Okay, "Southland" people, give: What's the deal with the attractive young naked man sleeping in Officer Cooper's bed?

Update below: About that fourth season for Southland

"Meet John Cooper, a 20-year veteran and training police officer in the gripping drama Southland," says the caption for this video clip on the TNT website. So here's Cooper (Michael Cudlitz) mostly with his over-age trainee Ben Sherman (Ben McKenzie). The question, though, is: What the heck was Officer Cooper doing with an attractive young naked man in his bed? No, no, I can make an educated guess as to what he does with the attractive young naked man, at least when his back isn't killing him. What does anybody do with an attractive young naked man in their bed? I just want to know, you know, what the heck Cooper was doing having a, you know, attractive young naked man sleeping in his bed.

by Ken

I figured it would be the question all of America was talking about for days if not weeks after that episode of Southland aired. Probably I don't listen in the right places (I expect if I went looking I'd find a fair amount of chatter online), but I haven't heard anybody else going, "What the fuck??? What's the deal with the attractive young naked man sleeping in Cooper's bed?"

It was the middle of the night, and we could see in a closeup of gruff veteran cop John Cooper in bed that his back was killing him worse than usual and he couldn't sleep any which way. Roger that. And then he got out of bed, presumably with the aim of "medicating" himself, which he's been doing more and more, and more and more alarmingly. Only as the camera pulled back, the bare back we saw told us that he wasn't alone in the bed, which was kind of surprising already, since we think of Officer Cooper as kind of a loner, and I certainly don't recall any glimmerings in the show's three seasons of him having any kind of private life beyond a certain lingering cordiality with his ex-wife. And finally the camera revealed that the naked person asleep in the bed was of the male persuasion!

I guess our John went on to "medicate" himself as expected. I seem to recall us moving into the bathroom, while my mind was still wrapped up in the bedroom, and the attractive young naked man in his bed, who gave every evidence of belonging there. And while I'm not the world's most fastidiously attentive televiewer, I didn't catch any further reference in the episode. To the attractive young naked man, that is. There was plenty of further reference to John's near-crippling back trouble, which was after all what the scene in question had been "about." But I took in no further data about the object of my interest -- and I have to say it would have been pretty startling, giving what we know about his private life (i.e., as I said, just this side of nothing), regardless of the gender of the other naked person in the bed.

What's more, there have been several more episodes since that one, and as far as I've noticed, again no further references or elucidation. Again, lots more back pain, but nothing more that I'm aware of about the identity of the Other Person in Officer Cooper's bed.

I have to say that, assuming I haven't missed something, and assuming I didn't hallucinate the whole thing, it's kind of cool the way the producers just dropped that attractive young naked man into the camera frame for that scene, without feeling any need to explain or apologize. I assume I'm right about the bit of information it gave us about Officer Cooper, but the overriding reality of his private life has always been that it is totally private.

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Southland has had one of the more unusual "story arcs" in network TV annals. It's seven-episode first season on NBC played well enough in April-May 2009 for the network to announce a 13-episode commitment for a second season, only to wind up canceling the show without even airing the six episodes which had been produced by the time of cancellation. TNT picked the show up, originally intending to air just the seven first-season episodes and the six new ones, then committing to a third season, though at a substantially reduced price, which meant substantial budget cutbacks in 10 Season 3 episodes, which began airing last month.

In a way I can understand NBC's disappointment with Southland. I was kind of disappointed in that first season too, and only grudgingly hung on through all seven episodes. There were so many characters, most of them were just so uncompelling, that I had kind of a hard time keeping track of or much caring about them. But I did continue to watch, and it seemed pretty clear to me that Southland was still better than most of the crap NBC was shoving onto its schedule -- though I realize that's scarcely a consideration in network programming. The NBC programmers who first renewed and then axed the show were probably thinking more about the combination of so-so ratings and high production costs, what with all those cast members, for example.

And I have to say that through the TNT seasons (a fourth season is now being considered highly unlikely online, but hey, the show was written off before the second season began airing, let alone the third, so you never know) I've continued to watch. In fact, using my most scientific measurement, I notice that episodes recorded on the DVR rarely go unwatched for more than a few days. Here it is only the day after and already I've watched last night's episode.

There are two episodes left to air in the current season, two more hours in which we either will or won't find out about the attractive young naked man. That is, assuming it really did happen. It did, didn't it?


UPDATE: A FOURTH SEASON OF SOUTHLAND?

In the comments we have a note from a commenter who would seem to be in a much better position to know than I am (based on nothing more than my bit of online poking around). News of the unlikelihood of a fourth season for Southland is, well, news to him!

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