A very quick review of last night’s “Southland” coming up just as soon as I get to punch you in the face…
Where last week’s episode spotlighted all the things I like about “Southland” across all the partnerships, “Community” only went 1-for-3 for me. The Cooper/Tang stuff played to all the show’s strengths: anecdotal (the retaliatory punch idea was as perfect a scene as they’ve done), funny at times, touching at others, and in the end (with the pedophile’s neighbors pulling an “I am Spartacus!” routine), a story about the job’s many frustrations.
Sammy and Ben’s storyline returned to Sammy’s fixation with getting various gang leaders off the street, and while that’s always been a part of the character, it’s never been a part of the character I cared much about, and one I was hoping would be largely left behind now that he was riding in a regular patrol car with Ben. And I’ll be honest about the Lydia storyline: my interest in that wandered very early (as it unfortunately often does during the detective stories, even though I like Regina King so much) and only wandered back at the very end when she was feeling lonely at seeing her partner with his large, happy family. If you were to quiz me on the two of them were up to at work, I wouldn’t be able to tell you this morning.
What did everybody else think?