TNT’s six-partI Am the Nighthas gotten a bit lost in the current shuffle of infinite television.
That’s too bad.
The limited series is an unusual mix of true-life biopic, semi-true crime drama, and Hollywood noir fantasy.
Credit: Clay Enos/TNT
The visuals are very colorful.
The mystery plot is a messy compilation of midcentury race relations and secret SoCal history.
The episode’s titled “Aloha.”
Clay Enos/TNT
It’s written byNightcreator Sam Sheridan, though the boldface name for me was director Carl Franklin.
Franklin’s best known for filming the Denzel Washington neo-noirDevil in a Blue Dress.
He’s a master at building tension.
Franklin doesn’t radically alter the look ofI Am the Nightestablished by previous directors Patty Jenkins and Victoria Mahoney.
He has richer material to play with or just crazier twists.
Jay goes to pick up Fauna (India Eisley).
His appearance offends Jimmy Lee (Golden Brooks), Fauna’s adopted mother.
Things spiral quickly, and soon Jimmy Lee’s chasing Jay across the house with a knife.
The action downshifts to a leisurely slow burn when Jay and Fauna head to Hawaii.
Fauna believes she’s heading toward a joyful reunion with her mother, Tamar (Jamie Anne Allman).
“Heaven must look like this,” Fauna says.
Looks can be deceiving.
The land is lush green, but it’s always raining, or about to rain.
A drunken sailor nearly assaults Fauna to the tune of “Wooly Bully.”
That night, Jay sleeps out in their cherry-red convertible.
Fauna wakes him up when he starts screaming through a nightmare.
Franklin films Pine in direct closeup in the back seat.
There’s an unadorned sadness in Pine’s thousand-yard stare.
Helooksa bit like some Sun God or other, nova-blonde hair and ocean-deep eyes.
Jay’s pondering madness Fauna can’t quite understand.
And then, suddenly, she can.
She finds Tamar, a woman living off the grid with two young children.
Fauna’s mother is almost a parody of Cali woo-woo.
Her children don’t call her mom.
She names multiple daughters after a Robinson Jeffers poem.
And she reveals that Fauna’s fatherwasn’tblack.
“I put Negro on your birth certificate because I just wanted you to belong,” she says.
“I admire black people so much.”
This is loopy logic, halfway Dolezalian, but then comes the final revelation.
Tamar was raped by her father.
Fauna’s her sisterandher daughter.
This twist is arguable history, inarguablyChinatown-y.
(Perhaps in deference, a late scene from the episode takes place in Chinatown.)
See the gorgeous Hawaiian coastline, spoiled beyond reckoning by memories of assault and incest.
Then Jay visits Tamar.
He sits by her at a campfire.
Tamar holds a lazy cigarette, explaining that Hawaii is beautiful, but boring.
“The men think they’re daring,” she says.
“Talking about free love, walking around naked.
Thinking that they’re pushing the boundaries.”
“The universe protects George,” she tells Jay.
The reporter thinks he’s the first man to ever connect George to the Black Dahlia murder.
“Everyoneknew,” she tells him.
But the episode’s final scene returns to Fauna’s adopted mother, Jimmy Lee.
Brooks' performance has been splendid, full of maternal toughness and dissolving sorrow.
She cries to Fauna on the phone, ecstatic that her daughter wants to return home.
And then she cuts off the call because George Hodel is in her kitchen.
And then the violence explodes at perfect random.
(Some symmetry: Jimmy Lee chased Jay withanotherkitchen knife.)
I wishI Am the Nightdidn’t keep reducing George to an omniscient boogeyman.
Franklin also directs next week’s finale.
Worth catching up onI Am the Nightnow.
