The story centers around Taylor Blaine, a boy that accuses basketball players from an elite private school of drugging and assaulting him. Taylor is played by one of my favorite young actors, Canadian born Connor Jessup, who is most famous for his role as Ben Mason in Falling Skies. The fact that his acting was good in the aforementioned campy sci-fi, bodes extremely well for his work on American Crime.
In the second episode, the director, John Ridley, keeps the camera focused on Taylor’s face through the entire hospital scene where a doctor collects evidence for the rape kit. It was extremely powerful hearing the purposefully unemotional doctor’s voice, while watching Taylor completely fall apart.
https://youtu.be/jDIuiAO2s4E
The two captains of the basketball team, Kevin and Eric, quickly become the lead suspects. Terri LaCroix, Kevin’s mom, is the kind of character that will make your blood boil. She is just a straight up prejudiced bigot. She’s scary, you guys.
Kevin, for all intents and purposes, seems like an average, entitled, Momma’s boy, jock. The show started out with him being in what seemed like a genuine relationship with a girl named Val; but when Momma Bear puts a kabash on that, he quickly moves on to another love sex interest. This one he gropes in public and, when asked to stop, accuses her of being a tease and a slut. He seems like the kind of guy that wouldn’t threaten his machismo by raping Taylor, but he also feels very … repressed.
The other captain is Eric. He’s only been seen in a handful of scenes so far, but man are they damning. One, he’s a closeted homosexual. That little tidbit was revealed at the end of the second episode when he shares a random hookup with an older guy in a car. Two, he’s been identified as being alone with Taylor for an unknown amount of time by the only eye witness.
But while Kevin mostly conveys an aloof coolness, Eric seems genuinely shaken. I feel like there’s something more between Eric and Taylor. At the very beginning of the first episode, Taylor is thumbing through Instagram and hesitates on one of Eric’s pictures long enough to look up and watch him at basketball practice. There’s something there that both boys are hiding.
Wrapped up in all of this is the school’s principal, Leslie Graham. This character is awful. Not in the acting sense, because Felicity Huffman is superb, but in the way that she’s everything horrible about political correctness. The character is obsessed with people’s perception of her and the school. She is aggravatingly calm in front of Taylor’s panicked mom and compulsively “helpful” to everyone else. I want to slap her on the face so bad.
My Verdict:
I usually stay away from these sorts of shows, because they are too real. I simply don’t like seeing horrible things happen to kids. Having said that, I think everyone needs to watch this series. It deals with really sensitive topics and just like many of the characters, I’m sure there are people out there who think it’s impossible for a boy to be raped by his peers.
The acting is fantastic on all levels – I didn’t even get a chance to commend actress Lili Taylor on her role as Taylor’s mom or André 3000 as Kevin’s henpecked father – and the direction by John Ridley is outstanding.
Go watch this. It will make you so mad it hurts. American Crime airs on Wednesdays at 10|9c on ABC.
