‘Snowfall’ cloudy but compelling
What motivates the central characters in the new FX drama “Snowfall”? The answers to that question aren’t always clear, which, counterintuitively, is one of the reasons the show almost works.
The 10-episode first season, starting Wednesday, July 5, introduces us to Franklin Saint (Damson Idris), who has so far avoided getting beaten down by life in South Central Los Angeles in 1983. Franklin is smart and ambitious, and brash enough to tell an Israeli drug kingpin named Avi Drexler (Alon Moni Aboutboul) he can sell a kilo of cocaine overnight.
Franklin has the skills to make good on his promise, but
he soon finds he needs to be more circumspect to survive in the drug business at the moment when the crack cocaine epidemic is exploding in Los Angeles.
Franklin’s is the most engaging of three main stories “Snowfall’s” creators — John Singleton, Eric Amadio and Dave Andron — concurrently tell. As Franklin is navigating what for him is uncharted territory, we also follow a woebegone CIA operative named Teddy McDonald (Carter Hudson) who is involved in an unsanctioned operation in Nicaragua to get U.S. arms to the Contras in their fight against the Sandinistas. Kilos of coke are the currency for these transactions.
At the same time, Lucia Villanueva (Emily Rios), the daughter of a Mexican American crime boss, is trying to break into the rapidly evolving coke business, with the aid of a former wrestler, Gustavo Zapata (Sergio Peris-Mencheta), known as El Oso (the bear). She may be smaller than Oso but she’s every bit her father’s daughter and, by the way, increasingly attracted to her partner in crime.
Teddy is torn between his stated desire to make his crumbling marriage work, especially because he now has a young son, and his obsession with making the arms-forcoke deal work with the Contras. We know he’s trying to restore his status in the agency after some unnamed misstep in his past, but is that sufficient reason to sacrifice his marriage?
Each of the stories is enhanced by nicely drawn secondary characters. Franklin’s mother, Cissy Saint (Michael Hyatt), is determined, for example, to make sure her son isn’t destroyed by the wave of drugs, crime and hopelessness sweeping over South Central. She’s made sure Franklin’s father, (Robb Edward Morris), already victimized by booze and drugs, is out of the picture. She suspects Franklin may be involved in some petty crime, and she’s always on guard to make sure he doesn’t get in any deeper.
There is no logical motivation for any of the main characters to do what they do. In fact, what motivates Lucia, Oso, Franklin and Teddy isn’t logical: It’s addiction. One way or another, each character is driven beyond the point at which their actions can be tempered by logic, and we are called on to suspend disbelief in a very specific way in the case of “Snowfall.”
That’s both an ambitious and a dangerous approach to characterization. Once we get it, that Franklin, Lucia and the others are motivated by their specific personal addictions, the characters may still remain elusive, but at least we’re more willing to go along for the ride, bumpy as it may be from time to time.