American Crime (season two)

I’m not sure at exactly what point cable networks took over episodic television, but ever since, it’s been nearly impossible for the old giants to reclaim their viewership. Why watch ABC, NBC, or CBS when you’ve got Game of Thrones on HBO, House of Cards on Netflix, Fargo on FX, Bates Motel on A&E? (BTW, mentioning those shows doesn’t mean I watch them all.) But this winter, something truly exceptional, one of the best things I’ve ever seen in my 42 years on planet, aired, and it was on ABC. It was called American Crime, and you most likely missed it.

To be specific, it was season 2 that aired this winter. Like Fargo, and American Horror Story (I hear), this show is completely different every season. Not only a new story, but all new characters, although some are played by actors who were also in the first season. You could call it “repertory TV drama”. It was created by the writer of the Academy Award winning film, 12 Years a Slave, John Ridley, who also wrote and directed a number of the episodes, along with other A-listers like Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry) and Gregg Araki (Mysterious Skin). And one final technical note, this is not the docudrama about OJ Simpson; that show is called American Crime Story. So just to get it straight, there’s no “Story” in the title of what I’m writing about here.

American Crime has two Indiana high schools as its backdrop. One is an elite private school, run by the cold and calculating Leslie Graham, played with supreme subtly by Felicity Huffman. The other is a somewhat run-down budget-poor public school, where there are constant tensions between the black and Hispanic populations. Chris Dixon (Elvis Nolasto, in what is truly one of the most sympathetic adult portrayals in this story) tries to keep things functioning and keep a lid on the tensions, which turns out to be a thankless and impossible task.

A scandal breaks out at the private school. Social outcast Taylor Blain (played by Falling Skies alum, Connor Jessup) shows up at a party, hosted by the captain of the basketball team. There, he has a sexual encounter with Eric Tanner (Joey Pollari), another member of the basketball team. Throughout the show, the exact nature and details of this encounter are never revealed, but in the next few days, photos of a passed-out and half naked Taylor are spread across the school, and Taylor will confess to his mom (the always-incredible Lili Taylor) that he was raped. Eric meanwhile is outed at his school, partially shunned, and completely denies that he did anything that Taylor didn’t want.

It’s necessary for me to take a moment to praise these two young actors, Jessup and Pollari, because while the show is full of extraordinary performances all around, it is these two that do the majority of the heavy lifting and are responsible for driving that emotional stake into the heart of the viewer. Here are two young, confused gay kids, living in a small town America that is much less accepting than you might imagine in 2016. Taylor is shy, sensitive, and under-stated. As his troubles get deeper and deeper, he withdraws further into himself, until he reaches a breaking point.  Eric is a young man who wants to project a very tough masculine exterior, and it gets harder and harder as the pressure mounts throughout the series. Taylor has a hard time expressing his thoughts and feelings, and yet in his pauses, you can see the painful truth in his eyes. I’m reminded of that song, “you say it best when you say nothing at all.” A lot of actors of any age have a hard time communicating their characters like this, and that’s why Connor Jessup is so amazing here. And look, his character is no angel, which becomes more apparent as the show progresses, but you love him and want to protect him as much as his mother does because of the empathy that Jessup creates for Taylor. It becomes a high stakes proposition for the viewer, as you rush to the television set every week to see what happens. You almost pray that everything works out okay, even though you know it’s fiction. As for Pollari, his smoldering portrayal of the angry-but-damaged Eric will make you almost as concerned for him as for Taylor…almost. He is like a caged animal, imprisoned by his anger and his recklessness. He does things that could get him killed. Pollari expertly finds the balance between the macho that Eric so wants to be and the deep wounded vulnerability that is his true heart.

Huffman’s private school headmaster only wants to bury the scandal and does everything in her power to silence the Blains, with devastating results. The basketball coach, played by Timothy Hutton (who is somehow always likable, no matter what character he’s playing) just wants to protect his team and preserve the notion of camaraderie, which means burying his head in the sand. Unlike the Huffman character, Hutton’s coach is almost always a man of good intentions, but they don’t get him very far because the good intentions are not matched with genuine courage and strength of character. And indeed, one of the themes of season two of American Crime is how children suffer at the hands of adults (their parents, teachers, so-called role models) who care more about their own institutions than about people. And in many cases, parents care only for their own kids, and are willing to throw other children under the bus to protect theirs.

One primary example is the LaCroix family, an affluent black community pillar, the youngest of whom, Kevin, is the basketball team’s captain. His parents witness the community falling apart around them over this scandal, and their only thought is to protect their son, no matter what his involvement in the incident might be. One especially noteworthy performance is by Regina King, as mother Terri, who is like a lioness, protecting her cub…And yet, at the same time, Terri experiences a real character evolution during these ten episodes. She goes from scolding her son for letting Eric take the winning basket in a game and railing against Taylor’s mom, blaming her for all the town’s troubles to taking ownership of her own mistakes, and urging her husband and son to do the same. It’s an incredibly strong performance, which—like Jessop’s and Pollari’s—should be nominated for an Emmy.

