I guess it was about time for our local boyscout Ben Sherman (Ben McKenzie) to have a bad day. This bad day however had him punch a young, black hipster party girl square in the face with a closed fist… and while she may have deserved it, the act was done with a huge crowd of people watching – camera phones running tape to make him e-famous on YouTUBE.
The situation came about towards the end of another unappreciated day for Sherman as he and Sammy Bryant (Shawn Hatosy) left the scene of a crime where their new Chief had shot an old woman in the face with a shotgun. Prior to that he had to wrestle a young criminal from the home of a woman who willingly hid him from the police and told the Cops that she did it because the boy was “more my people than you are”. Needless to say that little quote pushed Ben over the edge, having felt himself a champion of the people – the thought that the ones he was there to “protect” would rather help the criminals made him reach a boiling point.
So when he and Sammy come upon a street party and made to break it up for the noise disturbance, the privileged kids took to attacking them then filming the aftermath when Ben decided to fight back. He lost his cool, blacked out and decked the girl after she spit in his face and pushed him. The entire scene was inspired by recent events at the “Occupy” movement where similar things occurred with citizens attacking the police, barricading them with their bodies and then filming the aftermath of them being pepper sprayed. I see you working SouthLAnd, I see you working.
Bokeem Woodbine makes another appearance in this episode as Officer Jones – I really like this cat. He’s that cool Cop that is not only respectful to the people in the neighborhood (he grew up there), but unlike Lydia (Regina King) he isn’t on a “save the world” campaign. He has a green partner who Ben picks on the entire episode as a sort of hazing like he received in the 1st and 2nd season of SouthLAnd. It was pretty funny seeing Ben try and play the dick when someone like Dewey (C.Thomas Howell) makes it seem so easy.
The entire cast of detectives and beat cops worked together in this one and we get some brief time with Officer Tang (Lucy Liu) and John Cooper (Michael Cudlitz). These 2 are a cute match – with John trying to warm Tang up and she, recognizing that he wants to make friendly, playing the part of the ice queen. There’s just something about that little smile that Tang does when she plays hard to get that lets you know that she’s reachable though and before long we will get the full story behind her.
There were a few cameos like Marla Gibbs from the old show 227 playing the part of a senile old woman that kept calling Lydia “Brenda”. Those of you who are old enough to have watched that show will get the reference. A blatant plug for my other favorite TNT Show “The Walking Dead” was placed into the dialogue to remind us that it’s coming back next month but thankfully it wasn’t as distracting as it could have been.
I hope they do more episodes like this which involves everybody together but the thing that stuck out to me the most (outside of Lydia finding a woman’s body embedded in the front of an SUV with her hand cut off) was Lydia’s partner Ruben Robinson (Dorian Missick), hinting at destroying some evidence in order to keep a man free who had shot and killed a liar that got him wrongfully locked up for 22 years. It stuck with me because I would have done the same thing… and despite Lydia’s hardcore stance on following rules, I was proud of her for turning her back to allow Ruben to lose the evidence.
In the end it was Sammy’s turn to play mentor to the defeated Ben Sherman about keeping a cool head under all circumstances. Quite ironic since last season held an emotional version of Sammy, freshly divorced, having lost his partner and best friend, roaming the streets of LA looking for revenge. On a final note, the new chief is one impressively hardcore dude; I look forward to seeing what he has in store for the team (besides making them fill out a line of a McDonald’s application whenever they mess up… hilarious).
Written by Greg Dragon – who has written 366 reviews on Spicy Movie Dogs.
Cinephile and opinion writer, Greg Dragon has been a fan of movies since the 80's when Kung Fu theater was all the rage and Roger Moore was James Bond. As an opinion writer that has reviewed Box Office releases on a number of prominent websites, Greg is the founder and lead critic of Spicy Movie Dogs.
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