The Drop: A Snowfall Saga Review

The Drop: A Snowfall Saga is off to a promising start with its authentic, evocative portrait of the Gangsta Rap Era, despite a jumbled narrative structure.

Though critics were only given the first five episodes to screen, it’s clear that The Drop is well worth the wait. Gail Bean and Isaiah John give solid lead performances as OG series survivors Wanda Bell and Leon Simmons, and the show excels on a masterful level at recreating the 90s hip-hop tone. It’s impressively authentic and evocative in its portrait of the Gangsta Rap era, bringing with it the same passion and detailed attention to character development and evolution as its predecessor.

We start out in 1990, following Leon and Wanda in their current lives. The couple is no longer together but remain close, as they are bonded by their chaotic past and a shared present trauma. As a reformed drug dealer, Leon is still working at his free legal clinic. As a recovering crack addict, Wanda works at a used car dealership while also interning as an assistant for a music executive at the struggling Macroscope Records label. She knows that if the label is to survive, it must break into and embrace hip hop—not a far-fetched idea since Straight Outta Compton came out two years earlier.

As Wanda rifles through demo tapes, she stumbles across street poet and gangbanger Artillery (real-life rapper Simmie “Buddy” Sims III), whose newest underground single about a cop killed in the line of duty has sparked major beef throughout the city. She knows if she can pair him with her 19-year-old cousin Lamar (Asante Blackk, of When They See Us), who is a musical savant and budding producer, the duo will create the kind of magic needed to sustain and expand Macroscope, and she’s right. However, connecting the two artists proves difficult, as obstacles await in literally every direction and create the kind of frustration and tension akin to a pressure cooker – at some point, the lid is going to blow.

Helping drive this tension is the fact that the narrative’s backdrop is rooted in the constantly evolving territorial dangers of neighborhood politics and violent street gangs, like the Crips and the Bloods… or, for my Reservation Dogs fans out there, the Blips and the Cruds. While creator Malcolm Spellman’s series is not a gangster narrative in the traditional sense, it does implement gangster elements like drive-by shootings, gang wars, and street enforcement as powerful impacts on the everyday lives and aspirations of The Drop’s characters.

I’d like to say that Wanda and Leon are the only connective tissue between the two series, but they aren’t. Fans can also expect that raw focus on real people hustling in their own ways for their own piece of the American dream that Snowfall so effortlessly captured. An immersive nostalgic setting provides us with those familiar thematic questions of family, survival, and legacy. Furthermore, The Drop’s Los Angeles setting places the emergence of the West Coast rap scene as its own character almost, giving it its own active, driving narrative force as opposed to making it the background for an unfolding story. That is quite impressive. The drug game functioned the same way in Snowfall.

All that said, the season’s narrative structure feels a bit uneven. There’s a lot going on, with multiple crowded ensembles, making it difficult for any of our subplots to unfold in a clear, direct manner. And while we’re introduced to key characters early on, after five episodes, we still know very little about them, short of what we learn in episode five about the legacy of Lamar and his brother James (Peyton Alex Smith, of All American: Homecoming).

At times, storylines do feel jumbled and rushed, but this could just be the result of showrunners trying to establish the multi-layered foundation that is slowly unfolding beneath our subplots. Then again, what is lacking in cohesion now could be the basis of what will be made up for in ambition. What I did find interesting was The Drop’s devotion to an entire flashback episode pertaining to Lamar and James, which possibly reveals an ill-fated, shared genetic legacy.

While The Drop is entertaining and intriguing enough to reel you in, it’s clear that Wanda and Lamar are carrying the show. If we can’t have Franklin Saint, Lamar Kinsey is the next best thing. He’s a genius, and for being so young, he is staunchly equipped with genuine, realistic levels of intelligence, vision, and logic. He’s looking for a way to escape the limitations surrounding him, much like Saint was. What started as an opportunity became something Franklin built into a burgeoning, powerful drug organization alongside his family and friends. Where Lamar and Franklin differ, though, is on money. Lamar’s focus is on breaking free of family constraints and making music that reaches people, not the money it has the potential to bring in.

Wanda’s journey continues to be of great interest. She has clawed her way out of the hell of a crack addiction and continues working to make something of herself, even in the face of constant disrespect and shame. She is the example of how one past mistake will follow you around and work against you to consume your life, despite your efforts. She was lucky enough to make it out of the crack epidemic alive. Why isn’t that enough for the people around her?

No matter how hard she works or which professional personas she adopts, she’ll always be Crackhead Wanda, as is evidenced very early on in the season. It’s a heartbreaking moment to witness, and Wanda encounters it over and over again, always with her head held high. She’s a rockstar and no one is seeing it. For me, her story functions as a metaphor for the very human struggle of working to evolve past former mistakes in the face of a world that refuses to let the past be the past.

Overall, The Drop: A Snowfall Saga promises to be another FX gem that you won’t want to miss. Its authenticity goes a long way in carrying this story, and given that we’re just stepping into the 90s, I dare say we can expect to see the key moments of mayhem that emerged as a result of socio-economic tensions. If you’re wondering whether to stream it or skip it, you’re absolutely going to want to stream it.

The first two episodes of The Drop: A Snowfall Saga are now available to watch on Hulu and FX in the U.S., and on Disney+ in the U.K. and Ireland, Canada, and more countries. The remaining episodes will be released weekly, on Wednesdays, with the finale airing on October 27.