I had no set plans to watch Southland when the pilot came on last Thursday night. I guess that's why I recorded it rather than viewing it when it aired. NBC has been having problems as of late getting anyone to watch their shows, so they have a lot riding on this new cop drama. With the recent complete failure of Kings (a great show, but sent to the graveyard of Saturday night to die a quiet death) and ER now long gone, NBC desperately needs a hit. Taking ER’s Thursday night time slot (well keeping it warm until Jay Leno returns in the fall at 10p.m. Monday through Friday), Southland debuted to a strong audience, winning the 18-49 year old audience for that time slot.
The show is set in current day crime-filled Los Angeles while it follows several LAPD officers, specifically Officer Ben Sherman, played by The O.C.’s Benjamin McKenze. Southland begins about 3/4ths of the way through the episode, showing the end of a bloody shootout in one of L.A.’s, let’s just say I’m not moving there, “rougher” neighborhoods. Ben is standing over a bullet-hole-filled-tattoo-covered body in complete shock as we learn it’s Ben’s first day on the job. Quickly the story jumps back to the beginning of the day when Ben is getting into the police cruiser for the first time as a cop with an extremely blunt and crude Officer John Cooper, played by Michael Cudlitz (Band of Brothers). While Cudlitz plays a stereotypical rough and tough officer, it doesn’t seem too forced or unbelievable. His portrayal of John Cooper is someone I would expect, someone I would want to be patrolling the not so yellow brick roads of L.A.
The story also revolves around several detectives played by Shawn Hatosy (Alpha Dog, Public Enemies) and Kevin Alejandro (Shark, Ugly Betty) who investigate a random drive-by shooting of a black teenager. Additionally Regina King (24, Jerry Maguire), playing Detective Lydia Adams and Tom Everett Scott (Race to Witch Mountain, Saved), playing Detective Russell Clark, try to determine what happened to a young girl who went missing from a local neighborhood. Southland follows these characters throughout their day, similar to an omnipresent documentary crew, with gritty and choppy camera work, which gives the viewer the feeling of being there with them. The writing touches race, drugs, violent crimes and socioeconomics all in one episode providing a feel similar to the movie Crash. The writing was also very colorful in parts, enough to make the censors bleep out some language. I’m not sure why they put the bad language in the show knowing it would get censored, whether they want an even grittier DVD, desire to give the network viewer a flavor for the characters without lodging an FCC fine or if NBC just really wants to be like its cable channel cousins, but its overprotective parent at GE said no. Who knows and I haven’t even determined whether I liked it or if it was distracting.
What I did like was that that Southland seemed more original and fresh, not being a typical Law and Order or CSI franchise where there is a crime and then we follow the cops and lawyers until someone is neatly put behind bars. Southland doesn’t package things up quite as nicely and focuses less on the clues to discovering who done it and more on the surrounding circumstances, characters and just every day life. The viewer is left not even sure whether the cops solving the crimes are good, but it provides some great, if not gruesome, scenes. I really enjoy television shows that are more like mini movies every week, rather than ones that are completely predictable (first two minutes there will be a crime, then the detectives comb through the clues, then a plot twist, then the arrest). I’m interested to see the direction of this show and how the characters and stories will develop and evolve over time, which is a good thing for NBC, since I will tune in again this week. I give Soutland a Spork Rating of:
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