“L.A.’s Finest” with A-list stars Gabrielle Union and Jessica Alba premiered in 2019 on Spectrum as part of its “strategy to introduce high-end original content”for its customers.
The show was such a success, that a second season was immediately ordered and premiered in Sept. 2020. In the meantime, FOX aired the season in 2020 due to its fall programming being impacted by the pandemic shutting down productions.
And now “L.A.’s Finest” is available on Netflix and judging from its No. 4 spot on the Netflix Top 10 Rankings, the Jerry Bruckeheimer production is finding a vast new audience.
“L.A.’s Finest” is a spinoff of the Bad Boys series starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence with Union reprising her role as Syd Burnett from Bad Boys II. When we last saw Syd, she was in Miami working undercover as a DEA agent and romancing Smith’s Mike Lowery and now Syd is an LAPD detective paired with new partner Nancy McKenna (Alba).
“L.A.’s Finest” follows the Bad Boys formula with shootouts, car chases and trash talking among the stars and it does it very well. There is an homage to the Bad Boys opening scenes of a jet going over the “Miami” sign at the airport with a helicopter flying just over the Hollywood sign.
The pilot episode has our heroes looking after a young boy who who happens to be the only witness to a murder committed by an enforcer for the powerful Garza drug cartel.
Along the way, we get to know the characters such as Syd having to-go coffee cups for anyone who sleeps over at her extremely high-toned condo and she also pays a visit her estranged father Joseph (Ernie Hudson). Similar to Bad Boys, the partners are complete opposites as Nancy is happily married to the newly appointed interim district attorney and has book club with her stepdaughter.
We also know that Syd likes Bubblicious while Nancy prefers Skittles.
There’s even an appearance by John Salley as Fletcher, the hacker from the Bad Boys movies who has relocated to the West Coast. Fletcher invites Syd to a Lakers game saying “I know a guy,” (in real life, Salley finished his NBA career with the Los Angeles Lakers) to which Syd responds “I’m a Heat fan and I know a guy,” (in real life, Union is married to Miami Heat legend Dwyane Wade).
More importantly, we discover that the reason Syd is no longer with the DEA involves Gabriel Knox, who left her for dead during a botched undercover operation and her link to potentially finding Knox is Knox’s business partner Ray Sherman. The plot thickens as it turns out that Ray’s brother Dante is a part of Nancy’s past.
The entire first season’s 13 episodes are now available on Netflix. Spectrum has also released the second season for its customers courtesy of its VOD and when they will be available on Netflix likely depends on if/when FOX Network decides if they want to show them.
“L.A.’s Finest” appearing in Netflix’s Top 10 most watched shows list is a good sign that it will find an entire new level of popularity similar to shows such as “Cobra Kai” when it moved over to Netflix from YouTube and was a smashing success.
