“Southland” Episode 309 Recap: “He’s Dancing as Fast as He Can”

First off, mucho thanks to our fearless editor Michael Jensen for covering for me last week. (I was holed up all week figuring out my Oscar pool strategy, and now I have a whole $32 to show for it, so it was well worth it.) Boy did I dodge a bullet on that one, given that last week’s episode had to be just about the grimmest, most depressing one yet on this show.

As great a job as Michael did, I do have to take issue with his taking issue with Southland’s opening credits. Those credits rock! I love that opening music so much! In fact, if they ever get around to legalizing gay marriage here in New York and I finally get the lavish wedding I’ve been planning as revenge for all the opposite-sex bridezilla-ganzas I’ve suffered through over the years, I’m totally walking down the aisle to that music.

Anyway, this week opens with a big action scene. Josie and Lydia are inside some sort of factory/warehouse and there’s lots of people running and gunfire.

Foreboding Announcer Guy: “Hey, did you know this is the second to last episode already? Boy, I have no idea where any of this is headed. Nobody tells us Foreboding Announcer Guys anything. Sigh.”

12 Hours Earlier …

Lydia is at the shooting range happily spraying a target with bullets and shamelessly eavesdropping on the conversation next to her.

This uniformed officer is advising a colleague on how to execute a “failure drill.” Basically it’s two shots to the torso and if that doesn’t take the guy down, you aim for the head – information that I’m sure is totally irrelevant and won’t crop up again in this episode at all.

After all the fun of shooting, Lydia and the cop, Morales, make chit chat, and she starts batting her eyes and getting all, “Oh my, what a big gun you have.” And before you know it, she’s gotten herself into praying mantis position, her body language clearly articulating that she’s open for mating but that if you’re not careful she’ll likely bite your head off.

As Regina King has so deftly made it clear with this character, Lydia walks around with so many defenses up that body armor would pretty much be superfluous. So when Morales shows up at work and asks her out, it’s not surprising to see that she initially rebuffs him. But he keeps pushing and you can see the smallest little chink in her armor open up as she agrees to coffee after her shift.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. While I love Lydia and would very much like to see her have some happiness in her life, I’m just not seeing much chemistry or connection with this guy, the way I did that poor gunshot victim two weeks ago. Maybe that’s the point? That she’s so desperate for human contact she’s willing to take a chance on someone not right for her? I don’t know. I guess we’ll see.

Anyway, Lydia and Josie get called to this crime scene, a husband and wife who were shot, and their creepy-loner son was seen leaving the house.

The moron twin detectives we’ve seen in previous episodes, Beavis and Butthead, somehow finagled their way to be in charge this time out. So they get to order the women around and make them do the boring grunt work of questioning the creepy-loner son’s employers.

Lydia and Josie bitch about this boring assignment, but then – good news! – there’s been a gruesome homicide. So all of a sudden they have to rush off to investigate. They then spend the next 50 minutes involved with that case (which involves getting this freaked out teenager to admit he saw his father kill his mother).

But all that turns out to be a big red herring for where this episode is really headed. Because just as the two of them are congratulating each other for the speedy resolution to their case, they go to question the creepy-loner son’s employer and find themselves right in the middle of a major gunfight. Looks like the creepy-loner son has gone on some sort of rampage, starting at home with his parents and then winding up at his place of work.

All these people are rushing from the building screaming. Perfectly illustrating the sort of behavior that Cooper had recently told Chickie defines a true cop, Lydia and Josie rush toward the gunfire rather than away from it.