‘La Brea’: The one where they steal the whole village idea

La Brea
“The Fort”
October 26, 2021
For our dumb purposes here, I’m going to start with the B-plot taking place in the camp while the main characters run around a surprisingly well-developed fort, trying to get their dumb asses killed.

Ty, Lady Cop, and Dr. Sam all think that Lily knows more about the mysterious man she saw in the woods than she’s telling them. So Ty comes up with a plan to get her to open up: they’ll play softball.

Listen, that’s the plan, I don’t know what to tell you.

So, Ty invites Lily to come play, and her sister Veronica is all “NO,” until she’s like, “OK FINE.” While Lily runs off to warm up, Veronica offers Ty something of an explanation for why they are acting so weird: Dad was super religious and told them to stay away from everyone else. Cool explanation, makes perfect sense.

During the softball game, Ty compliments Lily on a catch she made, and she reveals that her dad used to coach their softball team and practiced with her all the time in their backyard. Ty is like, “Huh, that’s funny, the way your sister described your father, he doesn’t sound like the softball type …” Lily runs away. Great job, Dr. Freud!

That night, Ty approaches Lily and apologizes to her for upsetting her, but adds that he thinks she is holding something back. She insists that she’s told them everything she knows about the man in the woods, and Ty reassures her that if there’s anything she ever wants to talk about, he’s there for her. And Lily is like, “In fact, here’s something interesting: Veronica is not my sister. She and that dude who was eaten by the wolf on the first day, he’s not my father. The two of them kidnapped me about a year ago.” Just then, Veronica walks up, realizes what’s happening, and runs into the CGI saber-tooth tiger woods. (Not to be confused with Tiger Woods.)

As for the A-plot, last we left our explorers, they had barged their way into a fortified village because again …

One of the dummies wonders who built this, and Scott is like, “Well, we are literally thousands and thousands of years before Europeans arrived to the New World, so I’m guessing the native Californians, the Tongva people, built this. Good news: they’re very peaceful.”

And then Josh is like, “WeLl If ThEy’Re So PeAcEfUl, WhY aRe ThEiR wAlLs So BiG?”

Oh, I don’t know, dipshit, you tell me.

This goddamned dumb show.

Then they decide to split up because of course they do. Angry Son and Scott are in one group; Josh and Riley in another, and Levi and Eve in a third so that they can mope around some more about the fact that Gavin knows they cheated on him.

Josh and Riley find a food hut that has a secret exit to the fort, which they find themselves on the wrong side of. Also, at some point, Riley apparently had her hair blown out and makeup retouched after the previous day’s adventures, being nearly drowned by a prehistoric river snake.

This stupid stupid show.

Oh, and there’s some light flirting between the two, though Riley dismisses Josh, noting that he’s in high school, and she’s in college, they are a full “life stage” apart. This hurts Josh’s fee-fees.

Eve and Levi find the fort’s temple, where they find the device that is sending out a signal, hooray! But the device is on a dead body, boo. Inside another one of those giant hands made of rocks is the electrocuted body of Some Dude who was apparently a part of a science team who had been sent down into the sinkhole in the Mojave Desert. Levi reveals that saving Eve and her group was just part of his mission; he was also tasked with finding these seven scientists.

The good-ish news is that now that they’ve found the radio (or whatever) that was sending out that signal, they can get the fuck out of this fort. Except, UH-OH! The very very Caucasian and not at all Tongva people (basically a whole village of this moron) …

… they’ve come home to find these ding dongs have Goldilocksed the place, and they are SUPER PISSED.

They chase Eve and Levi around the fort for a while until Eve and Levi hide in a hut that is filled with children; outside the fort, the villagers chase Josh and Riley around; and they actually capture Scott and Angry Son, whom they tie up in the death temple. However, the villagers are called off of Josh and Riley at the last second so these two stupid idiots GO BACK INSIDE THE FORT because Josh insists on saving his mom; Scott and Angry Son manage to get out of their bindings and run away; and the kids in the hut where Levi and Eve are hiding not only speak English but are also more than happy to help them sneak out.