Meanwhile, back at the public school, as I said before, black kids and Hispanic kids seem to be hating on each other, and the school board, which is a multi-ethnic conglomerate, just like the school itself, has the so-called adults exploiting the tensions to jockey for power and position, and the sad-sack black principle is getting railroaded amid accusations of racism against the Hispanics. Where education and politics converge, politics will always win out. There are some connections between the goings-on at this school and the more central private school storyline. Eric’s less promising younger brother goes here, and Taylor transfers here from the private school after the rape.

I’m about to go into spoiler territory, so if you want to watch this and don’t want anything more given away, you should not read past this paragraph. My comments above barely scratch the surface of why this is a vital program that I think everyone should watch, even if they think it’s not necessarily their cup of tea. Like so few other programs, it reveals the real complexity of human nature, where nobody is good, and nobody is evil. Everyone has real and difficult issues that they deal with. It’s like that Facebook meme you see one in a while, I’ll try to paraphrase it: “Don’t judge people too quickly, because everyone is fighting a secret battle that you know nothing about.” Okay, I think I butchered that, but you get the idea. There are so many twists and turns and surprises. There is so much that is fresh and innovative here. If there were more things like this produced, I might not feel the need to be an artist myself. The need derives (possibly, one theory anyway) from a sense of something lacking out there. This is what art should be. This is what you should be watching. Trust Uncle Matt.

Okay, spoilers…not just for the sake of plot reveals, but the necessary discussion that must follow. For Taylor Blain, when it rains, it pours. Like many victims of sexual assault (and one of the things you learn is that male on male rape is much more common than you think), he just wants to put it behind him. But then there are the viral photos. Then his mom pursues justice, even when he’d rather she not. For her trouble, her past with mental illness is brought to light. Taylor loses his girlfriend when he’s outed as gay, which is a big deal simply because he needs moral support, and her anger prevents her from being there for him. Taylor gets the shit beat out of him for damaging the reputation of the prized basketball team. Taylor takes drugs to ease the pain. Taylor borrows a gun from his grandfather, and takes it to school with a hit list full of people, the top of which is Leslie Graham, the headmaster, who has done nothing but try to demonize him and his mother from the start. A compassionate secretary talks him down without even realizing it, but as Taylor is leaving the school, having committed no violence, he’s confronted and threatened by one of the jocks who beat him up. “If you say anything, I’ll kill you!” says Wes the jock. In a moment of panic, Taylor sees to it that Wes is the one that ends up dead.

Of the many, many hot-button issues that this show addresses, none is more relevant than the issue of school shootings. And while there have been many shows and films and even plays—I wrote one myself—that deal with this important subject, the approach taken here is somewhat different from what we’ve seen. In the first place, the shooting was not the premeditated one that Taylor had in mind when he came to school that day. It happened in a moment of shock and could therefore be described almost as accidental, which is why Taylor is charged with manslaughter and not murder. Add to that, the sympathetic nature of Taylor’s character and situation, and the fact that the bully Wes—while not deserving to die—was a truer villain than Taylor throughout most of the show. It’s very bold and unprecedented that a work of fiction would generate sympathy for a school shooter, but it goes back to what I said before about how complicated people are and life in general, and the situations we find ourselves in, our private battles that other people don’t know about. Some might not want a school shooter to be cast in anything but the most monstrous light because the problem is so pervasive in our society. Is it dangerous to try to understand the monster’s point of view? Or, even worse, to show that he isn’t even a monster at all?

I was bullied mercilessly in junior high. The late 80s was a time before Columbine, and when I wrote my imaginary hit list, and had to pass it forward to my math teacher who read it aloud, I was not suspended or even given a talking-to. I was not taken seriously. And truth be told, I wasn’t serious; it was a “cry for help”, as they say, but it fell on deaf ears. And so many years later, even with what we know now, there are many with willfully deaf ears and blind eyes. When everybody looks out for number one, they forget that the ostracized kid they’re ignoring might be the one who can tear their precious world apart.

This ten-episode story was deliberately devoid of resolutions. Taylor is given a chance to make a plea deal to lessen his sentence, but we don’t find out if he does so. Eric is seen about to jump into another stranger’s car for an anonymous hookup, which has proven to be dangerous in the past, but he takes a pause, wondering if he really wants to go through with it. We don’t know what happens. We don’t find out the truth about the night that changed Eric and Taylor’s lives forever, but we do know they both believe their own accounts of what happened. We can draw our own conclusions.