SouthLAnd Recap 3.7 – Sideways

This had to be one of the hardest episodes to watch on TNT’s SouthLAnd. Sammy (Shawn Hatosy) is getting worse, Lydia (Regina King) finally gets knowledge of who sold her pictures to the press and Chickie Brown (Arija Bareikis) has to be talked out of quitting the force by John Cooper (Michael Cudlitz).

The difficult part of the episode dealt with an innocent bystander who gets shot in the head by two warring thugs and is taken to the hospital where he dies slowly. What made it hard was the way the character was acted, it was something amazing and you wanted to root for him just off of the few lines that he has when onscreen. The man meets Lydia outside of a store when she is called in to investigate the murder and he is sitting on the curb holding his head thinking that he had bumped it when he fled the gunshots. He jokes with her about him having a hard head and before long she notices blood trickling down from his fingers and the paramedics whisk him off because that supposed bump he suffered turned out to be a gunshot wound.

In the hospital Lydia questions him further and he explains that he is a graphic artist and draws her a detailed image of the shootout with the suspects in remarkable detail. He remembers their names, the fact that they were light-skinned and he is in good spirits lightly joking with her and asking for his fiancé. When Lydia leaves his room the doctor tells her the awful news that the location of the bullet yields a 99% chance of death if operated on and at any time in the upcoming moments he would eventually die from his brain swelling. It is a lot for Lydia and when she gets suspended and sent on leave for the photo incident, her rage was not enough to prevent her from checking in on him later that day.

He is in a critical situation when she returns to him and by that time the doctors had already told him the bad news. He then asks her what she would do in his situation, take the 1% chance from the surgery or wait it out to tell his fiancé goodbye. Lydia relays to him a sad story of her past of losing her one true love to death without the opportunity to say goodbye. She tells him that if he truly loves her he would wait.

Sammy’s turn to hit Rock Bottom

Sammy Bryant is finally given a chance and vindication for Nate’s death when 6 men are chosen to stand up in a line-up for him to pick the killer out. The problem is Sammy doesn’t remember the killer out of the many angry faces that went at him and Nate that night and he panics at the thought of failing his partner. He is confused and stays with Nate’s wife playing mock dad for the children and knight in shining armor for the wife. The two are growing closer as men and women would in such a harsh aftermath of losing someone they love and she finally has to ask him “what are we doing?” Sammy’s world is falling apart and he fingers the wrong guy in the line-up who turns out to be a decoy planted to keep him honest and Detective Daniel Salinger (Michael McGrady) has to send the killer home free.

Sammy hits rock bottom and is spiraling out of control, unable to go to Nate’s wife for fear of the inevitable happening (guilty, rebound sex for those of you who don’t get it) and unable to play cop after messing up the line-up. His only recourse is to go home to Tammi who comes outside to console the crying Sammy as he breaks down in her arms. It was a tough and intense moment because I feel that Sammy will be gone soon, either from suicide, or vendetta leading to his incarceration. We only can home that maybe his boss Sal can step in and stop the ticking time bomb from going off.

The Misadventures of Chickie and Dewey

There was a lot of history told in this episode, like we find out that Chickie wanted to be a surfer girl but ended up pregnant and joined the force just to have work. We also find out that Russell (Tom Everett Scott) was the slime who sold the pictures to the press, a fact that he confessed to Lydia deep into the night after a day of hell for her. She of course took it as the ultimate betrayal, I think her words were of the tune of “I don’t know you dude” (yes Regina King is awesome I know). I foresee a Lydia breakdown coming and hers will not be an easy one for those involved. So bye bye Russell, I guess when Lydia refused to loan him $3,000 he felt helpless and sold her out when the chance presented itself, but hey, I am not mad at him. The people he sold the pictures to gave him half a million dollars.

Billy Dewey (C. Thomas Howell) was actually tolerable in this ep, he was funny, confident and seemed to be a veteran cop though and through. Unfortunately he ends up killing an innocent woman during a high speed chase when she walks out into the street as he and Chickie buried down on her at almost 100 mph. Let’s just say the death shook Chickie straight back into surfer girl mode. When the day ends she is crying her eyes out and getting into her car as John drills motivation into her head trying his best to prevent her from quitting. Chickie looked like shit, I mean really bad, dark bags under her eyes, crows feet aplenty and looking like a tired old smoker. No telling whether she’ll be back or not, I do hope so even though she is a major afterthought for the show’s writers.

This was by far the hardest SouthLAnd to swallow thus far and as Sammy gets crazier it is bound to get even harder. They just don’t make shows like this anymore and if this is the first recap you read from me, I would urge you to watch more SouthLAnd and get your buddies to watch it. Let’s keep this show going, there simply isn’t anything else like it on television.