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| johnhanlonreviews.com |
Imagine a scenario with me for a moment, dear reader. Imagine you are John Ridley in 2014, the year you win an Academy Award for writing the Best Picture of the previous year, the incredible 12 Years a Slave. So many doors are opened for you, but you choose to go to TV instead, tackling a massive operation known as American Crime, an anthology series filled with great actors like Timothy Hutton and Felicity Huffman that deals with real issues in society like racism, drugs, and faith. Your first effort is bold and thought-provoking, if a little muddled, so you need to find a way to refocus and improve after your show gets renewed. This, dear reader, brings us to season two, and all the twists, turns, and heartbreaking events that it holds.
American Crime season two’s inciting incident is the sexual assault of a young man named Taylor Blaine (Connor Jessup) at a party for the basketball team of Leland Academy, a prestigious private school in Indiana, by a member of the team. This event causes a massive ripple effect throughout the community and several stories, but there are four primary plotlines: one following Taylor as he recovers and witnesses his mother Anne (Lili Taylor) trying to get justice for him, two following the captains of the basketball team, Eric Tanner (Joey Pollari) and Kevin La Croix (Trevor Jackson), and their families as Anne’s accusations rock their worlds, and one following Leland principal Leslie Graham (Felicity Huffman) and basketball coach Dan Sullivan (Timothy Hutton) as they try to run damage control. Things spiral out from there as revelations are made and more daring and shocking actions are taken, but I wouldn’t dare spoil them for you.
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| thewrap.com
See those smiles? They do not last long.
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The first thing I need to compliment about this show is the amount of courage that John Ridley has in tackling these subjects head-on and for choosing to not go the easy route with them. Each character, no matter how small their role, is a fully-fleshed out individual that feels like a real human being. Nobody ever sounds fake or does something that you can’t understand, no matter how vile they are. It takes an incredible amount of restraint and talent for a creator to keep this consistent, and given that the topic of male-on-male sexual assault (which is sadly very common in the US) is one that will rile up emotions all over the spectrum, it’s incredible how Ridley kept everything so realistic and relatable.
One of the reasons this show succeeds on the relatability part is that Ridley takes real issues and addresses them in a way the American people would probably address them (probably a result of his very diverse writing staff). The reason Taylor’s assault isn’t taken seriously at first is because, as Teri La Croix (Regina King) puts it, “boys don’t do that to other boys.” This is obviously false, but it sets up the idea of how many Americans feel about rape against men for exploration this season. Many statements made about Taylor are disturbingly similar to comments made about female rape victims, and it is incredibly unnerving how the police and other authority figures don't take his accusations seriously just because he's a guy. It’s a disturbingly realistic mirror that Ridley holds up, but because his intention was to make people have these conversations, I’d say he succeeds with this season.
While the sexual assault theme is the dominant one, Ridley plays with other societal norms throughout the season. In an interesting role reversal, once Anne brings in lawyers, it is Eric’s family (white) that needs help while Kevin’s family (black) is rich enough to defend itself. Teri and her husband Michael (Andre Benjamin) are portrayed as snooty elitists here, something you never see from black characters in most media. Another plotline deals with tensions between black and Hispanic students at a nearby public school, which is never really touched upon in any media that we’re exposed to. While some of this leads to some of my issues with this show, I can’t fault Ridley for his ambition.
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| kingsoftheflatcreen.com
How many times have we seen this discussed in this context?
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Something that really sets this show apart from other TV shows (and most films, for that matter) is the technical aspect of it. There just aren’t any shows that are shot the way this is, and as a person who is really into this stuff I have to take time to tell you about it. The first season of American Crime used some neat camera tricks to simulate the experience of drug usage, but the editing was choppy and kinda ruined it. This season drops the bad editing, sometimes letting shots go for a long time and forcing the audience to pay attention to whatever (or whoever, as I’ll discuss in a minute) is on that screen. In one episode, there is an interpretive dance sequence that is all done in one take, even when zooming out into the audience and fixing on certain characters in the crowd. It may not be as impressive as something like an Inarritu film, but for TV it’s breaking new ground. There are other techniques that come in later on that I don’t want to discuss lest I spoil plot developments, but let’s just say that they are used to extremely powerful effect, despite their initially gimmicky nature.
