Going Out Sad: Snowfall's Final Season

By now, you’ve probably seen, or seen spoilers to the series finale of John Singleton’s Snowfall. This epic crime drama took audiences on a ride for 6 seasons, following the protagonist Franklin Saint, and his family as they became entrenched into the 1980’s Los Angeles crack game. Over the course of six seasons Franklin, based loosely off of the real Freeway Rick Ross, evolved into a $70-million drug kingpin. But his come up was not without major costs; and audiences saw the price he paid in the final season.

I think of Snowfall in two eras; pre John Singleton passing, and post mortem. When the late great filmmaker was alive, I could feel his influence on the show, depicting vintage Los Angeles with the authenticity that only someone who was there could re-create. The story had soul, and I felt like I was watching my dad who grew up in the same 1980s Los Angeles depicted in the series. I could feel the shift after John transitioned, but one thing the series did preserve is the gritty depiction of the realities of Los Angeles street life.

With every season, the heat rose, and Franklin fvcked around and found out! He was no longer the entrepreneurial around-the-way kid who stumbled into the game, he was a cold-hearted king pin whose greed, and narcissism drove him, and everyone around him to a point of no return. Whether it was Wanda and Melanie going from the girls next door to crack fiends, Teddy going from the twice-removed plug to public enemy #1, Jerome and Louis going from parental figures, to Franklin’s literal opps, or Leon going from most likely to crash out, to soul-survivor. No stone was unturned, no arc unexplored, no soul unscathed.

The series finale “The Struggle,” depicts the agonizing fall out after Cissy kills Teddy, and the possibility of Franklin recouping any of this $73 MM empire. It’s all downhill from there, and he spirals into a tirade that causes him to sell or lose all his properties, run away his pregnant girlfriend Veronique, burn all his bridges, and wilt into a shell of himself over the course of 5 years. The notoriously sober Franklin begins drinking to cope, and resorts to thieving and murder to salvage some semblance of his past fortune and dignity. After killing an innocent locksmith in his last ditch effort to recover his stolen money from Peaches, he ironically managed to recover $12,000; the same price as his first brick. By the end of it, Franklin is an alcoholic bum living in the Cissy’s house, and evading the police for unpaid property taxes. In the final scenes of the series finale, the house is repossessed, and he is left wandering the streets of his neighborhood, an image reminiscent of his alcoholic father. It. was. brutal.

While it may be one of the most depressing endings I’ve ever seen on television, I can’t say it wasn’t a realistic. In real life, the crack epidemic decimated the Black community; sending many to the grave, and more to the penitentiary. It destroyed users, families, and communities for generations to come, and I can’t say someone who was a major player in that destructive cycle deserved a happy ending. I loved how the finale honored John Singleton, depicting a film crew shooting Boyz n the Hood, with a young Singleton directing in the background as Franklin and Leon walk the neighborhood. It’s not only a nod to John’s legacy, but also an acknowledgement of how Franklin’s world manifested the conditions explored in the Oscar nominated film Boyz n the Hood.

The finale did leave us with some glimmers of hope. We learn Oso was able to escape to a new life, and his family is safe, Louis though on the run, is still alive, and Leon against all odds, is a stable well-adjusted citizen, showing viewers that ain’t nothing wrong with a righteous man. As much as audiences wanted to see Franklin get the vindication he so desperately sought, his dramatic fall from grace might’ve been the sobering reality some needed to see. Maybe fewer people would play with fire ,if they knew how badly they could get burned.

Until Next Time…

Stay Dangerous.

- XoXo DotCom