We all get busy sometimes, so in this case… mea culpa!

Don’t let that distract us from celebrating the birthday from an incredibly beautiful, talented and wonderful actress we have grown to love to hate from Southland: Ms. Emily Bergl!!

Even her toughest critics must admit, Emily has nailed it in her role on Southland as the oft-despised Tami Bryant, wife of Detective Sammy Bryant. Face it, for a woman as incredibly talented as Emily is, it takes amazing acting chops to come across on screen as clueless, naive and despicable as Tammi does – making her one of Southland’s characters that we all love to hate. That character is one that is undeniably indispensable, however, because it is her actions that lead to some of the best character development and actions on the part of Sammy throughout the first three seasons of the show.

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I believe I speak for all us fans when I say that we are thrilled by the news that Southland has been renewed by a 4th season! We may have to wait until next January to see new episodes (as the latest unconfirmed rumors indicate), but hey, at least we are getting more of our favorite show!! We have something to look forward to for the remainder of the year and much to discuss with speculations, story ideas and so on.

On a side note, thank you to everyone who signed our “Renew Southland” Petition – while ultimately it may have proven unnecessary (or maybe not? who knows!) I know that the show of support was appreciated on many levels, by many people – you’ll have to trust me on this one and leave it at that . We got over 2000 signatures on the petition (slightly less than that confirmed), with only word-of-mouth advertising for it, and for that we are very appreciative. Thankfully (and with thanks to TNT and Warner Brothers) it was not necessary for us to really push the petition into overdrive.

Sadly, the news of the renewal was marred by the tragic events in Japan earlier this month. For those of us on this site and the online Southland Fan community, this is brought all that much closer to home because of the immense and important participation in our community by our very own Hinako, aka @pinelou, who along with her family is a resident of Tokyo. Of course, our hearts go out to all of those affected by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami, but as with any disaster of this sale, knowing someone personally who has been affected by a disaster really brings it home for you, no matter how large or small.

After speaking with our website Steering Committee as well as several of the cast members of Southland, I have decided to hold a Charity Auction to help raise some funds for Japan. We may not raise millions, or even thousands, of dollars for them, but in a situation like this every penny counts. So let’s show the world what the Southland Fan community can do! (continue reading…)

We ALL Enjoy Southland

But 3D Southland? No 3D TV? Here’s How!

Okay – well, that title may have sounded like some kind of cheesy marketing scheme, but it’s not. No, really, it’s not. (Insert smiley face smiley here with your imagination)

I used to use 3D glasses on my computer long before the technology came out, and with Windows Vista, and DVI inputs on monitors, I thought the technology went way of the Dodo, for there seemed to be no way to get it working in Windows Vista again. That is until my companies that I deal with for 3D Viewing pleasure got around to updating it for us all to marvel at the 3D Universe again. Not only with games, with movies as well. You know what? That means that with 2D-3D conversion on the fly while watching, you can enjoy all your favorite SouthLAnd episodes in 3D too. (continue reading…)

Our regular Thursday night chat turned into a treat for fans when cast member Shawn Hatosy (Sammy) joined us for a Q&A chat. We went into moderator mode so as not to overwhelm Shawn with the nearly 175 questions that were submitted. Shortly after Shawn left, C Thomas Howell (Dewey) stopped by also. We will be posting that transcript in the next couple of days.

Make sure to join us every Thursday at 9:00 pm Eastern time for our weekly chat. We never know who will stop by to join us.

Below is a transcript and there are a couple of things you should know.

You will see the name of the person/chatter. The chatter’s name will have a letter in parenthesis after it, indicating that it is a Comment ( C ), Question ( Q ), or just a Post (P) to the chat room. If it’s a comment or question, then Shawn (“shawnyhats”) will have an Answer (A) following.

jbeaton(Q) Where was the scene filmed where the gang member had to dig the hole?

shawnyhats(A) Lancaster — way out in the middle of nowhere –the actor who played the banger was incredible

maryellen(Q) Shawn, is there going to be repercussions for Sammy for what he did to the banger?

shawnyhats(A) there might be more to this story — that’s all I’ll say

Kathryn(Q) What has been your favorite scene to shoot this season?

shawnyhats(A) All the scenes with Nate are memorable. I miss that guy — saw him last night at the wrap party (continue reading…)

By Karen Davidson and facilitated by Deb Craig

When we requested an interview, Allison graciously agreed.  Questions were submitted to her; then she wrote her responses and sent them back.   No changes have been made to her responses.

How did you end up directing an episode of SouthLAnd?

My manager Ragna Nervik knew about “Southland” and suggested me to Andrew Stern in John Wells office.  Andrew and I met and we really got along great.  Then I met with Chris Chulack, and he and I had such a great meeting talking about Los Angeles, and the neighborhoods and the life here that is often portrayed on TV and in movies really wrong.    Southland gets it RIGHT.  I also loved how Chris described the way the production is run and how it shoots.  There is a brilliant philosophy behind the style of Southland, and this is what gives us fans that feeling of being right there with the characters.  It’s the way I also shoot my movies.   In fact, I’ve even said, Chris is even more of a querrilla filmmaker than me!  I knew I was going to learn a lot from him.

So I was over-joyed when they offered me an episode.   Believe it or not I was actually supposed to direct Episode 7 of the first season of Southland on NBC!  But as all you Southies know, there was no episode 7 of the first season!  They were canceled before I could direct my episode which Cheo had written, which would have been awesome. (Cheo and I are homies, we met online from being mutual admirers — haa haa:  I loved “Notorious” and he loved “Mi Vida Loca”.  We finally met in person on Southland!)

As disappointing as it was when the show was canceled, I was so happy to be offered an episode again for season 3, and to finally get my Southland break!  And I absolutely loved Jonathan’s script for “Sideways”.  It was so perfect for me. (continue reading…)