Recap: “Akil The Fugitive Hunter” Is F*cking Nuts

Holy hell this thing’s crazy.

The highlights of Akil The Fugitive Hunter to some MAY be the Wood Harris commentary or the animated shorts depicting the titular character’s life produced by The Boondocks’ Carl Jones.

But if A&E’s new series Akil The Fugitive Hunter had none of that and only featured the meat and potatoes of the show which is the fact that it’s Cops primarily based in the Crips/Bloods gang banging neighborhoods of Los Angeles, California, the show would be just as terrifying.

The balls on the show’s star, Akil Muhammad to drive around these neighborhoods with a close to $70,000 Benz is by far the craziest shit I’ve ever seen. Nevermind the fact that the show revolves around him collecting bounties on criminals with rap sheets the length of your arm, most of whom have some sort of violent history. We’re not talking about guys who are getting hitched for “skipping court dates”, no, we’re getting kidnappers, armed robbers, people who are used to evading the law. Fortunately, they do NOT evade Akil for long, as he and his team of associates use a mash of both old-school and new-school techniques to track down and hook their prey(these guys even caught a dude’s whereabouts on Instagram).

What isn’t lost on this series is the heart of the matter of these social injustices…usually poverty. Underserved neighborhoods force men to make harsh decisions just to keep food on the table. Early high school drop outs miss out on important lessons in school like sex education that would perhaps help some of the women of these men getting locked up to make better decisions about having babies instead of lying to Akil’s face when he’s looking to put their guys in (in one scene, you can literally see the camera catching this girl’s baby daddy sneaking out back as Akil is interrogating the woman in question).

All in all, Akil The Fugitive Hunter is some of the most compelling television on right now. It’s here you get to see how REAL superheroes like Akil fight crime in the face of insurmountable and very dangerous odds that would certainly give me nightmares. But for Akil? It’s just another day at work.