique, the show felt the need to create meaningless establishing moments to refresh us (or introduce to new viewers) the partnerships on the show:  Adams and new partner Ochoa aren’t getting along, Adams is still attached to her old partner enough to have coffee with him at midday, Sherman is still the eager and healthy youth to Cooper’s weary and semi-paralyzed vet, and Bryant and Moretta are still being boyishly charming while playfully roughing up the gang youths in their territory.  It all amounted to less than eight minutes, but it played really long and really unnecessary.  The show has every reason to want to welcome new viewership; it’s a minor miracle of survival already.  I’m all for them growing a bigger following, but this just felt like a crash course in characters that needlessly kept loyal viewers at arm’s length for too long. 

On the bright side, the show continues to be stellar at creating small, impactful moments of police work that are overlooked on inferior cop dramas.  This episode featured two great ones, the first being the eerily resigned reaction of a murder victim’s father to the news of his son’s death.  Many cop dramas treat these scenes in very traditional fashion by jamming a camera in on the parent’s face to watch the tears fall.  But here we see a man who knew his son was going to die—if not because of his lifestyle as a gang banger then for what he may or may not have done to a very dangerous gang banger’s daughter—and receives the news the way another person might accept word that he’s being called off to war.  He is clearly saddened, but on a much more deep level he seems both resigned to reality and his helplessness against the powers that rule the particular corner of the world he and his family are holed up in.  It was a very simple moment that might have been the most profound of the episode.

Equally small and even more insignificant (but much funnier, because, you know, no dead sons or rape retaliation murders) was the call to a department store that finds Cooper refereeing a battle between a store clerk and a woman angry that she’s going to lose three dollars on a return.  Everyone has watched enough Cops and read enough local news to know that crazy things like this eat up the valuable time of police officers, but this show has a way of sneaking these nice bits in every few episodes to remind us that, like with any job, sometimes it’s death-by-1000-paper-cuts that really demoralizes good police.  Sherman looks mildly amused by the whole scene, but Cooper is in endless pain as it is, and the look on his face as he ponies up three bucks out of his own pocket to shut the two bickering women up is simultaneously funny and sad.

Tonight’s best sequence was easily the shootout scene, although it had disappointingly little to do with any major story.  In isolation, though, it was really nicely executed.  It emerged from a dull scene with a traffic stop and built tension quietly with the call coming over the radio followed quickly by a very distraught officer yelling (I had no idea what he said or that he was radioing FROM the scene) and then quite literally explodes on the viewer first with the sound of powerful automatic weapons (great use of sound effects in the opening moment of the scene) and then the full view of the chaos.  It all happened very quickly and I wish they hadn’t chosen to break the tension with a commercial break, but it was a scene that put the directorial chops of the show on display. 

It felt really good to be back in Southland with the officers and detectives again, but the writers need to ratchet things up pretty quickly here in the coming weeks.  This should be a season where the show finds some firm footing and some story arcs, both major and minor, which live up to the potential of the show’s more stylized elements.  Based on the fairly flat dialogue and lackluster plotlines of this premiere, that isn’t happening fast enough.  It’s obviously too early to worry, but if I were a new viewer I certainly would have left this episode with little more than a shoulder shrug (versus, say, scrambling for my remote to set the DVR for next week).  A show with this many regular characters and a desire to examine something as complex as the challenges and shortcomings of an overwhelmed law enforcement system is a sluggish beast by nature, but I know returning viewers won’t argue with me when I say we’ve seen much, much better than this from the show and are expecting a return to form much sooner than later.

Overall:  6.8/10

Great Quotes, Interesting Moments, What Not and Occasionally What-have-you:

·         The show continues to excel at interesting camera work:  tonight we had some nice lens flares to liven up some actionless scenes, a couple of nicely angled shots to help keep the surroundings the officers work in as a central part of the show’s perspective, and at least one clever shot during a foot chase where the camera briefly dips towards the sidewalk to reveal that the shooter is running over the celebrity stars in the sidewalk.  These little things make this show interesting even when it’s not at its sharpest

·         The pregnancy reveal to close the episode didn’t do much for me—I don’t like their relationship at all, but mainly because I dislike her.  How do other people feel?

·         Cooper’s back pain is actually giving me sympathy pains—he makes it seem very real and VERY severe

·         “Better live pussies than dead heroes” was apparently what passed for sharp dialogue tonight.  Booo.  You’re better than this, Southland.

• Falling Skies looks intriguing based on the extended look we got tonight during commercials. Tell me if I miss anything, but the preview basically involved District 9 plus The Walking Dead plus V with a splash of War of the Worlds and a sprinkling of Predator.  That’s a lot of “inspiration” for a 2-minute preview