TVSquad

Southland, the gritty new police drama from film producer Ann Biderman, puts the spotlight on the dark and grimy corners of Los Angeles as seen through the eyes of uniformed cops and plainclothes detectives. Unfortunately, the series premiere is mired in cop show clichés and forgets to deliver anything we haven't seen before.

The first episode – stream it now or watch it below, a week before it debuts on NBC – owes a lot to NYPD Blue, Homicide: Life on the Street and countless other cop shows that came before it. It's a procedural with a large cast about cops struggling to balance "the job" with their personal lives.

FOX has an interesting promo running in hopes that we'll all scurry to watch the season finale of The O.C. on Thursday night. It shows the main characters and tells us that one of them won't survive the night. The characters it shows are: Seth, Summer, Marissa, Ryan, Kirsten, Julie Cooper, and Sandy.

I think I have a pretty good idea of who it's going to be, but my official vote is for the untimely demise of Marissa.

(S03E23)  What has happened to our wonderful little group of four? Remember back in the day when everybody got along? Yeah, I think there was one episode where that happened way back in Season One. They were on a beach or something.

This week it's all about Senior Prom and, quite frankly, I have given up trying to suspend my disbelief that any of these characters remotely looks like they're in high school. The characters seemed really subdued to me this week. I guess that's because they're all bummed out about their respective situations. Ryan isn't with Marissa but he does know that Kevin is cheating on her. Seth can't find a way to explain to Summer that there's nothing between him and Anna. And, Kirsten and Sandy are moping about because he's turning into her father and she's turning back to the bottle.