Southland 3.04
Jan. 26th, 2011 03:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ariadnes_stringApparently every show gets its own post this week. I’m sure we’ll be back to the omnibus style next week.
I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to write anything about this one. I pretty much knew what was going to happen, so I watched it in my office at lunchtime with the door closed because I knew if I watched at night, I wouldn’t be able to sleep. And I was still shaking afterward.
So let’s just pause for a moment in recognition of how incredibly painful that was. Wow.
And would have been even if I hadn’t liked Nate so much. But I did like him a whole hell of a lot, and I thought he gave a kind of balance to the show. I’m not sure what it’s going to be like without his easy-going way with people (and with getting things done), his air of being comfortable in the world around him, and—especially—the way he cut through the Sammy lunacy. I’m not sure what increasingly-crazy!Sammy is going to be like untempered by Nate’s laconic affection and tolerance.
Plus, Nate was the biggest and best flirt on the show. I’m going to miss that.
As usual, the show seemed to be chewing over something—chewing with a heavier jaw than usual, I'd say—given the number of repetitions of the idea we got in forty-plus minutes (the heaviness wasn’t bad, just different).
I’m not sure what you would call it, though: something about the cheapness and randomness of death, certainly; but also something about the incredibly thin barrier between life and death. And about the interchangeability of the living and the dead.
We had Ben’s dream about his father’s funeral, which ended with seeing himself in the coffin (which, okay, that dream needs a meta of its own).
Ben telling the wrong woman her son had died.
The father getting killed picking up a birthday cake. And later Nate driving the girl past the birthday party turned wake--celebration of the beginning of life turned into a commemoration of the ending of it.
when Nate scooped those kids out of the SUV and carried them off, that might have been when I started shaking).
And even the candles burning in the girl’s house—as if they were already memorializing something.
And then, of course, Nate, who had been doing everything right, dying.
And then a lot about the horror of not respecting the dead: Nate and family’s fury that Sammy had neglected to cover the dead father; the fact that no one cared about Artis, only about his Golden Gloves necklace and the missing Playstation.
On the other hand, we did have Ben using his dojo skills on the PCP guy, and Cooper’s fabulous line: “Why run when you can drive?” And I don’t think I’ve mentioned how much I love it that John gets about two inches from Ben’s face whenever he gives him a talking to. So there were some smiles.
I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to write anything about this one. I pretty much knew what was going to happen, so I watched it in my office at lunchtime with the door closed because I knew if I watched at night, I wouldn’t be able to sleep. And I was still shaking afterward.
So let’s just pause for a moment in recognition of how incredibly painful that was. Wow.
And would have been even if I hadn’t liked Nate so much. But I did like him a whole hell of a lot, and I thought he gave a kind of balance to the show. I’m not sure what it’s going to be like without his easy-going way with people (and with getting things done), his air of being comfortable in the world around him, and—especially—the way he cut through the Sammy lunacy. I’m not sure what increasingly-crazy!Sammy is going to be like untempered by Nate’s laconic affection and tolerance.
Plus, Nate was the biggest and best flirt on the show. I’m going to miss that.
As usual, the show seemed to be chewing over something—chewing with a heavier jaw than usual, I'd say—given the number of repetitions of the idea we got in forty-plus minutes (the heaviness wasn’t bad, just different).
I’m not sure what you would call it, though: something about the cheapness and randomness of death, certainly; but also something about the incredibly thin barrier between life and death. And about the interchangeability of the living and the dead.
We had Ben’s dream about his father’s funeral, which ended with seeing himself in the coffin (which, okay, that dream needs a meta of its own).
Ben telling the wrong woman her son had died.
The father getting killed picking up a birthday cake. And later Nate driving the girl past the birthday party turned wake--celebration of the beginning of life turned into a commemoration of the ending of it.
when Nate scooped those kids out of the SUV and carried them off, that might have been when I started shaking).
And even the candles burning in the girl’s house—as if they were already memorializing something.
And then, of course, Nate, who had been doing everything right, dying.
And then a lot about the horror of not respecting the dead: Nate and family’s fury that Sammy had neglected to cover the dead father; the fact that no one cared about Artis, only about his Golden Gloves necklace and the missing Playstation.
On the other hand, we did have Ben using his dojo skills on the PCP guy, and Cooper’s fabulous line: “Why run when you can drive?” And I don’t think I’ve mentioned how much I love it that John gets about two inches from Ben’s face whenever he gives him a talking to. So there were some smiles.
