'SouthLAnd' recap: 'Legacy'

It’s official—Cooper and Tang have become my favorite part of SouthLAnd, and frankly, I’m surprised it took me this long to realize. Michael Cudlitz has always played Cooper flawlessly, but season four has shown a side to the character that we have never seen. While I think that’s partly due to his pain killer addiction coming to a head last season, there’s no doubt his partnership with Tang has brought the best out of him.

So I was pleased to find “Legacy” was a Cooper/Tang heavy episode, focusing on commending Cooper’s 20 years on the force (really, it’s been 22, but the people in charge of recognizing these things don’t do so in a timely manner) and what a police officer has to do to make it that long without “eating his gun,” as Dewey so eloquently put it. After roll-call and Tang’s announcing that everyone was welcome to celebrate the landmark at the bar after work, the pair responded to a seemingly routine domestic dispute.

They arrive on scene to find a mother and father yelling at their son who insists on going to school. Mom and dad refuse to let him go, saying their son sent nude pictures to another boy and he is to transfer schools immediately. Tang and Cooper separate the family, and Cooper tries to reason with the upset teenager, Mike, saying he knows how tough high school can be and to calm down. “How do you know about high school being tough?” Mike huffs and with that, he’s gone. Unable to arrest a kid for wanting to go to school, Tang and Cooper can do nothing.

Later in the day, the pair responds to a call about someone on the top of a building getting ready to jump. It doesn’t take long to realize the jumper Mike, outfitted in a pink dress and two black eyes. The kids at school weren’t as tolerant as he had hoped, and now, he plans to die. Cooper does all in his power to talk Mike down, and finally admits to his own homosexuality.

This is the first time we have had a clear answer to Cooper’s always questionable sexual orientation and in the presence of other cops nonetheless. But Mike is resolved to die and throws himself off the building. With impressive reflexes, Cooper catches him, and with the help of Tang and three other officers, hoists him back onto the roof.

There is only so much someone can do to help another person. At a point, they’re on their own, and Cooper knows that. So at the hospital when he tells Mike that he’s “got a lot of problems kid, being gay isn’t one of them,” and Mike still manages to find a way to kill himself (off the 14th floor of the hospital; he found someone to loosen his restraints), Cooper knows he did all he could. And that’s what he tells Tang when she breaks the news about Mike. He already known, had heard it on the radio, but didn’t let on. He does everything he can when he’s at work, but sometimes you have to leave the job at the door. And it’s knowing that that will help Cooper make it to six stripes.

If Tang and Cooper have become the heart of the show, Sammy and Ben have assumed the role of comedic relief. The two engage in a prank war that quickly escalates from a taped up locker preventing Sammy from toweling off to a faked pregnancy which scared the living daylights out of Ben, and was a great tie to the many hookups Ben has engaged in this season. They even manage to tie the case they’re working in to the pranks.

When someone who leaked information on a shooting winds up in the hospital themselves, Sammy convinces Ben to get the victim who is “circling the drain” (or doesn’t have a prayer, in laymen’s terms) to “squeeze his hand” if he knows who shot him. In reality, the victim had a flesh wound, and Ben wound up begging a paraplegic to squeeze his hand. It was sick and twisted and funny as hell; exactly what cops need to blow off steam.

Lydia and Reuben’s storyline wasn’t much to write home about. Their chemistry pales in comparison to Tang and Cooper’s and Sammy and Ben’s, and their cases leave much to be desired. We’ve come no closer to learning who Lydia’s child’s father is, and she’s still hesitant to even confirm Reuben’s suspicions that she’s pregnant.

Like last week, their case had undertones of the lengths a parent should go to take responsibility for their child (last week, claiming to have committed a murder they didn’t; this week, murdering your grown child to prevent them from committing murder in the first place), but did nothing to further Lydia’s arch this season, which is presumably the path to motherhood and its implications on the job.

As other partnerships find their footing and places in the show, let’s hope this partnership doesn’t continue to serve as a show-stopper, and not the good kind.