IMHO: Southland (1.06) Westside

Last night's Southland promised some new revelations about gay cop John Cooper and it certainly delivered.

With each new episode, Southland grows more compelling and this episode definitely continued in that vein, thus earning an up arrow. For the details why, keep reading but be wary of the SPOILERS below.

This week we again see Cooper at the local dive gay bar, but this time we also see that he sometimes buys prescription drugs from a dealer working out of the bar. Seeing a deal go down between the two, another dealer tries to make a sale to Cooper, but he makes the mistake of thinking Cooper is looking to get high. Cooper tells him off and ruins the second dealers' drugs by dousing them in beer.

Meanwhile, fellow officer Ben Sherman is starting to figure some things out when he catches Cooper snooping in the bathroom drawers of a crime scene. However, when he brings the matter up with Cooper, his patrol partner snaps that he has things under control saying, "Look, I experience pain every once in a while and I'm not going to bitch about it and I'm not going to get desked over it."

Cooper clearly doesn't have things under control, however, as a few minutes earlier he was calling his ex-wife trying to get even more meds. Even though his pain is worse, she insists she can no longer take that kind of risk, and when Cooper's regular scumbag dealer turns out to be unavailable, he's forced to go back to the hottie dealer from earlier.

With the growing details about Cooper's addiction, I'm enjoying the slow reveal of his sexual orientation even more. I like that we're getting to see Cooper's struggle with prescription meds before he gets any romantic drama -- which, if his life is going to be like his co-workers, is not going to go well.

Why do I like it? For the most part, TV is still struggling to figure out how to give us gay characters that  are neither defined by their sexuality but don't ignore it either. Gay characters tend to exist either as secondary ones to help further the main characters' stories, or, less frequently, have storylines of their own that are defined by coming out, gay-bashing and homophobia.

Southland is in an even more challenging situation since its gay character breaks new ground by being an out gay cop who is pretty complicated. By focusing on his battle with addiction first, we're drawn to Cooper's other traits such as his stubbornness, his refusal to ask for help and his fear of being taken off street duty, before audiences can pigeonhole him as "the gay one".

That said, Cooper was notably the only one whose personal story wasn't about his domestic life. This episode saw Clarke's marriage potentially end, Adams break up with her new boyfriend, Bryant trying to talk his wife out of wanting to buy a downtown home and Sherman discovering his feelings for an old friend.

Putting all those stories next to Cooper's addiction struggle made for an unfortunate contrast. I'm fine with Cooper's sexual orientation not being front-and-center right away, but this episode would have worked better if at least one of the other characters' subplots wasn't about their interactions with the opposite sex.

What did you think? Is the slow reveal on Cooper holding your interest? Is Southland being too subtle with Cooper's sexual orientation?

Here is the episode via Hulu in case you missed it!