L.A.'s Finest

The bang-bang in L.A.'s Finest is long and loud—two car chases and two shootouts in the first 12 minutes—but it's too well-staged to complain about. And the lurid back stories of the detectives—even their secrets have secrets—keep things interesting even in the infrequent moments when nobody is being tortured or killed.

It’s a pretty light-hearted action-drama, the kind of show where Syd and Nancy banter their way through a bullet-riddled convenience store hold-up/hostage crisis.

When it gives itself over to big, loud sequences, L.A.’s Finest comes close to recapturing the bombastic spirit, if not the scale, of Bay’s films (such are the constraints of the small screen). But after blowing the budget on making a good first impression, L.A.’s Finest quickly sinks into mediocrity, unable to offer the same kind of big-screen thrills in a weekly format, or find much of anything new to say about odd couples and pasts that won’t stay hidden.

Hollywood still churns out cut-and-paste action comedies, but now women get to take the lead. [17/24 May 2019, p.90]

Everyone can find another show exactly like this one on Fox or other broadcast networks, USA or other cable outlets, and even streaming services. They don’t need Spectrum for this kind of show, and this specific show doesn’t do much to make it feel needed at all.

Whatever L.A.'s Finest is, it isn't bad on an outlier level. It's as good as much of what counted as broadcast television dramas this past season. This is not in any way intended as a compliment, just my acknowledgement that as thoroughly mediocre as it is, L.A.'s Finest feels like the sort of show that, in a different era, easily could have attracted a healthy audience on broadcast.