Today, Elizabeth’s back Guest-clacking for us, after wondering if Heroes was about to blow our minds….
Southland could have been a solid cop-centered replacement for ER on NBC when the first few episodes aired last spring—probably a better replacement than the paramedic-centered Trauma, which already came and went this past fall—but instead turned into the most public casualty of the network’s decision to put Jay Leno in primetime. (Well, most public until this week. But that’s beside the point.)
Some critics have already mentioned that TNT, the network that finally bought the show after it was canceled by NBC, is really a more appropriate network anyway. Southland does fit in well with Saving Grace, TNT’s other gritty police drama, and the somewhat less gritty Law & Order marathons. On the other hand, if NBC was really trying to bring back the glory days of complex, adult 10 PM dramas, Southland would have been a good place for them to start. A character-centered, complex adult drama seems like the kind of show most networks would want, at least for prestige, even if the ratings aren’t as high as they’d like. Cable networks can also get away with lower ratings than broadcast networks, which means popularity isn’t as much of a concern. So far TNT hasn’t committed to filming any new episodes, but we can dream, right?
As for the show itself, the pilot episode is a little more of a self-contained story than most, showing a day in the life of detectives and patrolmen. One of them, played by the redoubtable Ben McKenzie (finally getting past his years on The O.C.), is a rookie just being trained. There’s a gang shooting early in the day with a single witness, a case that provides the closest thing to a fleshed-out plotline to the episode and which, as even new viewers will have seen in the second episode this week, some of the detectives here will keep working on throughout the season.
Other than that, it’s pretty much a day-in-the-life show, similar to ER, following the characters through their day on the job and occasionally at home. Though some of the shootouts get a little melodramatic and more cinematic than real, it’s still compelling drama and the characters are fully-drawn people, if not always people you’d actually want to hang out with (which is at least realistic.)
Though the ratings for the first-season reruns still need to be evaluated (not to mention the ratings for the new episodes that had already been filmed), as I’ve already said, TNT can afford lower numbers than NBC could, so it’s a definite possibility that they’ll renew it. But with the first part of the new season already filmed, we’ll definitely get resolution to last season’s cliffhanger. Best of all, on basic cable they won’t have to bleep out as much language as a broadcast network would. Now we can finally hear what Cooper really thinks of Sherman.
Clacked by Guest Clacker
on Jan 22, 2010 @ 13:00 EST5EDT
I was compiling a mental list of points I wanted to mention, but you checked off each one of them as you went along. Nice thinking.
Loving the reduced censorship and really looking forward to the new episodes.
I forgot to add, also loving Ben McKenzie’s public schadenfreude at NBC’s embarrassing and expensive problems.
I think the reduced censorship is the only thing that could (have) save(d) this show in the first place.
It was doomed on NBC or any other major network because you could just feel the walls it was hitting in the later episodes (4ff). It was rightfully canceled at the time and I’m really hoping for it to become the new “Shield” now.