Seven Seconds

This is a great series, very well played, but I think Netflix owes the audience a second season.

This series grabbed my attention right from the start! A white cop happens to hit a black 15 year old kid with his car. The cop's boss and coworkers show up seconds after and tell him to leave the kid there...essentially ignoring/covering up a hit and run and allowing things to turn to a possible homicide. This is just the beginning of a sick, downward spiral. Unfortunately this doesn't have a happy go lucky, movie magic storyline or ending. Instead this movie portrays HARSH REALITY! The reality of giving power to a corrupt and unjust system. It really opens your eyes in so many ways. This movie made me feel so many different things...frustration, heartbroken, surprised, yet not surprised at all. I don't doubt for one second that this stuff really happens exactly the way it played out on screen. Actors were incredible!! A very high end, solid series that keeps you glued from start to finish!! Highly satisfied! Would've loved if they could've continued this series with different cases and new cast each season!

We say, I say, again and again that we are in a Golden Age of Television. We say it and I say it because it is very true. Television shows, spurred on by streaming apps and audience expectation being raised higher and higher, have become as good and often better than anything that film can offer. The problem for shows and audiences alike however is that so many superb shows can get lost in the shuffle and even, as we saw so recently with Damnation and Dirk Gently, get cancelled long before they should be. Hopefully Seven Seconds does not fall into the latter category. Created, and largely written by Veena Sud, best known for her work on The Killing, (She's also from Toronto. I need to mention this because I too live in Toronto and because it is so nice to see a Canadian Woman, particularly one from so close to home, finding such success.) Seven Seconds is better than just good. It's great. Sud does a masterful job of writing and the shows itself is so layered with thought and imagery that I just had to go back and watch it again right away, something I have only done once, maybe twice before. On the surface Seven Seconds is a very intense and dark story about a young white cop who hits a black boy and then, along with three other cops who he barely knows on a narcotic squad that he has just joined, seeks to cover it up. On the surface Seven Seconds is a contemplation of race relations and the police. But it is so much more than just that. Seven Seconds is a deep and profound psychological and social study. It is a show that questions how well we really know each other, and how easily that we can assume that we know each other. It is a study of repentance and sorrow. It is a quest to see the humanity that underlies the surface in each and everyone of us. Yes, it's another cop show. And, taken on that level, it is a damned good cop show. Yes, it is a story about crime and punishment, or lack of thereof. Taken on just that level, it is a superb presentation of the impact of crime and on each every person that crime touches. Yes, it is dark and moody drama. Taken on just that level, Seven Seconds' superb writing and exquisite acting stands up with the best drama. Each and every actor is so perfect. Each and every bit of dialogue is so dead on. Each and every scene evokes and rips at your emotions so terribly and so beautifully. Seven Seconds is simply and utterly perfect at what it does in that very rare way that shows like Rectify or NYPD Blue have been able to be. Watch Seven Seconds. And then watch Seven Seconds again to see how well symbols are used to create depth, how layered and complex this show is underneath what seems like a pretty straight forward exterior. Because that is exactly what Seven Seconds really turns out to be about. What we see on the surface does not tell us what lies hidden beneath. But even on the surface Seven Seconds is a superb show. Don't let it get lost. Don't wait until it's been cancelled to find out how good this show is. Enjoy all your other favourite shows too. But, for your own sake, make sure you don't lose sight of Seven Seconds.

This story arc would have been better served if it transpired over a tighter six episodes. In so many episodes, the story is allowed to wander. The side roads are interesting (and contain some of the very best acting, especially from Regina King and Russell Hornsby), but they distract from the main story line.

I found that I could not draw a parallel between a real life white police officer shooting an unarmed young black man in the back with a fictional white police officer driving in a bad snowstorm, while taking a frantic call his wife is going into early labor, accidentally hitting and killing a black teen on a bike. The real-life event, murder; the fictional event that drives the series, an unfortunate accident. This was the wrong plot device if the show meant to make a really strong statement about police killings of young black males.

I like Veena Sud's flawed heroines, both in The Killing and here. Personally, I'm all done with the male antiheros littering TV. I now find them boring and unwatchable. I only wish the KJ character here didn't clean up so good between her bouts of binge drinking. She seemed too clean and healthy when she was sober. I've known a couple of alcoholic women and they never could quite pull themselves together when sober. Even at their best, you could see them desperately trying to hold on. But not KJ. She seems at times like two different characters. I don't know if the flaw is in the writing or the acting. But honestly, I think a stronger actress could have been cast in the role.

For what it's worth, I never watched The Killing when it was broadcast (had no TV at the time), so I later stream binged it. I had no problems with the end of the first season, probably because I immediately went from watching the last show of the first season to watching the first show of the second. It likely played much better that way. So animosity about that show was absent from my viewing of this one.

If you watch a lot of good television, you will recognize this as one of the best. Intensely touches on the issue of race, relationships, and death. Heart-wrenching. Phenomenal, and most importantly believable acting. The episodes are sort of like a novel, you don't want to put them down.