American Crime 3.1-2: 21st-Century Dickensian Focus

American Crime, one of the best shows on television - and on ABC, not cable or streaming, no less - is back for its third season, and off to a powerful start.

The theme this year is, again, remarkably apt, with a focus on migrant farm workers in Carolina, and the attendant ills and crimes that best everyone in the vicinity.  So far, a young prostitute, a young drug addict, and a father from Mexico in search of his son who came to make it rich in the United States are the best stories - along with the attempt of decent people, in and out of government, to help them.

This puts the third season in marked contrast to the first season, in which there was a homicide and near-homicide at its core, and the second season, which delved into a high school party rape.  But the third season has its own quiet power, which even after just two episodes is special and remarkable.

The most interesting story is about the Mexican father, played by Benito Martinez.  For most of the first two episodes, we didn't know why he wanted to come and work in the U.S.   Tonight we discover that it's to find his son, who after communicating with his family back in Mexico, suddenly fell silent.

The story of the drug user is also unusual.   He's played by Connor Jessup, picked up off the street by one of the crew bosses, played by Richard Cabral.   But it turns out this boss has something of a heart, and may, against the advice of a more seasoned boss, actually try to help the newbie.

Regina King, outstanding in now her third season on American Crime, is a social worker who tries to help the prostitute, and (of course) has problems of her own.   But speaking of outstanding, the acting of everyone in American Crime, by mostly the same cast in different roles each season, is excellent and riveting.  This, combined with the unflinching topics and 21st-century Dickensian focus, makes American Crime a series you just can't afford to miss.

See also: American Crime 2.1-3: So Real, It Hurts ... American Crime through 2.6: Brilliant and Unflinching ... American Crime Season 2: Too Little Info

And see also: American Crime, American Fine ... American Crime 1.7: The Truest Love ... American Crime 1.10: The Exquisite Hazards of Timing ...American Crime Season 1 Finale: The Banality of So-Called Justice

a different kind of crime

American Crime 2.7: Seeds of a School Shooting

One thing you can depend on in American Crime, one of the most powerful and important series ever on television: when things get really bad, they get even worse.  Until last night's episode 2.7, we had a rape and a searing portrayal of anti-gay bias and racial relations.   Last night we had a murder - in a school.

And in many ways the most horrifying thing about this shooting is that it was deeply motivated, to the point in which you can almost feel that the victim had it coming.   Taylor was not only raped a few weeks ago, but beaten a few days ago by the homo-phobic jocks in the school.  He shows up with a gun, but we don't know what he actually would have done it.
Possibly nothing.   But he uses it after one of his beaters threatens to kill him if he makes any more trouble.

This part of the story is also an indictment of how easy it is to get guns in this country.  Taylor gets it from a closet, where it shouldn't have been left.   The irresponsibility of gun owners results in a continuing stream of deaths in America.

Connor Jessup gives a tour-de-force performance as the kid with the tortured soul and the gun.  Even the people who have tried to help have been making his mental situation worse.  He told his mother what happened - that was he raped - in the first place, but pleaded with her not to go to the press, which she did.   His girlfriend tried to comfort him, but got furious when she found out he was gay.

And Taylor is still struggling with his sexual identity.  Drugs, of course, only make all of this worse.

And now the police, who have had not much of a role this season, in contrast to last, will be pulling Taylor into the criminal injustice system.  Look for things in American Crime to get even worse.

See also: American Crime 2.1-3: So Real, It Hurts ... American Crime through 2.6: Brilliant and Unflinching

And see also: American Crime, American Fine ... American Crime 1.7: The Truest Love ... American Crime 1.10: The Exquisite Hazards of Timing ...American Crime Season 1 Finale: The Banality of So-Called Justice

a different kind of crime

#SFWApro

American Crime through 2.6: Brilliant and Unflinching

American Crime in its second season continues to be what it was in its first season - a brilliant, unflinching examination of American life, with all its warts.  As of episode 2.6, it's easily still one of the best series ever on television.

It's ugly and uncompromising, but that's the way truth often is.   The revelation that Taylor is gay could have been the end of his rape story - it certainly was a stunner - but it actually is only the beginning of a much deeper, and more needed narrative.  Rape aka unconsensual sex is wrong - not only morally, it's a brutal crime - regardless of whether the victim is gay or heterosexual, and regardless of the sexual orientation of the perpetrator.

Of course, many of the characters in this story don't see it that way.   They assume, out of prejudice, that if a boy or man claims he was raped by a man, and the victim turns out to be gay, that this fact somehow negates the rape, or makes the act automatically consensual.   If that absurd argument were true, then that would negate the myriad of heterosexual women who have been raped by heterosexual men over the millennia.

The acting, as it was in the first season, is just exceptional.   Not only Connor Jessup as Taylor and Joey Pollari as his accused rapist Eric, but everyone around them and in this story gives edge-of-your-seat performances.

The default mode in American Crime is powder keg, either already lit or about to be.  There are no doubt some shockers and shake-ups ahead, and I'm both looking forward to and bracing for the ride.

See also: American Crime 2.1-3: So Real, It Hurts

And see also: American Crime, American Fine ... American Crime 1.7: The Truest Love ... American Crime 1.10: The Exquisite Hazards of Timing ... American Crime Season 1 Finale: The Banality of So-Called Justice

a different kind of crime

#SFWApro

American Crime 2.1-3: So Real It Hurts

Checking in with a review of American Crime, now three episodes in to its second season on ABC.   Like the first season, which drilled down on a brutal murder and its ugly repercussions not only in the criminal police system but on family relations, racial relations, and diverse elements of life in today's America, the second season holds back nothing as it delves into a rape in high school - the rape of a boy who wants to be on the basketball team by at least one of the guys on the team or who wants to be on the team, at a hazing party.

So in addition to the racial and family tensions which propelled the first season, we have the big business and sacrifice and sleaze of high school sports in this second season.  As in the first season, just about everyone is culpable of something, including the victim's mother, driven to get some sort of reckoning for her son, not just because she's seeking justice, but because she's driven by guilt over some earlier development in the family, as yet unknown.

Connor Jessup - last seen in Falling Skies - is doing a fine job as Taylor Blaine, the victim, who would just as soon forget what happened rather than see himself headlined in the social media, one of the biggest destructive forces in this story.  Taylor's mother is powerfully played by Lili Taylor, from the first season, but with a much bigger role.  Regina King, Timothy Hutton, Felicity Huffman, Elvis Nolasco, and Richard Cabral are also back from the first season, in completely different roles.

At this point, Regina King's Terri LaCroix has been the most stand-out, as the mother of one of team's co-captains - at the hazing party, but not necessarily part of the rape - at least, not as far as we know at this point. Terri and her husband and son are in the upper middle class - professional and executive - and her attempt to keep her son on the right path, her struggle as both the mother of a teenage boy and the mother of a teenage African-American boy with talent and intelligence and everything to lose, is a masterpiece of subtle, complex, heart-rending drama in itself.

As was the case in the first season, there's nothing else quite like American Crime on any kind of television.   As such it makes a much needed and unique contribution, and more than holds its own with anything on cable or even streaming TV.


See also: American Crime, American Fine ... American Crime 1.7: The Truest Love ... American Crime 1.10: The Exquisite Hazards of Timing ... American Crime Season 1 Finale: The Banality of So-Called Justice

a different kind of crime

#SFWApro