Stream It or Skip It: ‘Snowfall’ Season 5 on FX And Hulu, Where the ‘80s Coke Craze Hits Hard in Its Fifth Season

As Snowfall returns to streaming on FX and Hulu for a fifth season, it’s 1986 in the City of Angels. Freed from his cane act, with a new flame by his side, and still doing big numbers in the drug business, youthful drug kingpin Franklin Saint is aiming to diversify his ill gotten gains into legit real estate property. His position of power has been secured. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t problems…

SNOWFALL SEASON 5: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: University of Maryland, June 19th, 1986. 5:58am. A group of college students are talking basketball and passing around a plate of cocaine. “He plays the three. Know who else on the Celtics plays the three? The Hick from French Lick, aka the best small forward of all time.” Boston has just drafted Len Bias number 2 overall in the 1986 draft. Bias does another line, has a massive heart attack, and dies.

The Gist: Season five of Snowfall begins in the air. Franklin Saint (Damson Idris) is at the controls of his private plane, scoping out beachfront property north of LA. He has plans for a compound, a place to solidify his legacy. New girlfriend Veronique (Devyn Tyler, Clarice) is pregnant with their child, and they’ve pledged that their future together will be built legitimately. But before any of that can happen, there’s the business of drug slinging to do. Frank and his female enforcers Black Diamond and Dallas pay a visit to CIA spook Grady Williamson, Teddy McDonald’s replacement who has a penchant for partying, and they haggle over the price point on a key of coke. The marketplace has become more volatile. Everybody’s into cocaine — even blue chip draft picks — and cheaper product from Mexico is flooding into Los Angeles. Franklin and his partners Louie (Angela Lewis) and Jerome (Amin Joseph) need a lower rate at wholesale in order to stay coke competitive.

Out in the Valley, Whiteboy Rob (Taylor Kowalski) is also partying, but it goes bad when his hothead rich kid buddy Thad brazenly shoots somebody. It’ll be up to Franklin to find Thad and contain him before the cops do, because Rob gets his blow from the Saint crew. Rob is also using again, and friends since high school or not, that makes him another liability for Franklin.

It’s nice to be on top, to be a boss, to be moneyed up and eyeing a new chapter in your life with the benefit of straight world insulation. But Franklin is still on the bend, and the drug business is getting more dicey even as demand for cocaine is skyrocketing. A dirty cop is hanging around at Louie and Jerome’s club asking them to give up a name, someone “to give to my bosses, get ‘em off my back.” Leon (Isaiah John) is breaking the feet of his street-level soldiers as a show of force. Franklin’s connection to the CIA is a tenuous dark secret. And Veronique’s pregnancy has escalated their relationship, even as she’s expecting him to extricate himself from his life of crime. It’s good to be king, but nobody said it was gonna be easy.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Snowfall shares its large ensemble cast, storyline tectonics, and illicit subject matter with Narcos, Netflix’s long-running crime drama. The Starz series Power, meanwhile, also featured a drug kingpin with designs on getting out.

Our Take: Snowfall has always excelled at scene setting, and that’s immediately apparent as season five begins, using the high profile death of Len Bias as a frame for the mainstreaming of cocaine use that defined the middle 1980s. Music cues like “Notorious” by Duran Duran, “Just Want to Love Ya” by B & the Family, and “I Can’t Wait” from Nu Shooz highlight their set pieces well, and Franklin’s gorgeous, gargantuan silver Cadillac Fleetwood is so prominent and prominently cool, it might as well be named as a cast member. And lest we forget how different this era was for the dealing and doing of drugs, notice the ever present pagers and rotary phones. Wanda (Gail Bean) is even working as a phone sex operator.

The dealer with a plan for one last play before he goes straight is all too common in movies and TV. But Snowfall makes it work because every facet of the action is covered with a terrifically talented cast. Damson Idris, as Franklin, is utterly captivating. But there’s strong work all around, from Angela Lewis and Amin Joseph exploring the quiet romance at the heart of Louie and Roman’s relationship, to DeRay Davis lending a jaded yeoman’s air to Peaches, the Vietnam veteran and Franklin’s personal security detail.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: Franklin has taken Veronique to the ocean, and the stretch of beachside property where he wants to build a compound. “But I need to know I have your loyalty, V.” The Michael Corleone vibes bounce off the breakers.

Sleeper Star: Taylor Kowalski puts a ton of offhanded charm into Rob, a guy who might’ve been your brother’s best friend or your college roommate if he wasn’t a drug dealer, crack cocaine abuser, and casual accessory to murder.

Most Pilot-y Line: “A ballplayer OD’s in Maryland and shit starts to roll downhill in LA.” The city streets are an incubator for the cocaine hunger of America in the ‘80’s.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Snowfall is full of great acting from top to bottom, with family politics, big money crime, violent disputes, and power shifting intrigue to spare.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges