La Brea
“The Great Escape”
October 11, 2022
I hate this show because it is dumb and bad and this week it is boring. Let’s begin.
Eve and Levi wake up in their cave love nest together because their enslavers are apparently romantics at heart? After some more kissykissy, they are released from their cell and sent to work.
Meanwhile, outside, Gavin and a new batch of slaves are being given the drill: you’re looking for this rock; fuck around and find out. Again, how do these people know English?
Inside the cave, Levi checks in with that Virgil dude who tells him that there are about a dozen other prisoners who are down with a breakout attempt, and Levi explains the plan is to rush the guards during shift break. Great plan, no holes, zero notes.
Outside of the cave, Eve is reunited with Gavin. Upon their reunion, Eve tries to tell Gavin that their son is lost in 1988 somewhere, but he already knows, and then this asshole, for reasons unclear, neglects to mention that he dragged their daughter with him to 10,000 B.C. He just tells her that Izzy is “fine.” Levi soon joins them and everyone is hugging and happy and not weirded out about the whole love triangle thing which I call bullshit on.
ANYWAY. Gavin shows them the map that his grandfather gave them, leading to a back exit to the cave, but Eve is like, “WELL I DON’T TRUST YOUR GRANDFATHER BECAUSE HE WANTED TO KILL JOSH AND IZZY SO I THINK WE SHOULD GO WITH THE WHOLE FAKE HEART ATTACK/BUM RUSH THE GUARDS PLAN.” And Gavin is like, sure, fine, whatever you say.
So shift time comes, and Virgil is all, “OH! MY HEART!” and collapses on the ground. A guard comes to check on him which is when the prisoners all jump him and beat him with their shovels. The entire group makes a break for it but one of the Exiles manages to begin the process of lowering the gates. Levi and Gavin dick around trying to prevent the gate from lowering instead of … you know … just getting out of the cave before the gate closes. But that would be a lot less exciting and wouldn’t allow Gavin to do a dramatic barrel roll under the gate at the last second and have I mentioned this show is stupid because it is spectacularly stupid.
And they are all FREE! until the Exiles on their horses find them and are like, “Nice try, assholes.” Gavin convinces the leader of the Exiles that it was all his idea and he should be the only one punished, and the leader of the Exiles is like, “Cool, we can work with that.”
Gavin is thrown into a cell when he notices that the leader of the Exiles speaks “Tongla,” which Gavin knows to be the language of a “peaceful” people. In an attempt to make a human connection with this guy, Gavin asks him if he’s a member of that Nice People tribe, why is he hanging out with these human slavers? UH, GAVIN? THE GROUP IS CALLED THE “EXILES.” I THINK THE EXPLANATION IS RIGHT THERE IN THE NAME.
And in fact, this only serves to piss the leader off, who is like, “You’re gonna die here, pretty boy,” before sending someone in to rough him up.
After Gavin is properly beaten, they throw him into Eve and Levi’s cell because apparently these human slavers are paying enough attention to their captees’ interpersonal relationships that they know these three would want to be together?
I hate this show.
Anyway, Gavin is returned to Eve and Levi’s love cell, and asks for some water. Levi is allowed out of the cell to fetch water for his friend, and give Eve and Gavin some time to talk about how crazy it is that she met Little Gavin in 10,000 B.C. Gavin reminds her that when they met as adults, he told her it felt like he had known her his entire life, and, yeah, when you put it that way, it’s super gross and creepy. Blah blah blah, he wants a second chance with her and their family. Also, he knows about her boning Levi, and he’s cool with it?
Meanwhile, out in the caves, Levi overhears the guards talking about how they need to get the black rocks over to “the tower” and is all “HMM, THAT SEEMS IMPORTANT.”
When Levi returns, the trio decides to try Grandpa’s map, and hey, guess what: it’s legit, and leads them to an exit. Gavin manages to not scream in Levi and Eve’s faces, “WELL WELL WELL, HAD WE BEGUN WITH THIS, I MIGHT NOT HAVE HAD MY LIVER PUMMELED.”
But the escape isn’t that easy, obviously: the Exile leader somehow knew they were going to sneak out of there at that particular moment and attempts to stop them. But Levi and a battered Gavin manage to overtake him, and Exile is all “YOU SHOULD KILL ME NOW,” but they do not, thereby turning him into Chekov’s Exile. And then they just casually walk out of the compound and no one gives chase.
As they near the camp, Levi mentions the whole using the black rocks for the tower thing. And Gavin — who has fully recovered from his vicious beating on this walk …
… is all, “Oh, by the way, I brought Izzy — you know, our daughter with only one leg — down here with me to have to run away from dire wolves and cave bears, surprise!” And then Eve and Izzy have a big reunion with absolutely zero emotional resonance because this show is terrible.
Meanwhile, the Camp B Plot.
When Scott returns from his little expedition with Aldridge, he lies to everyone and tells them that they were chased by a herd of mastodons into a cave. When he turned around, Aldridge was gone, and he definitely didn’t see any 21st-century high-rise office towers in the middle of the prehistoric prairie. That is absolutely not a thing that happened.
