Two Series Drive Home Essence of L.A.: Freeways

Welcome to L.A.

The movie industry’s dark ambitions and banal glibness coincide in Nathanael West’s “The Day of the Locust.” And in “Farewell, My Lovely,” Raymond Chandler has Philip Marlowe search for two-timing Velma in “a dried-out brown house with a dried-out lawn in front of it,” before sending him to swankier digs “hanging by their teeth and eyebrows to a spur of mountain and looking as if a good sneeze would drop them down among the box lunches on the beach.”

That was 60 years ago. How should L.A. be defined today?

Two of this season’s new series--the ABC comedy “It’s like, you know . . .” and the improved CBS drama “L.A. Doctors”--haven’t been shy about saying.

That’s especially true in tonight’s season finale of “L.A. Doctors,” whose Southland ambience is uncomfortably vivid in a tingly, twisty, distinctively fine hour that--if good work were the sole measure--would automatically earn this series the renewal it deserves but may not get because of low ratings.

It’s worth watching, even if you’re a first-time viewer.

On the comedy front, L.A. spent six weeks as the favorite pin cushion of “It’s like, you know . . . “ during a faintly amusing trial run that ended Wednesday with an episode whose deep affection for this city was expressed by Arthur, Chris Eigeman’s homesick New Yorker stranded here while writing his book, “Living in L.A.: How Can You Stomach It?”

Arthur: “I talked to a friend of mine in New York City last night, and told him I saw Heather Locklear in Brentwood. He told me he saw Norman Mailer in Gramercy Park. It does sort of sum up both cities.”

And confirms for “Melrose Place” fans what empty lives New Yorkers lead.

It’s L.A. life that Arthur had found to be “crap”--even before arriving here--and his views of the city were capsulized in a reply last week to a friend who wondered: “What crime gets you one night in jail in L.A.?” Arthur: “Reading a book.”

“It’s like, you know . . .” was a one-lane gridlock of such L.A. stereotypes--citywide vacuousness and beauty worship and so on--that fit the mythic L.A. of complete kookydom and movie star maps viewed from afar by those with no knowledge of the area’s rich and fascinating cultural history nor appreciation of its gorgeous (though highly vulnerable) topography.

Yet all of this is just foreplay for what L.A. was really all about in the minds of those blathering box lunches Arthur and his friends, Robbie (Steven Eckholdt), Lauren (A.J. Langer), Shrug (Evan Handler) and Jennifer Grey (played by Jennifer Grey).

Freeways.

But not just freeways, on which Joan Didion says L.A. residents gather en masse in something of an act of communion.

Instead, freeways whizzing with fugitive motorists being chased by cops, as telecast live locally and beamed across the land, establishing L.A. in the eyes of the multitudes as some sort of human video game.

“It’s like, you know . . .” began its ABC run by immersing its characters in a televised chase, and ended by dwelling on one, with Shrug visiting his jailed motorist friend, Hilo (Grant Heslov), and just dying to learn: “Why did you stay on the 101 east instead of taking the 110 Harbor Freeway south?”

Hilo: “What’s wrong with the 101 east?”

Shrug: “It’s unheard of to take the 101 when you’re being chased.”

Yes, freeways.

Who would have guessed that two series as different as “It’s like, you know . . .” and “L.A. Doctors” would collide head-on at this crossroads.

It was only last week that Suzanne (Dierdre) O’Connell), a medical assistant in the office of doctors Roger Cattan (Ken Olin), Tim Lonner (Matt Craven), Evan Newman (Rick Roberts) and Sarah Church (Sheryl Lee), learned that she had hepatitis. Arguably even more troubling, her car broke down “in the middle of the No. 3 lane on the Ventura Freeway.”

Meanwhile, it’s on a freeway (perhaps an overpass) where “L.A. Doctors” bows out so stunningly tonight in an hour directed by Olin and written by Michelle Ashford and Tim Kring.

It begins routinely, with Evan and Sarah (who are having a secret affair) in bed in front of a morning TV news report about fires devastating Malibu. Soon they and the other two doctors are in their van en route to a medical conference in Palm Springs.

Then comes a massive chain-reaction accident involving them, a paramedic van, a school bus and a spate of other vehicles, turning the freeway into a tangle of gnarled metal and putting in extreme peril a heart patient and Sarah, who is trapped behind the wheel. Making matters worse, there’s a whiff of gasoline in the air, and emergency help is nowhere near because everyone is preoccupied with the Malibu fires.

It could have been hokey, but isn’t. Instead, this is a suspenseful, deeply emotional, well-acted hour that neither panders nor compromises.

The plot basics could have worked anywhere, this episode vaguely recalling another terrific story on NBC’s “Homicide: Life on the Street” about a man whose life drains from him as rescue workers try to free his crushed lower torso from beneath a subway car.

But that was Baltimore, and this is L.A., land of freeway mayhem, fires, funny bunnies and many things no one will see on TV but you’ll know about because you live here.

* “L.A. Doctors” airs its finale at 10 tonight on CBS. “It’s like, you know . . .” finished its season last week.