The staple of this show in terms of technical stuff, however, is the way conversations are framed here. Sometimes during a conversation we never see the people involved and only hear their words, while other times the camera will fixate on only one person for several seconds at a time. This is revolutionary filmmaking for TV and really drives the actors to give it their all, because according to them they have no idea whether or not they will even be in the shot for the entire conversation. In order to illustrate my point I’m putting the rape test scene where Taylor goes to the hospital in this article. Notice how you never see the other person in the conversation, and that aside from a few shots of movement the camera never leaves Taylor’s face. Just incredible stuff.
Without a doubt, the show’s strongest asset is its incredible cast, which is almost unrivaled in how many talented actors it has at its disposal. Everyone gets their chance to shine, with some giving more subdued performances and others giving the exact opposite. The scene in the first episode where Anne and Leslie meet says so much about their characters in just a few minutes, and it's just a taste of how brilliant Lili Taylor and Felicity Huffman are this season. Regina King and Timothy Hutton are also great, though they don’t get their big moments until later on. Perhaps the most impressive performances come from the new actors, with Trevor Jackson and Angelique Riveria (who plays Taylor’s girlfriend, Evy) really showing off some dramatic chops despite being relative newcomers. Joey Pollari also impressed me, playing Eric as an incredibly tormented character that quickly wipes away whatever negative impressions you had of him with a tragic performance that pulls at your heartstrings. It’s all great work from everyone involved.
However, despite the great work of the cast, I think that Connor Jessup’s performance stands above the others and needs to be discussed. Taylor Blaine is an incredibly complex character, and one that the entire season hangs on. The audience needs to like Taylor, feel sorry for him, rejoice with him in his triumphs and even be afraid of him at certain points, and Jessup pulls it all off effortlessly. There is a sequence in the seventh episode where Taylor has a drug tripping sequence in the woods and experiences some intense hallucinations. For that five to six minutes, Taylor doesn’t say a single word, with Connor Jessup’s eyes, facial expressions and body language telling the audience more than ten pages of dialogue could have. I was incredibly impressed by him, especially that such a young actor (only 22, and a few weeks younger than your faithful reviewer, in fact!) could pull off such a tall order that most established actors couldn’t do. Without him the entire show would collapse on itself, and I think it’s a freaking crime that he wasn’t nominated for an Emmy. Keep your eyes open for him, folks, I think he's going places!
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| threeifbyspace.net
If you only knew how much this ONE LOOK foreshadows this entire season, it would blow your minds.
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This leads me to my main complaint with the season, which is that Ridley’s reach often exceeds his grasp. Just like in season one, he tries to cover so many topics that things get lost in the shuffle, such as the storyline involving the other school. We haven’t seen a real examination of the conflicts between the black and Hispanic communities, and try as he might Ridley still hasn’t delivered one. A plotline that could’ve taken up an entire season is shoved into the sideline of this one, giving us no time to really care about it and making it seem like an intrusion to the far more interesting story of Taylor and the Leland school. Another plotline that had potential and is subsequently wasted is one of cyber vigilante Sebastian De La Torre (Richard Cabral), who steps in to help Anne fight Leslie and Leland. His plotline includes elements of the “who watches the watchmen” idea involving hackers, but it is introduced so late that you wonder why it was even included in the first place. It sucks because Ridley’s heart is in the right place, but trying to tackle so much does the show a disservice.
In the “Your Mileage May Vary” category is the ending of this season, which could break the entire show for some viewers. I’m going to tell you right now, you never find out what happened to Taylor at the party, at least in any definitive way. The show takes both Taylor and Eric on a massive journey only to leave their next moves a mystery to the audience, forcing them to fill in the gaps. I dig it and I applaud Ridley for choosing to make a bold choice like that, but I know a lot of people will not. If you think this will be a hurdle for you, try to get through it because you’ll be missing out on a wonderful journey.
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| zap2it.com
Oh don't worry, this gets resolved. In an insanely satisfying way, too!
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American Crime is not just one of those dramas that serve as Emmy bait, it is really one of the most important shows on TV right now. Though not as well crafted, it reminds me of The Wire, which also forced audiences to grapple with tough questions that had no easy answers. Whether we are affected by these issues or not, we need to accept that they do exist and we need to discuss them. Ridley wants us to open our minds and see other perspectives, thus broadening our own horizons and making us more empathetic. Though he may not succeed with everything he attempts, the main plots, the performances, and the film-quality craft more than make up for it. This is not a show to be missed, so make sure to check it out.
American Crime has been renewed for a third season, and you can watch the first two seasons on ABC’s website.
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