This entire episode would have been greatly improved if all of these scenes had been set to “Yakety Sax.”

Except! Just as they are about to crawl out of the secret hole in the fort wall that the agreeable kid shows them, the warriors catch up with the group. Led by the old guy in the woods, the warriors are about to let loose a bunch of arrows on our protagonists when a Deus Ex Machina some woman blows a horn and orders the warriors to let them go. Well, that’s convenient!

The group then heads back to camp, wondering what the hell they just wandered into. Also, Angry Son threatens Scott some more that he better find the drugs that he hid.

Back at camp, Levi continues to send out SOS messages on his radio; Eve continues to have a sad that her estranged husband knows she cheated on him; and Riley and Josh continue to flirt, despite being in different “life stages.”

Back in the present, this Aldridge lady is pressuring Gavin to fly into the sinkhole. Tonight. And, she adds, she’ll be coming with him. The plan, such as there is one, is that Dr. Nathan will go back to the Air Force base and turn the radar off — which seems like a super great, very safe idea — and then they can sneak their Super Magic Plane into the sinkhole. Dr. Nathan reveals that Gavin and Izzy aren’t the only ones with loved ones trapped in 10,000 B.C. — her fiancé was on the scientific team that went down into it in the Mojave Desert a few years ago.

While Dr. Nathan heads back to the base where she is immediately confronted by that officious Agent Markman dude, preventing her from tinkering with the radar, Aldridge continues to pressure Gavin into flying into the sinkhole that night. Aldridge insists that tonight is their last opportunity to get into the sinkhole, and she has the proof to show them — they’ll just have to hop into the helicopter that she apparently owns and fly into Los Angeles. (And I’m not going to rant about this, but WHY CAN’T THESE WRITERS GET THE DISTANCE BETWEEN LOS ANGELES AND SAN LUIS OBISPO STRAIGHT? Why is it that Dr. Nathan can drive back in no time, but they have to take a helicopter? Is there some sort of wormhole between L.A. and San Luis Obispo, too?)

ANYWAY, they fly into Los Angeles where Aldridge takes them to what appears to be a construction site in the middle of the city, but actually is a secret dig of a 12,000-year-old settlement — the settlement the survivors of the sinkhole in La Brea made.

There, Aldridge explains that they found a letter in a bottle from Eve, a letter that their “team” was able to piece together despite being in MORE THAN 40 WHOLE PIECES.

Oh my goodness, I love me some terrible TV. La Brea is almost Under The Dome levels of dreadful, but it just peaked with this moment – and I swear this is real.

How?! However did they manage it? Did they somehow have a five-year-old child on hand to assist? pic.twitter.com/sPmTbavH9L

— John Walker, National Treasure (@botherer) October 29, 2021

Long story short, Eve wrote that she loves Gavin and Izzy, she wishes she could get back together with Gavin, and is super sorry she doubted him about his visions, and oh, by the way, on Day Five, the light they fell through began closing up.

AND ZOMG TONIGHT IS DAY FIVE.

So that’s when Izzy is like, “Fine. Go, save them. I’ll be fine.”

So, the survivors discover that a group of people who are remarkably like them in unexpected ways has been living in this mysterious place in surprisingly advanced conditions? HUH. FEELS FAMILIAR.

And … you’re telling me the survivors decide to play a sport to take their minds off of the dire situation they’re in for a few minutes? Where have I seen that before?

I  absolutely can not with this show.

Alright. I have a whole other episode I need to get to, so I’m not going to dwell on this any longer than necessary. Especially since in the next episode, the writers decide to tackle time travel paradoxes and believe you me, I have a whole lot to yell about it.

La Brea airs on NBC on Tuesdays at 8/9 p.m.