There’s a moment early in the second episode of Gang Related that gets at the much better version of the show that could have been. Protagonist Ryan Lopez (Ramon Rodriguez) gets out of the shower to find both of his cellphones buzzing on his table. His official phone rings with a call from his boss over at the Gang Task Force, Sam Chapel (Terry O’Quinn). His secret phone carries a signal from his father figure, whom he’s truly loyal to: the gang leader Javier Acosta (Cliff Curtis). The two vibrate next to each other for a moment, Ryan trying to decide which to answer. It’s a neat little image that encapsulates a version of the show that exists less and less the further along it goes.
In the eyes of creator Chris Morgan (screenwriter for much of the Fast & Furious franchise), Ryan’s dilemma is less that the character feels genuinely torn between two worlds—Rodriguez isn’t good enough at the kind of soulful frustration the character would require to allow for that—but because the two men he’s caught between are both versions of himself he might like to be one day. As Chapel, O’Quinn mostly sleepwalks, but there’s enough of the gruff authority he brings to every part to show why Ryan seems occasionally swayed from feeding information to Acosta—which is his purported reason for joining the LAPD. And as Acosta, Curtis creates the show’s most impeccably nuanced character—a family man prone to violence at the drop of a hat. Someone who can go from loving to terrifying in a matter of seconds; someone who seems genuinely shaken by the life he’s built for himself. It’s also nice to see a show where only one regular—O’Quinn—is a white dude, where the writers seem at least interested in the lives of other American subcultures. Yet as the show’s first four episodes rattle on, the nuance starts to leech out of the program, and it turns into just another cop show with a twist.