Stream It Or Skip It: ‘L.A.’s Finest’ on Netflix, A ‘Bad Boys’ Spin-Off Starring Jessica Alba and Gabrielle Union

After premiering on Spectrum in May of 2019, L.A.’s Finest has made its way to Netflix. In the cop series, the eternally-youthful Gabrielle Union reprises the role she originated in the 2003 (!) movie Bad Boys II, and is joined by none other than Jessica Alba as her LAPD partner. With all the star power on the show, is it any good?

L.A.’S FINEST: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Aerial shots of downtown Los Angeles, and a police helicopter flying over the Hollywood sign. Then a shot of a police SUV rolling through the streets.

The Gist: Sydney Burnett (Gabrielle Union), a former DEA officer who is now an LAPD detective, is partners with Nancy McKenna (Jessica Alba). In their car, Syd and Nancy (yes, that’s right) talk about how Syd never shows up to Nancy’s family book club night. Syd is single, so she she’d rather go out on a date than do book club. She has them stop at a convenience store that just happens to get robbed; after they kick ass and subdue the robbers, Syd gets what she needed: a box of condoms.

The partners get involved in a case involving the shooting death of a nanny, which leads them to a security consultant who revealed inconsistencies in accounts that happened to belong to a major cartel. With the consultant overseas, the cartel looks to kidnap her son, including blowing up a police safe house with a rocket launcher, taking the kid right out from under “the Bens” (Zach Gilford and Duane Martin), two detectives who are friendly rivals to Syd and Nancy.

But Syd has other fish to fry; she’s trying to find the man who tortured her and left her for dead when she was an DEA undercover agent. Her estranged father Joseph Vaughn (Ernie Hudson) gives her info about a guy who knows her target, and she leaves the safe house while on duty to pursue that lead without backup. After Nancy bails her out of that jam, she tells Syd that they need to be honest with each other, so Syd tells her the whole story. Little does Syd know that Nancy has a past of her own.

Our Take: If you’re a Spectrum customer, L.A.’s Finest will be on their VOD systems starting today, with the first three episodes; the rest of the 13-episode season will debut over the next ten Mondays. It’s kind of a surprise that a show with big stars like Alba and Union is on a platform that’s got a limited, albeit large, potential audience. What’s even more surprising is the Jerry Bruckheimer’s company decided to create a Bad Boys spin-off in the first place.

How is it a spin-off? Union played Syd as a DEA agent in 2003’s Bad Boys II. Somehow, 16 years later, she looks exactly the same, so despite the wide time gap, it feels like a direct continuation of that role. And, like the Bad Boys franchise, the pilot for L.A.’s Finest has a lot of car chases, shoot-outs in public places in broad daylight, explosions and crashes galore, and lots of banter. There’s oh so much banter; between Syd and Nancy, between the women and the Bens, and between the women and Nancy’s prosecutor husband Patrick (Ryan McPartland) and too-smart stepdaughter Izzie (Sophie Reynolds).

Are we looking for a dose of reality in our Jerry Bruckheimer cop shows? Probably not. But there’s absolutely no substance to this show, just banter and explosions, married to situations that would get any real cop fired in a heartbeat — leaving an assignment to do personal work, shooting at cars while chasing them down a major road, etc. Add to that some weird story inconsistencies, like Syd, a woman who’s been in law enforcement for her entire career in a beautiful downtown apartment and riding a Bugatti motorcycle, or the McKennas living in a beautiful huge house despite the fact that both Nancy and Patrick work for the city, and you have the makings of a show that would have been rejected by FOX ten years ago.

When we get away from the case-of-the-week stuff and get to Syd and Nancy’s continuing arc, the show improves slightly, because Union and Alba get to stop bantering and start showing some range and emotion. Syd’s strained relationship with her father also has potential. But there’s not nearly enough of that stuff to sustain a show that makes CBS procedurals look like Peak TV by comparison.

Sex and Skin: Syd has to-go cups in her kitchen so that the people she sleeps with — male or female — can get their coffee and not stick around.

Parting Shot: Nancy spends time with her family, but not before fielding a call from someone who is involved in Syd’s search for the man who left her for dead.

Sleeper Star: How can we not give this to Ernie Hudson? He’s in a thankless role as Joseph, who’s trying to rebuild his relationship with Syd after she and her mom moved to Miami when she was little and he stayed in Los Angeles. And, as you’d expect from Hudson, he humanizes what, at least at this point, is a cliched role.

Most Pilot-y Line: Lots of choices, but this stuck out — Joseph: “I wouldn’t be a good father if I didn’t tell you to just let this go.” Syd: “Nice speech. You were never a good father.”

Oh, and there’s also the line where Syd gets help from Fletcher (John Salley, reprising his BB role), her go-to hacker. He says “he’s got a guy” who can get her Laker tickets. She says, “I’m a Heat fan. I got a guy.” We know Union has a Heat connection, of course. Are we going to have Nancy talking about using Honest products?

Our Call: SKIP IT. L.A.’s Finest feels like a show that should have come out in 2004, not 2019.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream L.A.'s Finest on Netflix