American Crime

Nov 23, 2016

I just finished binge watching American Crime, season 1….wow…

I didn’t know anything about the show when I saw it on Netflix, and I don’t want to ruin it for you if you haven’t seen it (and don’t read anything about it either!!), but after watching this show, I feel like I’ve been on an extraordinary emotional experience–

The pace of this show is very quiet and slow–unlike most crime shows–and it takes a little while to get used to this quiet pacing…there are no real ‘good’ guys or real ‘bad’ guys, everyone is a shade of Grey…perhaps that’s more like how we all are truly, in real life, a shade of Grey,

but in a tv show this greyness often leaves something feeling missing, because we often go to tv (and movies) to escape, and part of the pleasure of escaping into the tv world, is that we know who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, because they’re nicely labeled nicely for us in escapist tv and movie pleasure…

American Crime doesn’t cave to this hedonistic pleasure.

So I plowed through the entire first season, at times not really sure how I felt about the show as a whole,

and I have to say,

American Crime pulls off one of the most touching and dramatic and beautiful moments of true tenderness and love that I’ve ever seen in a television show, in a completely and unexpected way, in the last episode of season 1–

It completely took my breath away–

But perhaps like working hard on a movie for a long time, or spending hours on a book and then finally getting to the point where you feel ‘it’s done’,

this moment in the last episode pays off mostly because of diligently going through the entire season, digesting the show, allowing its tempo to take hold of your heart,

and also because of its element of surprise…not knowing anything about the show, so when it happens, you’re like…wow…

If a visual medium could ever express true love (like how Beethoven’s ninth symphony expresses true happiness), this moment is it.

If you find yourself in the mood for a quiet, savoring drink…something beautiful, something thoughtful, something biting, something loving, something questioning, something dark…

Then watch American Crime season 1.