TV Reviews : ‘Flashpoint’: A Look at Where L.A. Riots Started

“Flashpoint”--an hourlong program that returns viewers to the intersection of Florence and Normandie, the April 29 “flash point” for the Los Angeles riots--has been deemed important enough by KCOP-TV Channel 13 to merit preempting its regularly scheduled 10 p.m. newscast tonight.

It is notable in that it is the first time a local station other than KCET-TV Channel 28 has attempted a serious examination in a special, prime-time broadcast of the trauma inflicted on the neighborhood and on Los Angeles.

It is not notable viewing, however. Despite its good intentions, “Flashpoint” does not have a solid focus, nor does it come close to fulfilling its stated mission to take a “journey to find out what it’s like to live, grow up and even die in this now-famous community.”

Hosted and reported by KCOP’s Bryan Jenkins, and written by Jenkins and producer Le Roy Hudson, “Flashpoint” represents five months of research and taping. The main thrust is to let community members speak for themselves. The lineup is predictable--the minister, the struggling entrepreneur, gangbangers, a policeman--and the turf covered is familiar stuff.

And, in a distortion of the multiracial character of the riots, the choices are deliberately slanted to get only “the African-American perception,” as Jenkins bluntly puts it at the start of the hour (there is one mention of the Latino presence in the area).

In an odd way, “Flashpoint’s” creators seem to have internalized some of the negative image of “the other” that their program is attempting to overcome. A peculiar “visit to a strange planet” tone works against one of the central messages of its participants: that the members of this community are no different than anyone else, that we all share a common humanity.