Blog: Notes from a Filmie
Background Movie: La Brea TV Series (2021)
I’m counting down the days, soon to be hours, until my month’s subscription to Peacock TV is over. I subbed earlier this month to watch Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie with my MIL, and nothing else has really captured my attention to keep subscribing.
In these final hours, though, I happened upon the show La Brea. The show first aired in 2021, and it’s now in its third and final season. If you haven’t watched it, La Brea is similar to Lost if you swapped out the island for Los Angeles. In the pilot’s opening scene, the earth cracks open and blocks of Los Angeles fall into an enormous sinkhole. It turns out that the sinkhole empties into a kind of wormhole, and the people and things that fell landed in 10,000 BC (or BCE, for the non-Christians).
Just like in Lost, the group is led by a handful of key players: the doctor, the overprotective and sensitive woman, the police officer. There’s also an outlaw whose car contains kilos of heroin. I’m on Season 1 Episode 10 and still no sighting of any black smoke, but large beasts have walked through camp with mystical, mysterious music in the background.
These shows always capture my attention because I enjoy seeing possible ways humans deal with alternate realities. I never understand, though, why people think the rules of their former society still stand. Why is everyone listening to the cop, and the security guard too? Why does the cop think she still rules the land and needs her gun? Why do these strangers all stick together instead of doing a Hunger Games grab for supplies and dash back into the woods?
Me? I’d be finding a water source and a cave. Then looking for edible plants, seeds and a place to start growing.
But back to the show. So many tv shows are theatrically produced, with beautiful long shots, well-developed characters, and lovely soundtracks. It’s hard for this to be playing in the background.
La Brea is playing on Peacock TV now.