What the Hell is Going on in 'La Brea'?

By Dustin Rowles | TV | January 24, 2024 |

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 shit 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.