CATALINA
A Mountain Lion’s epic journey out of the wilderness and across the city as he flees the fire and looks to make it to the salvation of the Ocean.
INFLUENCES AND CONSIDERATIONS:
John Cheever’s The Swimmer
Leave No Trace
An Odyssey tale that encounters the last of his kind as he embarks on one final quest: to reach the ocean.
Our final story perhaps deals mostly with the struggle of the journey than multiple character interactions. An All is Lost on land.
STORY BEATS:
Two Mountain Lions - Jeremiah and Catalina - living high up in the mountains above Los Angeles, awake in the heat of late afternoon.
They need to come down the mountain to find water in the drought.
A Freeway cuts through their habitat.
In their eyes, they see monsters with blinding eyes bearing down on them.
They make the crossing, but halfway across Catalina is devoured by a monster.
A fire starts. (Here we reveal the cause of the fire - the vehicle crash.)
Jeremiah flees the rapidly spreading fire.
He is now truly alone. The last of his kind. A noble lion out of time and habitat.
The ghost of his deceased mate, Catalina keeps him company on his epic journey.
Reference - Un Prophete for the visual execution of the ghost. He remembers a moment where together they played in a field of Butterflies.
While he stares out at the bright lights below, she asks him what makes the light.
Jeremiah steps into the urban jungle.
He comes up against a Coyote pack - a gang of highway hoodlums who call themselves the ‘Beachwoods’.
Coyotes – “You gotta be kidding. You don’t know who the Beachwoods are?”
JEREMIAH
Last wolf I met …
COYOTE
Grandpa thinks we’re wolves.
They show off at having been able to adapt to modern world unlike him.
They want to know where Jeremiah is headed. He tells them he is looking for water. They tell him he needs to get to the end of the world.
Jeremiah has to train jump to sleep in a carriage at night.
Perhaps in the train yard he meets other immigrant animals / insects from the Invisibles. They are all fearful of being caught by the predators. They want to know where Jeremiah is going. He tells them he is heading for the end of the world. It’s there he has heard there is water to drink.
Jeremiah finds water - is this the end of the world? - and drinks but doesn’t realize it’s a Beverly Hills infinity pool and wretches on swallowing the chlorine.
Jeremiah makes it to the coast. He looks out and sees endless water. Salvation?
It looks like the road down from the hills is moving but in fact it’s a mass exodus: A sea of insects all fleeing the fire. Grasshoppers etc. Bug life fleeing the flames. They overtake Jeremiah at the end as he runs down to the beach.
Jeremiah rests for a moment on the beach. Sitting with his back to us looking out to the horizon. Behind him the scorched Malibu hills. He listens to the lapping shore. Then approaches the shoreline.
The air is thick with smoke from the fires and the sun hasn’t come up. There is no bird song. No dawn chorus. Is this the reason why the sun has not risen?
Jeremiah passes some vagrant birds and animals asleep on the beach. Purdy, Djangcrow and Melody among them.
Melody the songbird (ep 101) wakes when Jeremiah passes her.
Melody sees the dawn light trying to cut through the smoke.
Jeremiah reaches the end of the world (the Pacific shoreline) and enters the break and sets out, and starts swimming, heading West into the unknown.
DjangCrow wakes and watch him go, then strike up a rhythm.
And Melody sings like a busker. She duets with the washed up busker Crow.
And other songbirds join in. And Purdy. She leads but others join. It becomes a true chorus.
Our season 1 credits roll as the rainbow of color and creed sings together.
And the smoke begins to clear. Revealing an island far out. A new world:
Catalina.
Jeremiah swims ahead.
And as the song comes to its end, Melody stands and limps back into the city, the urban jungle.