La Brea Review: Topanga (Season 1 Episode 10)
La Brea Season 1 Episode 10, “Topanga,” solidifies that the season has been groan-worthy at the best of times and an utter trainwreck at the worst.
It would’ve been nice to come out of this freshman season with anything that might possibly resemble a positive thought. No one goes into something hoping to hate it. That certainly wasn’t our intention prior to the premiere. The hope was for something like Zoo: madcap nonsense that was wonderfully calibrated and knew precisely what it was.
The fact is, however, that it is not what La Brea is or even could be. Retrospectively, expecting it to be anything other than what it has been was a mistake — and a foolish one, at that. This is a show that practically telegraphed that it was going to be a mess.
Now at the end of its first — and depressingly not its only — season, it is more clear than ever that La Brea is designed on every level to be an utter disappointment to anyone that would dare expect anything from it. That being said, we expected nothing and we’re still disappointed.
“Topanga” would be a nothing of an episode if this were airing in the middle of the season and it is even less so when it is functioning as a finale. Logically, you can look at everything that happens within this episode and you can almost trick yourself into thinking that things did indeed happen.
Silas has been stopped, Isiah got through the portal, Marybeth died; but when you stop to think about it at all, it’s so clear how it feels like nothing is occurring at all. There is no life to this episode. There’s no forward momentum and there’s hardly any stakes.
It’s all a nonstarter because there has to be some kind of tension of whether or not Isiah will go to 1988 and that just isn’t present throughout the episode. It’s not believable for a single second that the show will kill off Josh and Izzy. Even as Marybeth is bleeding to death, there is no danger that anyone else will die.
Speaking of which, Marybeth is indicative of what’s wrong with the show because we watch her literally die and it feels like nothing has happened. There isn’t any weight or poignancy to her death. It’s a senseless death and it only works if we’re invested in her or any of the other characters.
On a different note, this episode’s haphazard use of time travel is honestly embarrassing. This is either a causal loop or it’s not but La Brea is not allowed to have its cake and it eat it, too. There are either rules or there are none. If there are, great, explain to us what they are. If there aren’t, then please go away with your nonsense.
In case this were not already abundantly clear, the answer to any of this will forever be a mystery to us (or, at least, this reviewer in particular) as we have no intention of ever watching a single moment of this ever again.
What did you think of this episode of La Brea? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Critic Rating:
User Rating:
La Brea airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on NBC.
Follow us on Twitter and on 
Instagram!
Want more from Tell-Tale TV? Subscribe to our newsletter here!
Drew Koenig
Drew has an ongoing, borderline unhealthy obsession with pop culture, but with television in particular. When he's not aggressively trying to get out of a perpetual state of catching up, he can be found passionately defending the ending of Lost. More of his online work can be found at The Lost Cause and he also co-hosts The Lost Cause Pod.
One thought on “La Brea Review: Topanga (Season 1 Episode 10)”
Why is it that when there is a time sensitive matter, they always have to waste more time having a debate over what to do? Marybeth gets stabbed, the light is closing, everyone else wants to waste more time going back when they should be pushing forward. Getting the kids through the light is the most pressing matter yet they want to wast time worrying about Marybeth getting to the light. Seriously, just STFU and go!
The one and only sensible line in the whole series, when Gavin tells Eve that Josh knew about their affair, Eve: “I can’t deal with this right now, I just have to focus on Isiah”. Which seems to be a unicorn for the series given all the other stupid and self serving innuendos that fill the scripts. I’m shocked the producer didn’t have the 2 of them slip off into the shadows for a quick romp before heading on to the light.
So Josh, Eve and Isiah crawl out of a hole and the first words out of Josh’s mouth are “we made it”, but from the looks of things they are still 4 miles away from the top of the mountain and of course the old man will be somewhere along the path to impede their journey. And sure enough there he is, right about the time Josh has a pain attack.
So I guess the plot twist for the very end, since the older version of Lilly didn’t vanish beforehand, and since Josh, Veronica and Lilly got sucked into the void before the light closed, Josh and Veronica will end up being Lilly’s foster parents. Not sure if I will bother wasting anymore of my life watching season 2 when I can find more suitable things to do with my time. Or at least much better programs to devote my time to over La Brea.
Other than this, I fully agree with Drew Koenig in his review. Ultimately in the last hour of this season’s edition, NOTHING HAPPENED!!!!
Comments are closed.