La Brea: Season 1 Finale

Created & Written by: David Appelbaum

Produced by: Asher Landay, Livia Hanich, Naomi Cleaver, and Zakiyyah Alexander

Starring: Natalie Zea (Eve Harris), Eoin Macken (Gavin Harris), Chiké Okonkwo (Ty Coleman), Karina Logue (Marybeth Hill), Zyra Gorecki (Izzy Harris), Jack Martin (Josh Harris), Veronica St. Clair (Riley Velez), Rohan Mirchandaney (Scott Israni), Lily Santiago (Veronica Castillo), Chloe De Los Santos (Lilly Castillo), Virginie Laverdure (Dr. Sophia Nathan) (Wow, that was a lot of actors.)

This season really got better as it went.  

The concept definitely got my interest immediately: a sinkhole that opens in the middle of LA? I tend to enjoy natural disaster movies, so that was right up my alley. And the bottom of the sinkhole leads to a prehistoric world? That sounds like sci-fi or magic to me, so even better! 

I remember my first impression of the pilot being that it felt a bit rushed. The sinkhole appears within close to the first five minutes (maybe a little longer, but not much) of the episode, and I would have preferred to have a little more time to get to know the characters before that. I'll grant that those preceding five minutes were great: it showed all of our main characters having a meaningful, good conversation together that showed who they were and why they cared about each other. It was good, meaty, informative stuff that was also entertaining. But just as I was enjoying it, they were torn apart by the sinkhole. Would the show really have benefitted from more time before it appeared? Debatable. 

The only other criticism I have of this season is the realism. I say that a lot about these fiction shows I watch, and my friends are always like, "Ben, this is Marvel/Harry Potter/Avatar/insert-magical-world, what's supposed to be real?" I counter with: all these worlds have rules. In Harry Potter and Avatar, the magic system has laws, just like physics. So, within the bounds of established rules for that world, I want more realism. For La Brea, there's not a lot that really departs from our world's physics beyond the wormholes that seem to appear and disappear. Other than that, I feel like we can apply real-world stuff. In this instance, the show really focused on the character interactions and drama--which makes sense for a TV series. It's very comparable to Lost, and to Appelbaum's credit, he acknowledges this in the show. They both suffer from lack of realism, IMO. Neither in Lost nor in La Brea do the true hazards of being lost in the wilderness really become apparent. Exhaustion, starvation, high tempers, loss of sleep, general exposure, and not to mention hygiene--all these would have been far more extreme than either show depicted. These are challenges I wish the characters would have acknowledged (which they do for some, but not nearly as much as I'd prefer), but never really did. 

So how did the show succeed? In most every other way. As I opened saying, the season really got better as it went. It started off a little bland with one group of characters stranded and trying to figure out life, but as they explored their world, dozens of new and very compelling plot points were revealed. They discovered a village of people already established who were obviously not from the sinkhole/LA. I don't know my prehistory very well, but I'm pretty sure there were no humans around in 10,000 BC. (Which, I just Googled this, and I'm flat wrong 😂) Slowly, Appelbaum revealed a whole mess of time-travel shenanigans, beginning with the fact that many other sinkholes/wormholes have appeared throughout history, dumping people from various eras into prehistory--and returning people from prehistory into our more recent history. Probably the most fascinating revelation (spoiler alert) was that one young character in prehistory is one of the current adult stars in the modern-day side. 

Which brings me to my next topic--the show balanced present day and prehistory stories expertly. The central family was torn apart by the sinkhole, with mother and son falling into the hole and father and daughter remaining above in present day. Additionally, the father (Gavin) was written to experience "flashes" of scenes that are happening simultaneously in prehistory, which serves to connect the two stories very nicely. Even better, the flashes were later explained in a way that beautifully developed and furthered his character and the plot--memories of a time-displaced childhood. I was so impressed by that!! I ended up being even more interested in the modern-day storyline than prehistoric, even though it had less screen time, because I thought Gavin's, Izzy's, and Dr. Nathan's characters were the most compelling. I was also fascinated to see how modern-day LA was responding to this massive natural disaster, though unfortunately (but understandably) that wasn't expanded on. 

Okay, I've written a lot at this point. My main takeaways are that the time-travel element is being used very well and it looks like that's going to be explored even more in the already-greenlit season 2. Characters are being developed well and focused on appropriately. And the dynamics of the Harris family are fantastic. They're compelling by themselves and written such that they expertly tie together the time periods and various plot points! 

Job well done, Mr. Appelbaum.