La Brea: Season One Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

La Brea: Season One Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman October 23, 2022

Important opening note: episodes five and six are reversed. To watch episode five on disc one, play episode six on disc two. To view episode six, play episode five on disc one. The titles of the episodes are in the right place, but the wrong episode is tied to them.

Usually, a Disaster movie will build to the disaster and then slather the screen with images of cracking roads, crumbling buildings, screaming people, and general sights and sounds of chaos. NBC's La Brea, instead, begins with the disaster in the opening minutes when a mammoth sinkhole swallows up a good chunk of Los Angeles. What follows through the 10-episode first season is the breathlessly chaotic, twisting-turning aftermath not just in the world around the sinkhole, but also the world within the sinkhole. Those who have been swallowed up find themselves not in a different place, but in a different time, struggling to survive in the same place but in a distant past time. The show blends the best of Disaster and Sci-Fi with an oftentimes skilled, but sometimes overly clumsy, hand, resulting in an enjoyable, yet uneven, first season foray into the wild convergence of time and the human condition.

Official synopsis: An epic adventure begins in 'La Brea: Season One' when a massive sinkhole opens in the middle of Los Angeles, pulling hundreds of people and buildings to its depths. Those who fell in and find themselves in a mysterious and dangerous primeval land, where they have no choice but to band together to survive. In search for answers, one family torn apart by this disaster will have to unlock the secrets of this inexplicable event to find a way back home.

As might be easily deduced from the plot, there's a certain Lost-like narrative underbelly to La Brea (and one character even mentions the similarities early in the series run). Yet the show is its own entity, offering a mostly compelling merging of the Sc-Fi and Disaster routes, though it certainly leans much more heavily on the former, using the latter more as a central propellant rather than a core defining characteristic. It works. Most of the time. La Brea is kinetic and quickly evolves as the story takes shape, and it springs plot twists left and right with machine gun speed, but also machine gun inaccuracy. Some twists hit the target, others land far from it. The content gets jumbled towards the end of the season run as too many moving parts emerge and merge in too few episodes. The show needs to slow down, if only jut here and there, and breathe. Hopefully that will be more its pace in season two: frantic as a rule, but slower when necessary.

The season does well enough to definite its broad swath of characters, first in a rather frantic sense as the new reality of life in the sinkhole and back up in Los Angeles begins to take shape, but also as various character qualities and plot tentacles begin to engulf the show and the roster, pulling each this way and that. The actors do a fine job of keeping up, but it seems like there's some underlying uncertainty about the ability to sustain the show's pace. The episodes are fairly compact, too, to accommodate network schedules, which only amplifies the speed of things. The visual effects are subpar but acceptable for network TV in 2022.

The following episode summaries are courtesy of the Blu-ray packaging:

Disc One:

• Pilot: When a massive sinkhole opens in Los Angeles, the Harris family is split in two; Eve and her son are sent to a mysterious primeval world; Gavin discovers that the visions that have plagued him for years might hold the key to bringing them home.
• Day Two: With Josh's life on the line, Eve traverses the dangerous wilderness back to the clearing to save him. Desperate to kickstart a rescue mission, Gavin and Izzy work to prove there are survivors alive inside the sinkhole as government agents track their every move.
• The Hunt: With the survivors' food supply dwindling, Eve and Ty venture into the forest on a risky hunting expedition only to face unexpected dangers that threaten their survival. as an unlikely rescue mission comes to fruition, Gavin must put his faith -- and the fate of his family -- in the hands of an old friend with whom he shares a complicated past.
• The New Arrival: The sight of a crashing plane spreads a wave of unexpected hope through the clearing as Eve and the others search for its fallen pilot. Gavin and Izzy seek help from an unlikely source after the government permanently suspends their mission into the sinkhole.
• The Fort: Eve, Levi and the rest of the search party explore a mysterious fort that raises more questions than answers. With the help of a new ally, Gavin and Izzy embark on a dangerous and unauthorized mission to save their family despite government warnings that they could cause unprecedented disaster.

Disc Two:

• The Way Home: With time running out before their window home closes, the survivors hatch a final escape attempt. That plan, however, is put into question when they receive a stark warning from Gavin that it will end in disaster, forcing Eve to make an impossible choice.
• The Storm: When a chaotic superstorm hits the clearing, a structural collapse puts Marybeth and Lucas' lives in danger. Eve, still at odds with everyone for thwarting their way home, desperately tries to make amends by leading the effort to dig them out. Gavin embarks on a journey into his past, which could provide a crucial piece to saving his family in the present.
• Origins: With cold weather approaching, Eve, Levi and Ty return to the mysterious fort, despite their near-death experience, hoping to learn 10,000 B.C. survival skills. Gavin's attempts to spare Izzy pain threaten to do their relationship more harm than good.
• Father and Son: When a stunning revelation puts Josh and Izzy's lives on the line, Eve and the other survivors desperately search for the young boy who holds the key to saving them. Gavin and Izzy must rely on a stranger if there is any hope to reunite their family.
• Topanga: With news of one last sinkhole opening, Gavin, Izzy and Dr. Nathan race to Seattle to launch a final rescue effort before it's too late. Eve embarks on a perilous journey to send a young boy though a portal in order to save her family.

La Brea: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

La Brea looks razor sharp on Blu-ray. This is one of the clearest, sharpest, most robustly detailed TV show images on the format. Close-ups reveal every single pore and hair with striking detail. The world of the clearing where those who have fallen into the sinkhole find themselves presents with impeccable clarity to grasses, trees, and all of the natural, and otherwise, secrets around the camp. The picture simply could not be sharper. Color output is vivid and stable. Primaries pop, whites are brilliant, black levels depth is excellent, and flesh tones appear to be spot-on accurate. The picture does struggle with some heavy banding (look at the 37-minute mark of episode one) and macroblocking on occasion. Nevertheless, the excellence far outweighs the shortcomings. This is a great looking image from Universal.

La Brea: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

La Brea roars onto Blu-ray with an aggressive and satisfying DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. The track engages listeners with plenty of excellent discrete audio cues and some incredible movement, depth, stretch, and immersion as the sinkhole opens in the opening moments. The subwoofer and surrounds work for their money here, as they do in practically every episode. The track is not at all shy about utilizing the low end and the surround channels to their fullest extent, delivering a near ceaseless barrage of intense cues and sound effects to heighten the experience down in the new world, and back in the normal realm as well. One great example of the low-end stretch is an explosion at the 35:20 mark in episode seven, while surround usage is exemplified by great office bustle at the 7-minute mark of episode one. Music spreads far and immerses through the rear channels while maintaining precision clarity. Dialogue is well prioritized, clear, and center positioned for the duration.

La Brea: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of La Brea: Season One includes one supplement on each disc. No DVD or digital copies are included with purchase. This release does not ship with a slipcover.

Disc One:

• Inside NBC's La Brea (1080p, 8:46): SyFy Wire's Tara Bennet virtually meets with key content creators and cast to talk up the show.

Disc Two:

• LA Brea: Survival and the Unexpected Journey (1080i, 32:15): TV Guide Magazine's Damian Holbrook is virtually joined by the La Brea cast and crew to talk up the show. This was recorded prior to the airing of the season one finale.

La Brea: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

La Brea is Lost-lite. It aims big and sprawls quickly, but it becomes too jumbled and unfocused in its latter episodes to hold the kind of compelling interest engendered by its early episodes. Hopefully season two slows the pace, just a bit. Universal's two-disc season one set offers solid video and excellent audio along with a couple of good virtual roundtable discussion supplements. Recommended.