Soon after, Paara and her tribe of conveniently English-speaking cavemen arrive, looking for Gramps. However, when they find out that the “sky people” let Grandad go for some boneheaded reason, Paara and her people get pissed and take back all the food they just gave them which is mostly a bunch of squash.
Everyone starts bitching about having to eat mushrooms again, and Angry Son comes up with A Very Bad Plan: what if they just stole the food back? What could go wrong? I mean, aside from instigating a war with a bunch of weapon-owning people who actually have been living here for God knows how long and aren’t starving to death?
The group is sensible and promptly votes this Very Bad Plan down, but that doesn’t discourage Scott who suggests to Angry Son that they just steal the food anyway. Vanessa, who happens to be standing there when these two have this conversation, finds herself roped into the Very Bad Plan, too, even though 24 hours ago, her foot was being crushed in a bear trap. HAVE WE ALL JUST FORGOTTEN ABOUT THAT???
As the trio approaches Paara’s fort, Scott is repeating a series of numbers to himself under his breath. Angry Son and Vanessa are like, “Why are you being so weird?” But Scott is all, “NOTHING.”
They sneak into the fort by the secret side exit — which you would think the natives would be guarding better — and Scott immediately twists his ankle. He urges the other two to go on without him and promises to stay hidden. As soon as Angry Son and Vanessa leave, Scott, whose ankle is not actually injured, sneaks into Grandpa’s hut to steal a metal key card hidden in a book — Journey to the Center of the Earth to be groaningly obvious — that has the word LAZARUS cut into it.
Meanwhile, Angry Son becomes distracted from his Very Bad Plan when he spots the man who killed his mother. Suddenly Operation Start a War becomes Operation VENGEANCE.
Veronica tries to convince Angry Son that killing the man who killed his mother is not going to fix anything, but Angry Son is not to be deterred … until he sees Mom Murderer with his son, and changes his mind. Instead, they steal the food and hurry out of the fort.
The next morning when they return to the camp with the purloined food, everyone is like, “DAMMIT, WE TOLD YOU NOT TO DO THIS VERY THING,” and Angry Son is all, “do what I want.”
Later Angry Son and Veronica talk alone where Angry Son reveals that he couldn’t kill Mom Murderer after he saw him with his kid, because it reminded him of his own dead father. They have A Moment.
Meanwhile, Scott heads into the woods “for a walk” and Veronica is all, “but what about your ankle?” GIRL, YOU AND YOUR BEAR TRAP FOOT ARE ONES TO TALK.
Scott lies and says it feels better when he moves around.
First of all: NO ONE SHOULD BE GOING INTO THE WOODS ALONE. HAVE WE FORGOTTEN THE DIRE WOLVES? CAVE BEARS? PEOPLE OUT HERE ELECTROCUTING FOLKS?
Second of all: Why is Scott’s ankle a concern now when Veronica just walked back with Scott all the way from the fort? Was she concerned about it then? Did he fake limp all the way back?
I HATE THAT I AM ASKING THESE DUMB QUESTIONS.
Anyway, Scott goes into the woods where he meets Aldridge, obviously, and gives her the Lazarus card. She encourages him to keep lying to his friends and insists that she is trying to keep them all safe. Aldridge explains that the Lazarus card will get her into the building, and once inside, she will do several things, including bringing Josh and Riley back. All Scott needs to do is go back to the clearing and wait for Gavin.
I AM NOT EVEN GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE WHOLE “LAZARUS” THING, YOU PEOPLE SHOULD JUST WIKI IT YOURSELF.
So how did they rip Lost off this season? GLAD YOU ASKED.
First of all, and I don’t know how I missed this one last week, but the whole thing where the original inhabitants kidnap the newcomers and press them into hard forced labor, working on some mysterious project.
Here on La Brea, it is mining the mysterious black rocks in the caves:
On Lost, on the third season, Jack, Kate, and Sawyer are abducted by the Others. While Jack is pressured into performing life-saving surgery on the leader of his captors, Ben, Kate and Sawyer are taken out to what is called the “quarry” to do hard labor on some sort of building project. They are not told what they are building, and we only find out much later it is a runway that will later play a very large part in the survivors returning to the island … and ultimately in their leaving it.
Speaking of the Others and their capture of Kate, Jack, and Sawyer … those three were locked in a love triangle at the time.
Ahem.
One of the things that Lost was famous for doing was using books as Easter Eggs. Countless books were shown on the show that related to the series’ grander themes like Watership Down, A Wrinkle in Time, Lord of the Flies, and a more obscure sci-fi novel, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. It’s this book that in the second season Locke removes from the hatch’s bookshelf and flips upside down …
You know, as if looking for something.
Finally, there’s the thing where they steal Sawyer’s entire schtick.
In the first season of Lost, we learn that Sawyer became an orphan after a conman slept with and swindled Sawyer’s mother out of their family’s savings. When Sawyer’s father found out, he killed both his wife and himself. Sawyer then grows up to become a conman himself. However, he calls off one con when he realizes the woman he’s trying to defraud has a kid, due to his own traumatic childhood.
I MEAN, COME ON.
GET YOUR OWN IDEAS, YOU TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE SHOW. DAMMIT ALREADY.
La Brea airs on NBC on Tuesdays at 8/9 p.m.