Story rings grimly true
The show: Seven Seconds, Season 1, Episode 6 The moment: The great Regina King
A car accident in Jersey City. A white cop drives away. A 15-year-old Black boy is left for dead. The boy’s mother, Latrice (Regina King), knows something isn’t right. She confronts the cop, Jablonski (Beau Knapp), in a supermarket.
“I know it was you,” she tells him. Her anger crumples into sorrow. “I just want to know if he was scared,” she says. “If he was in pain. If he called out for me . . . I just need to know. Please tell me.”
“I’m sorry for whatever happened to your son,” Jablonski says. “But I had nothing to do with it.”
What? No. She grabs his arm. “You did,” she says, pleading at first. “You did it. Say it.”
He looms over her. “What was he doing in that park, anyway?” he hisses. “What kind of mother are you?”
She blanches, then flails at him. “Say what you did, say it,” she cries. As clerks pull her away, she keeps wailing: “Say what you did.” Damn. Can we bow our heads in thanks for the treasure that is Regina King? I like my television series dark — The Wire, Broadchurch, The Night Of, Six Feet Under, American Crime, The Leftovers. (King starred in the latter two.)
But this one, created by Torontoborn Veena Sud ( The Killing), with its corruption, misery and racism radiating out in concentric circles from the initial crime, is super-sad even for me. (So many Black characters getting shoved around by white cops.) It feels grimly and grimily real.
King keeps me hooked, though. No matter how dramatic the situation, she never overplays. Instead, she gives us diamond-like moments of truth.
Watch her face when she arrives at the hospital in Episode 1, is not told her son’s condition, but is expected to fill out forms. She twitches an eyelid, and we hear something in her soul snap. Seven Seconds is on Netflix. Johanna Schneller is a media connoisseur who zeroes in on pop-culture moments. She usually appears Tuesday and Thursday.