La Brea

Classic dorky network TV show, with bad VFX, pretty actors that wear perfect outfits, makeup and hairstyles even when teleported 10000 BC and living in the woods without shower. Laughable drama, dumb jokes, tropy camera work, plot that moves from commercial break to commercial break, dramatic music, unnecessary flirting, this TV show has it all. It's like a relic from 2006.

A cross-section of LA denizens fall through a groundswell in Los Angeles that takes them to the stone age and prompts the question "how is this different from a normal day in Los Angeles?" Seriously, I don't know. It seems like an LA thing though from so many films and TV shows I've seen.

The show cross-cuts between two different scenes.

The dad and husband of two of the victims has paranormal premonitions about what's happening and gets the attention of a shadow government agency that is determined to suppress the truth and conduct a rescue mission.

Getting the lion's share of the action is the group of displaced people as they try to figure out what is happening in a loose rip-off of "Lost." The crew includes a wide variety of professionals such that many are the deus-ex-machinas for each other's ailments. There's a kid with life-threatening injuries but fortunately there's a doctor among the stranded to rescue him. Ditto with a stunted child who's been trained to pretend she's mute and a child psychologist who needs to get information from her without traumatizing. Similarly, there's a paleontologist who can decipher the tea leaves and a cop who can keep order.

The coincidental nature of each person's abilities isn't so bad but there's a clunkiness to the dialogue and the character development that's par for the course for standard broadcast procedurals rather than the middle brow serial this show aspires to be. This certainly slows down the show but it's marginally watchable and has enough potential that it's worth finishing the season.

Poorly written, horridly acted with painfully low-budget special effects... the Asylum Studios has productions better than this drivel. Even the ScFy Channel has produced better content than this. You can't blame anything this bad on the Pandemic.

Hollywood loves trying new shows with strong female leads but Natalie Zea as the fawningly over-protective helicopter Mom is just disastrous. Her acting is heavy-handed and reminds me of Debrah Farentino from Earth 2. As the lead in this sewer circus, Natalie is just a dragging this show down the drain quicker than Debrah did to E2.

Clearly the addition of Zyra Gorecki as daughter Izzy is a cheap PC attempt to cast an "impaired" actor who's better off behind a still camera. Her acting talents aren't even fit for commercials. Even though she appears to be able to work up tears on command, her facial expressions and execution of dialog don't fit the moment or the waterworks.

Whoever was responsible for casting Eoin Macken as the Dad should be fired immediately. I can't really think of anything positive about his role or his talent in this part. I really kept expecting him to die in one of the early episodes... too bad.

What can you say about Jon Seda as Sam and Nicholas Gonzalez as Levi other than they are simply just embarrassing. Was this a conscious effort by the production to cast such weak talent? Something that seems to be a trend in Hollywood over the last 10-15 years.

Chiké Okonkwo as Ty is the only secondary actor that has any chops and it's too bad he's been relegated to such a minor roll.

I watched 5 episodes of this garbage hoping that the cast would settle in to the roles and the writing and production would find their groove... no such luck. If anything, it's gone downhill. At the beginning I was intrigued by the concept but by the end of the 2nd episode, I no longer cared what happened to any of the characters and actually looked forward to a few of them being killed off... eaten or otherwise graphically dispatched.

Unfortunately, this is exactly the type of brainless garbage that will be renewed for more seasons... but one can only hope otherwise.

Stay away from this mind-numbing drivel... you've been warned.

It makes me laugh that everyone is always so clean with neatly cut hairstyles and have new clean clothes to wear with pretty jewelry.

Did I miss the explanation of how they are taking care of these little details? I do admit to not always keeping up with every episode.

And what about feminine products? Too much reality for the show? Lol.

They have bottles of alcohol and even wedding clothes, for the episode airing 2/21/23.

You'd think that they would have at least added the reality of dirty clothes getting worn out and tattered to help us accept the whole sinkhole to the 10,000 BC world.

Oh well. I guess that it's just Too much to ask.

Truly listen to the dialogue each episode. You will see it all sucks... every line. That said, I do enjoy the plot of the show. It has a great sci fi idea. But these generic blah lines without good character development just won't cut it for a season two. No doubt this show is cancelled after one season. Find better/smarter writers!!!