Okay, the good news: "Fault Lines" is one of the better Snowfall episodes in a while. No, it's not as good as so many in the first two seasons, when the show seemed propelled by a vision of where it was headed, but at least something *happened* in this episode. In other words, it wasn't just all set up the way so many episodes of the last two seasons or so have been, as though building to a point (that often gets unresolved) is all a TV series has to do. Much of the episode is compelling and, at times, even intense.
The bad news: Because so many episodes feel like filler, this one almost seems rushed and like it's trying to do too much all at once. The last season of Breaking Bad, which this show has been compared to, suffered from the same problem, as though the producers really needed two or three more episodes than they got to wrap things up.
I say this, in part, because so many of the characters are required to do abrupt shifts away from their trajectories, often after being relatively inert for so long. Snowfall has an excellent cast, but too often, the actors are required to pivot in ways that don't seem genuine to their characters.
Take Sissy Saint, for instance. She tried so hard to hold to a moral plane despite the swirl of injustice around her. We see some of the reasons for her breaking point, but we don't actually see the point. For the convenience of the plot, she just shifts. The same goes for Oso. He's been the strong, silent type, a deep thinker who is dependable. At one point, he had a meaningful, growing relationship with Lucia, and then suddenly she was gone. No real explanation. But then his character became rudderless, with only hints at his purpose anymore. I could go on, but you get the point.
In this episode, Franklin is coming undone. Yes, we've been seeing it for well over a season, but it happens in a way that makes him seem particularly stupid. And that's just it. Franklin Saint isn't stupid. He was smart from the beginning, at least until the scripts started to define him not on his intelligence but on his rage. Then suddenly we're to believe he's got all sorts of blind spots -- with Avi, with Teddy, with Aunt Louie, and in this episode, with his girlfriend and own mother. It's one thing for him to be betrayed, but it's another for him to be punked so much. Again, it doesn't seem true to the character so much as convenient to the story.
Meanwhile, Teddy continues to show himself as a rat. There's no way that can be avoided in a show premised on how the White CIA created a morass of violence and addiction that devastated so many Black communities across the country and contributed to our bloated prison system. But his descent contrasts rather sharply with the guy in the first few seasons who, among other things, killed a fellow operative because of how he murdered two sisters. Yes, Teddy has grown more and more cynical and calculating, but a lot of the reasons why seem to have happened off camera.
Anyway, if you squint, you can find the dots to connect, but in a stronger show, it wouldn't be that hard. I've watched Snowfall from the beginning, in part because the cast is excellent, and at times, so are some of the episodes. No, it's never convinced me it's taking place in the 80s (though an image of Teddy running through a very 80s white house tonight was the first time the show's aesthetic felt authentic). But it was premised on a solid idea. I sense the loss of John Singleton was a big reason the show lost its way, though I sensed it was faltering even when he was with us. I'm only hoping next season, the show's final, pulls things together on a satisfying note.
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