Stream It Or Skip It: ‘La Brea’ On NBC, Where A Massive Sinkhole Opens In Los Angeles, But Those Who Fell In Actually Survive — Somewhere

NBC has been trying to give viewers Lost–like shows, with grand mysteries that take years to get through the twists and turns to figure out. Manifest, for instance, did reasonably well for them (and very well for Netflix), and its newest show, La Brea, feels like it’s even closer to a Lost imitator than Manifest was. Read on for more.

LA BREA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Shots of Los Angeles, with its typical morning traffic. We see a shot of the La Brea Tar Pits.

The Gist: Eve Harris (Natalie Zea) is driving her teenage kids Izzy (Zyra Gorecki) and Josh (Jack Martin) to school, although Izzy wishes she wouldn’t; it seems that Eve has been even more protective over them since her divorce from their dad, Gavin (Eoin Macken).

As they wait at a light, the pavement starts to crack and give way. Soon, a gigantic sinkhole opens up, consuming people, vehicles, and large buildings. Josh gets swallowed up in the hole, and as Eve chases after him she also falls in; Izzy grabs her, but Eve purposely gives her self up and tells Izzy to run.

Elsewhere, Gavin is on a nearby Air Force base looking for work; he drinks from a flask to calm his nerves and the visions he sees of unspoiled wilderness and strange, massive birds. He was medically discharged from the Air Force after an accident, and he’s been having these visions ever since. When he sees the news and gets a call from Izzy, he goes to the scene.

Eve wakes up in a field, surprisingly unharmed. As she runs around looking for help, she drops her wedding ring, which she was wearing as a pendant. She then runs into a scared man who later introduces himself as Ty Coleman (Chiké Okonkwo). Together, they find a plume of smoke, and see not only are there other people there, but items that fell into the hole, like cars, buildings and street signs, are scattered about. That’s where she finds Josh. There is a green crack-like anomaly in the sky.

We meet a few other people, like Dr. Sam Velez (Jon Seda), a surgeon who was a former Navy SEAL, and his daughter Riley (Veronica St. Clair); Marybeth Hayes (Karina Logue), an LAPD detective who has an “looking out for yourself” mentality; and Scott Israni (Rohan Mirchandaney), who gets stoned to stave off crippling anxiety.  When gigantic wolves enter the crash site, Ty shoots one of them dead right after it bites Josh and is about to attack Eve. Josh is bleeding out, and Sam and Eve go looking for an ambulance Eve remembered seeing, to see if they can get antibiotics.

Above ground, Gavin and Izzy see massive birds pop out of the hole, and Gavin starts getting visions of seeing Eve and VelezJosh in that field. He tries to speak to Homeland Security’s chief scientist. Dr. Sophia Lathan (Virginie Laverdure) about his visions; little does he know that the government already knows about the mysterious fissure, but has no idea what’s on the other side. When he gives the tail number to the drone that they sent in, she’s alarmed at what he knows.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Like most NBC dramas these days, La Brea has a heavy Lost element to it; this one comes complete with a group of survivors in a primeval or prehistoric-seeming world full of mysteries. One cast member actually mentions that they feel like they’re in an episode of Lost, so there’s that.

Our Take: There are elements of La Brea, created and written by David Appelbaum (Wisdom of the Crowd, The Mentalist), that work despite the show’s inherent cheesiness. Part of it is that Zea squeezes as much character out of the broadly-written Eve as she possibly can in the pilot. She feels that she was responsible for Izzy losing a leg in a car accident, for instance, and feels that she’s been failing her kids in general. And she seems to be relatively in control even under trying circumstances.

But she’s the only character who so far isn’t written as broad character types instead of real people. Sam is the “do no wrong” guy, even if his daughter Riley doesn’t want to follow in his footsteps. Scott is the goofy dude who is really competent. Marybeth looks out for Marybeth. And we’re not sure what Ty is all about, as he seems to recoil from any responsibility and is highly depressed, but because of his job (a therapist) he still has the capacity to listen.

The situation above ground is presented in an even sillier manner, with Gavin touting his visions over and over with the standard “You’re gonna think I’m crazy, but…” preface. Of course everyone thinks he’s crazy, but he manages to give the tail number of the drone and somehow find Eve’s ring that she dropped, though we’re not sure how the ring came back through the rift. So will the government work with Gavin or try to lock him up? Do we care?

So the series will take place in both worlds, and we’re only slightly more interested in the primeval world than the world of 2021 L.A. Unfortunately, we’re going to get both as Gavin races to find Eve and Josh. But the more time we spend on the surface, the less interesting the story is.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: This is a good place to mention the not-so-great CGI extinct animals that are terrorizing the survivors. As Sam, Eve and Ty get everything they need out of the ambulance, they’re confronted by a saber-toothed tiger. “RUN!” Eve says. Why wouldn’t they get in the ambulance?

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Ione Skye, who plays Gavin’s sister Jess; we hope she has more to do than just tut-tut her brother’s visions every time he says he has one.

Most Pilot-y Line: “Your mom and Josh are alive, and I’m gonna find them,” Gavin says to Izzy after he finds the ring. That’s pretty much the premise of the series in one sentence, isn’t it?

Our Call: STREAM IT. There’s enough to like about La Brea that will keep viewers watching, despite the show’s more silly and cheesy elements, especially the mystery of where the “lost” Angelenos are and why they’re there.

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, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream La Brea On NBC.com