Escapist Routes #20

Coming in late again this week, because I’ve been really busy. Doing what? You know, I’m really not sure. But the time. It passes. Too quickly.

Smoke, episode 6

This show surprised me — episode 5 saw the competent and boobtacular Detective Calderone get confirmation that Gudsen is an arsonist, and also a dog murderer, thanks to his ex-partner, cop-turned-pornographer John Leguizamo. (His character has a name, but he’s basically Every John Leguizamo Character.) I assume that Calderone would keep this info under her hat for another couple of episodes, basically going rogue.

Instead, she goes straight to the boss, who is initially skeptical, especially when Special Agent Anna Chlumsky points out that there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence, but nothing that would hold up in court. Until Boss Harvey hears a fragment of Gudsen’s terrible novel, which contains a detail about a real crime which he could only know if he was the investigator — which he was not — or the arsonist.

Meanwhile, Second Arsonist Freddy is escalating, while Gudsen — motivated as much by professional jealousy as anything else — is close on his tail. He finally takes Freddy down at the end, and we see he is really happy about it. In his pants. If you know what I mean.

Smoke is your classic "bog standard show that thinks it’s prestige TV because it has a budget and is on a streaming service”, but I’m not really mad about it. Like Gudsen’s novel, it thinks it’s deeper than it is. But unlike Gudsen’s novel, it’s competent, and if you’re a crime show tragic, that’s enough to fill an hour a week.

Foundation, season 3, episode 3

One of the things I love about Foundation is that every season introduces a new set of Emperors Cleon, and they are all completely different and exactly the same. Dawn, as Gaal points out, is always seeking escape.

But this generation of Brother Day is different. It feels like he never evolved beyond his Dawn era — maybe because, now Demerzel has possession of the Prime Radiant and has some limited view of the future, he has become an absolute ruler who is all too aware of his powerlessness.

A smarter person would be able to say something about history as a product of forces rather than Great Men, but I’m an idiot, so I’m simply going to observe that watching Lee Pace chew the scenery while Cassian Bilton and Terrence Mann try to keep him under control is deeply fun. Also, this week Brother Day gets to wear a false moustache, and it amused me almost as much as it did Gaal.

OH YEAH it turns out that Gaal and Dawn have been secretly acquainted, if not actually friends, for three years. I am extremely invested in the two of them becoming friends. Bros, in fact. She’s mentoring him the way Hari mentored her, except she’s doing a better job so far, and no one has died.

Okay, well, lots of people have died, but that’s not Gaal’s fault. That’s because of the Mule, a character who is definitely a different villain to the dude in Dune: Prophecy who turned up out of nowhere with a shabby coat and mysterious powers. I keep telling myself that, but I don’t yet believe it. I like that his main nemeses at this point seem to be the rich nepo baby space influencers, but I’m not yet sold on this arc.

Ballard, season 1

I think it was during episode 3 of Ballard where my flatmate turned to me and said, “You know, it’s just really nice to have a cop show where women are good to each other.”

I have to admit that I did not expect this of Ballard, the new spin-off from Bosch. I expected the title character, played by Maggie Q, to be another lone wolf fighting crime and the LAPD (but I repeat myself).

The LAPD are definitely the villains here, but Ballard fights them by assembling a team dominated by the marginalised, and people whom we simply don’t usually see on television. She’s an Asian-American woman in her 40s who has been pushed into cold cases after she accused a fellow officer of attempted sexual assault. Her team consists of a Black ex-detective who quit after the same officer raped her; a gay white man (whose husband is played by Jim Rash, formerly and always of Community); a fat middle-aged civilian mom; and a Latina law student.

There is, of course, the obligatory white cis straight man who thinks his gun and badge are magic, and who definitely seems like the type to be afraid of cities, but he’s the non-villainous antagonist and is learning an important lesson about not being a jerk.

The other striking thing about Ballard is that this is a police procedural about a cop who insists that her team follows the rules. Searches require warrants; she expects everyone to be reasonably courteous to suspects. She only bends these rules in extreme circumstances.

That Ballard is an outlier is made clear in the opening sequence, in which she pursues and eventually non-fatally shoots a suspect, and all the other cops are mad at her for it. “No one wants to work anymore” largely applies to the LAPD; the extent of work facing the cold case team is as much a result of previous laziness as sinister police conspiracies.

(There is, of course, a sinister police conspiracy, and also a serial killer who has gone unnoticed because investigating crime is, like, really hard, you guys.)

The story of the One Good Cop is, of course, its own type of copaganda, but I feel like this universe has earned it after ten seasons following Harry Bosch. Ballard offers a clear-eyed view of the failings of the LAPD, and looks at Los Angeles from the perspective of ordinary working people, from immigrant maids to disabled forensic scientists.

Comparisons to Department Q are probably going to be inevitable, but I think each shows complement each other — though Ballard is infinitely more cynical about policing and power dynamics, as you would expect from an American production in the 2020s.

It also features one of my favourite elements from Bosch: scenes filmed in real Los Angeles food places, which means I can look up the menu and yearn for a time when I can just pop by for some Hawaiian food, or Danny Trejo’s doughnuts, or the best sandwiches in California. Please get better, America, I need to come and eat your food again.