I've been dying to watch the first episode of
La Brea, the new tv series on Hulu: according to the horrendous reviews, a "cliched, amateurish, inept rip-off of
Lost" with "a cliche gay couple." 11% on Rotten Tomatoes. Where are Joel and the Bots when you need them?
Scene 1: Stuck in traffic outside the La Brea Tar Pits in L.A., Mom intermittently honks her horn, complains about her job, and displays her wedding-ring necklace (so she and Dad are divorced so they can get back together again). Teenage daughter Izzy has a prosthetic leg. Teenage son Josh (Jack Martin, left) demonstrates that he is heterosexual by cruising a girl in the next car (aren't you glad we got that out of the way?).
Suddenly the pavement cracks, and cars and buildings fall into a gigantic, rapidly-expanding sinkhole. Mom reverses the car and drives down the sidewalk until she crashes. Hundreds of people run past stopped cars (but no one actually gets out of the cars?). Josh falls in. Mom falls in, but Izzy grabs her arm. Instead of "Pull me up!", Mom orders her to "Let go!" Huh? The sinkhole obligingly waits for her to think it over, drop Mom, and run away in slow motion.
Scene 2: U.S. Air Force Base, El Segundo, California. Disgraced ex-pilot Gavin (Eoin Macken) in a car, intermittently drinking, getting a vision of a giant condor, and gazing at a photo of his estranged family. He goes in to apply for a job. The interviewer doesn't want a pilot who has crazy hallucinations (
and drinks...and discusses his marital problems in detail), but she promises to find him something else to do.
On the way out, he sees a news story about the sinkhole on tv (helpfully set up in the lobby), and Izzy calls. Before she has a chance to say anything, he yells "Stay there. I'm on my way." How do you know she was in the disaster? How do you know where she is?
Scene 3: The disaster site. Izzy in an ambulance, being examined. Why is she the only one? Wouldn't there be hundreds of evacuees? Dad arrives. Wait -- it's 24 miles from El Segundo to L.A., How did he get there so fast? They hug. Suddenly giant condors, just like the ones in Dad's hallucinations, fly from the sinkhole. One stops and caws ominously: "Nice seeing you again, Gavin."
Scene 4: Mom fell through a glowing rift into a new world, barren except for a single "Wilshire Boulevard" sign and a weird pictograph on a rock. And her wedding-ring necklace, on the ground nearby. Why isn't she pulverized by the fall? And where are the other people and objects that fell with her? She starts running at random, yelling "Josh!"
Eventually she runs into a black guy with a gun (whoa, racism!), traumatized by the fall. They both run toward some smoke -- oh, here's where everything else landed, in a convenient clearing! Why are the cars and buildings all mangled, but the people are fine?
Scene 5: Josh has apparently been there much longer than Mom. He's already got a sidekick -- Riley, the girl he cruised earlier! They also meet a gung-ho woman and a giggling stoned dude (Scott), who thinks they're in an episode of
Lost. A convenient Doctor (Jon Seda) takes charge, and sends them all out looking for supplies.
There's also a gay couple, half of which is played by Pacharo Mzembe. The other half has lost his glasses, and is literally blind without them. They're on the scene for about 10 seconds.
Riley and Scott find a cache of heroin in one of the cars. Ulp! There's a drug dealer among them!
Uh-oh, giant CGI wolves attack! Riley's dad is killed and eaten. Jack is bitten. The others take refuge in cars until Black Guy with Gun shoots the wolves.
Scene 6: At the sinkhole, Homeland Security lady holds a press conference. It was...um...er...a natural disaster. There are no plans to search for survivors: "no one could have survived that fall." But Gavin gets a vision of Mom in the prehistoric world: "This sounds crazy, but Mom and Josh are still alive. And what about the condors?"
Meanwhile, Homeland Security Lady talks to Adam (Toby Truslove, left), a senior official who worked on a similar incident in the Mojave Desert: "Yep, I told them what they wanted to hear. No way they can know the truth!" They go into a command center tent and look at drone images of the glowing rift. Suddenly the images vanish.
Scene 7: At the prehistoric world, Doctor treats Josh's wound -- he needs antibiotics, or he will die in like a few minutes (that's not how infections work). The Black Guy with a Gun, traumatized by using his gun, runs into the woods. Mom and Doctor drop their search for antibiotics to follow. Just let him go? Keeping Josh alive is more important than telling a stranger "Everything is going to be ok?"
Coincidentally, Black Guy with Gun knows where an ambulance is -- inconveniently distant from the rest of the debris.
Scene 8: Dad Gavin tries to talk to Adam and Homeland Security Lady: "I know something. I've been having hallucinations, see, but I'm not crazy. And not very drunk yet.." They dismiss him. "I saw the serial number of your drone." They pretend not to care, but secretly investigate him.
Dad Gavin, Izzy, and Aunt Jessica go home -- extremely ornate rich-person house. Dad sorts through a shoebox of old photos to find a picture of the boulder with the pictograph, which would prove that there are sinkhole survivors, I guess.
Scene 9: On the way to the ambulance, Doctor conveniently walks ahead, so Black Guy with Gun (Ty) reveals that he has an ex-wife (of course), and he's a psychologist (who carries a gun with him at all times?). He immediately stops being traumatized and asks if Mom wants to start an imprompto therapy session.
Ok! About a year ago, she was running late, so she asked a neighbor to pick up Izzy from school, and there was an accident, and Izzy lost her leg.
"You can't blame yourself," Ty responds. Gee, I could have said that without a Ph.D. in psychology!
Scene 10: Dad Gavin sneaks out in the middle of the night to find the boulder with the pictograph. And he digs around, and finds the wedding ring necklace! Are they going with the survivors in the prehistoric past, before the first humans came to North America (over 23,000 years ago)? No way that ring would be so close to the surface.
Meanwhile, at the survivor camp, Scott and Riley try to keep Josh awake so he won't die (that's head injuries, not infected wounds). Gung-ho lady fires a flare. Someone notices -- a prehistoric person with the pictograph on his cloak!
Meanwhile, at the command center, they discover that the condors belong to a prehistoric species.
Scene 11: Mom, Doctor, and Ty finally reach the ambulance. Suddenly Mom notices that they're still in the L.A. basin. Ulp, a saber-tooth tiger attacks! Saber-tooth tigers became extinct about 10,000 years ago, so they're definitely in the past. The end.
Beefcake: None.
Gay characters: One couple, for ten seconds.
Heterosexism: Nearly all interactions, even professional and familial interactions, are between men and women. I can't recall a single line of dialogue spoken between men (except the gay guy says "It will be ok, Sweetheart" to his partner).
Plot Inanities: Lots.
Will I Keep Watching: What for? Everybody is divided into boy-girl dyads, and no one took off his clothes, and the mystery has already been solved: they're in the prehistoric past.
Another sword-and-sorcery hero, The Warlord (seen here in cosplay), debuted in an anthology series called 1st Issue Special in 1975 before going on to a successful run in his own title (1976-1988). He was an American pilot who accidentally flew into a hole at the North Pole and ended up in Pellucidar...um, I mean Skartaris, where he rescued the scantily clad Princess Deja Thoris...um, I mean Princess Tara.
