Hap and Leonard’s third season — despite taking place in the 80s, and the novel on which it’s based being written in the 90s — turned out to be surprisingly and terribly relevant to current events. As Hap (James Purefoy) and Leonard (Michael K. Williams) ventured to and from Grovetown in search of Florida (Tiffany Mack) and the truth of what happened there, the show gave us a raw and often horrifying view of racism and hate. Hap and Leonard has always succeeded because of its authenticity, whether that means the study of its East Texas location, the brotherhood between its leads, or in holding a mirror up to society. And yet, as crazy as Hap and Leonard can also sometimes be, Season 3 never felt like it was going overboard, especially because this story was so specifically grounded in villains who felt real to life. There was nothing extraordinary about Truman Brown (Pat Healy) and his cronies, or the evil that persisted in Grovetown. They are a kind of everyday evil. As Hanson (Cranston Johnson) is reminded, they’re human — even if they don’t act like it.
The Season 3 finale brought several important storylines to a close (in a different enough way from the book that readers of the novel will also find some surprising twists), including mending the break between Leonard and Hap after the alley, and Florida’s fate. When I spoke with executive producer John Wirth from the set of Hap and Leonard last fall (on the day they were shooting the very end of the brawl in the alley, so yeah, it was intense), he gave some additional insights into these final two episodes, and how things ended up as they did.
The Brawl
One of the most intense sequences of the season was just before the finale, when Hap and Leonard take on Truman and his boys in Maude’s diner, and seem to prevail … only for a crowd to gather and (off-screen) beat the two men from LaBourde within an inch of their lives. But one of the most affecting moments was just before that, when we see Louis Gossett, Jr.'s Bacon confront Truman in an unexpected way — one that would have a call-back in the final episode of the season. Wirth said,
“There’s a moment where Truman Brown says to Bacon, ‘Boy you better get over here right now, or you're gonna be on the wrong side. And you've got five seconds.’ And it just is at the last second. I didn't really think about it. I just wrote, Bacon says, ‘One, two, three, four, five.’ And he doesn't move. And that moment became amazing, on film. And Michael [K. Williams] was just blown away by it. And Lou [Gossett, Jr], the way Lou did it, was incredible. He gave more meaning to those five words than you could possibly imagine anybody uttering, ‘One, two, three, four, five.’ But the way he said it, there was so much […] it was really an amazing moment."
Of course, Truman’s use of “boy” when talking to Bacon is what ultimately (and satisfyingly) got him killed by the older man who had enough. It was one of the show’s most triumphant and satisfying moments.
Hap and Leonard Patch Things Up
A big question for fans of the show early in the season was what was up with Hap and Leonard being so distant with one another? Leonard is having flashbacks and talking to his Vietnam self, and Hap and making his own bullets, but until the alley scene, we aren’t sure why.
“I think one of the hallmarks of the show, what makes the show distinctive, and different from other buddy shows on television, is the nature of the relationship between the two men,” Wirth told me.
“We really examine and challenge that relationship this year. The moment in this alley […] There's that thing of, ‘One of us could be killed today. I hope it's not you, and I hope it's not me. But if it has to be one of us, I think it's better if it's you.’ And that's the hard truth. The human truth. And so we explore that moment in this alley […] that's the break that happens. They see it in one another, and they acknowledge it, but they don't want to acknowledge after the fact that they saw that, that that moment happened between them, that they're aware of it. And so they just split.”
Hap admits as much to Charlie (Douglas M. Griffin), in an incredibly emotional scene. Hap knows it, Leonard knows it, but as Charlie counsels, they need to get past it. And in typical Hap and Leonard fashion, they do so with a quick “We good?” The honest conversation they have afterwards at Leonard’s house (after Leonard thanks Hap for putting his pecker back in his pants for him, of course) is not about them and their relationship and that moment, but about the larger context of the Grovetown beatdown. And that they can take action against, which unites them. As Wirth explained,
“There was quite a lot of discussion in the writer's room, because I felt that that moment was a bifurcation of dramatic intent. Why do they go back to Grovetown? Are they going back to Grovetown to pick up the pieces of their shattered manhood, and put them back together and get back up on the horse like Humpty Dumpty? Or are they going back because they still haven't found Florida? And they're still not acknowledging that they're 100% sure she's dead. And I felt like that really muddied their intention, and I kept trying to get it to be one clear thing, and not two muddy things. It was a challenge. I think we got to the place where we were able to have them state very clearly, ‘There is this, and then there is that. And we're gonna deal with this and that, and then we're gonna go.’ So it all came together.”
Florida and the Flood
Even though there was a lot of foreshadowing about the coming flood (especially with that devil frog hopping around), the timing of it may have been a surprise. In the book, the flood does show up right at the end and essentially wipes out all of Grovetown. And yet, even though the flood may have killed some of the bad guys on its own, it was important for that big showdown to have happened in the junk yard as it did. For Bacon to kill Truman and Sneed to kill Reynolds was perfect -- it was justice in a season where justice was hard to find.
But scenes that contain so much rain and water are notoriously difficult to shoot. Wirth revealed that, when it comes to such a massive thing as a floor, “It's just really not possible to shoot on our budget, with our timeframe. So it's raining like hell, there's the big showdown in the junkyard, just like in the book, and we shot that yesterday, and it was miserable for them. They were wet and cold all day long. But as Lou Gossett says, ‘Beats working.’”
With only six episodes to work with each season, it makes sense to cut to scenes like the aftermath in the alley, or the aftermath of the flood. That last tracking shot was also a powerful one, as we saw what ultimately happened to each of the characters after the water overtook them. But nothing was more shocking than to see that Florida didn’t make it out. It’s a terrible twist to what just seemed like a heroic and happy moment when she was found alive.
“Tiffany Mack has been so good this season,” Wirth said. “It's really heartbreaking, as a writer, when you have this actor that has really embodied this character and is really doing such amazing work and you're saying goodbye to that.”
Wirth added that there was a lot of discussion among the writers about how the end this season. Whereas last year, even after all of that darkness, the show ended with Hap and Leonard in the red truck chatting (“It's like Lone Ranger and Tonto, together again,” Wirth said), this year they wanted to do something different, especially given the weight of Florida’s death.
“We were sitting around, and actually Pam Veasey said, ‘Is that the last image we want to see on the show? A black woman, wound up in a tree, dead?’ So then we started talking, and I think Jim Mickle came up with this idea of, 'Why don't we do an after-beat?' So we fade up, and there are Hap and Florida, and they're dancing across the surface of the lake […] We built a platform that is a couple inches below the surface of the water, on a lake nearby, and we're gonna put them on it, and have them just dancing on this lake. It’s just gonna be a beautiful moment between those two characters. And that's what we'll go out on.”
It was beautiful, and sad, and haunting, and yet somehow hopeful. Whether or not Hap and Leonard returns next season (and I very much hope that it does), that final scene with the voiceover saying that people may die, but love never does, is a fitting finale for a show that never shied away from that love as well as hard truths, approaching them -- as always -- with compassion, authenticity, and style.
