Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | January 24, 2024
It’s been a long time since I watched an episode of NBC’s La Brea, having bailed after the third or fourth episode of the second season. However, my podcast colleagues have been giving me sh** for skipping out on La Brea when I sucked it up and endured all of Manifest, Riverdale, and the entire The Walking Dead franchise, so I decided to check in on the series, halfway through its six-episode final season.
The first thing people need to know is that Eve — the character played by Natalie Zea, the ostensible lead of the show — is no longer around. Back in 10,000 BC, she got lost in some portal to the future at the end of season two and bleep-blop-blorped into an unknown time and place. This season largely focuses on finding Eve, but Natalie Zea only makes a brief appearance (and she was replaced by a body double in a flashback scene in episode one). It’s unclear why Zea essentially left the series, but my guess is that she remembered that she is Natalie Zea and that this is a show called La Brea.
The other thing that people need to know is that, for reasons I don’t fully understand, there are a lot more people from the future who are in 10,000 BC now. There are helicopters, a bunch of military redshirts, and even a field full of landmines, and thank god, because a rhinoceros stepped on one and exploded while it was chasing Gavin and Sam.
In 10,000 BC, Gavin and Sam are trying to locate a secret military base — again, in 10,000 BC — and figure out how to find Eve. The clue to unlocking the mystery of her whereabouts, however, appears to be in a memory forgotten during a year in the present full of forgotten memories. As it turns out, a woman from the present, Maya Schmidt, worked in psy ops and developed a concoction that would erase targetted memories, which she gave to Gavin to erase certain memories about his experiences regarding the time-traveling portals. However, Maya was going to whistleblow, but the military baddies figured it out, and they … sent her back in time to 10,000 BC, where she’s now trying to help Gavin resurface his lost memories. Doing so has triggered a memory about a microchip, which one wouldn’t think would do a whole hell of good in 10,000 BC, but clearly, you haven’t seen the hair product apparently available back then.
Meanwhile, Ty Coleman — the guy who had a brain tumor — was apparently cured of his brain tumor because 10,000 BC is a helluva drug. However, he has found himself in 2021 along with Gavin and Sam from before they time traveled to 10,000 BC. In 2021, Gavin is a drunk. Ty tries to recruit Gavin into helping all these people who will be stuck in the past in the future.
Ty also meets up with his ex-wife, who he remembers will leave an AA meeting that night, drink a lot, and cause a serious accident. In order to prevent that from happening, Gavin appears at the AA meeting and gives a speech about how one should accept help from those who love them, which prompts Ty’s ex-wife to accept help from Ty, which stops her from getting into a drunken car accident.
Meanwhile, Lucas and Veronica — who used to be black-sheep characters — are now a couple, although there’s some tension between them because Veronica was asked to be a board member on a community organization in 10,000 BC when it was Lucas who wanted to be on it.
Elsewhere, Gavin and Eve’s daughter, Izzy, is smitten with a Native, Leyla, with whom she went boar hunting. Izzy had to save Leyla after she got stuck in a tar pit, and Leyla got out just in time to help Izzy kill a boar before it killed them.
In the present, there is also a mysterious blonde woman with a gun following Gavin and Ty.
I made the right decision in bailing, and there’s nothing in this episode that would suggest to me otherwise. The show about a portal to the past in the La Brea tar pits has gone off the rails.
