The opening episode of FX’s summer drama Snowfall ends with a dream-like rendition of the song “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” which includes the line, “I’m just a soul whose intentions are good.”
The producers could offer a million-dollar prize to the viewer who finds anyone with good intentions here, and it wouldn’t cost them a dime. Or a dime bag.
That doesn’t make Snowfall, which premieres Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET, a bad show.
For one thing, it’s hardly surprising that a drama about the birth of crack cocaine would feature a whole lot of people you wouldn’t want dating your son or daughter.
The unsubtly named Franklin Saint (Damson Idris, top) comes about as close as anyone to having a shred of traditional morality, though you have to pay attention early because he loses it much of it fast.
Franklin explains to his buddy Jerome (Amin Joseph), with whom he deals weed to awful rich white people, that he gave the system a real shot. He applied himself in school, worked at a convenience store, tried to present himself well.
After several years he concluded the system was “rigged,” that he would never get a fair shot. So when he lucks into an opportunity to move up from small-time weed dealing into the big time of cocaine, he makes an instant decision to seize it.
At the same time, in another part of Los Angeles, CIA operative Teddy McDonald (Carter Hudson) stumbles into a situation where The Agency can partner up with some cocaine dealers itself.
And why would The Agency do that?
Simple. The piles of money the CIA could reap from that partnership would enable it to keep funding the Nicaraguan Contras, a rebel force trying to overthrow the left-wing Nicaraguan government.
Congress had rudely cut off the funding for that enterprise, so Teddy starts thinking maybe this would be a nice clean end run around the problem.
Sadly, as anyone who remembers the real-life Iran-Contra drama of the 1980s can attest, this scenario isn’t nearly as fantastical as one might prefer to believe.
In any case, Snowfall brings in other characters and dramas as well. It particularly focuses on Gustavo Zapata (Sergio Peris-Mancheta), a professional wrestler who wants into the crime game, and Lucia Villanueva (Emily Rios), heiress of a Mexican crime family.
With a cast like this, we aren’t looking at Little House on the Prairie, and sure enough, Snowfall quickly establishes itself as violent, menacing and downright nasty.
The language gets rough, and the sex gets loose, though that seems mainly to help set the tone for a world in which rewards are high and punishment swift.
It’s a world in which Jerome looks like a voice of wisdom when he tells Franklin that the money you can make from cocaine comes with too high a price.
Created by John Singleton with Eric Amadio and Dave Andron, Snowfall is a good-looking production.
It gets its music from turntables and boomboxes, and it reminds us that South Central Los Angeles, for all its notoriety, has a lot of tree-lined streets and perfectly decent houses with front yards.
It also reminds us that crack cocaine was not so much a brand new problem as the consequence of several larger and longer-simmering problems.
Accordingly, we see how someone like Franklin, Zapata or Lucia gets to where they are.
Still, Snowfall lays out a world in which much feels dirty and little feels admirable. It’s another American underside that lends itself to no quick fixes.