Southland returned for its fourth season with a bang. Heck, it returned with several, as we got to know new faces and get reacquainted with some old ones on "Wednesday."

Officer John Cooper is back and he looks damn good. John is clean, sober and apparently pain free after successful back surgery. Now he's got to prove he's fit to be back on the street and he's obviously trying to figure out who knows what about him. 

His new partner, Jessica Tang, (Lucy Liu) has her own issues. She requests to ride with John. She's tired of being hit on. Does that mean she knows he's gay? Apparently not. She's just heard his a good guy and "squared away" so she hopes they won't have a problem. No. N problems there, that's for certain, and these two have great chemistry as partners.

Jessica's got her own YouTube video out there from when a giant of a man beat the crap out of her at a traffic stop. The police cruiser video cam caught it all and it looks like she's lucky to be alive. Hearing Dewey make fun of that video made me remember why his last partner ditched him. Drunk or sober, Dewey's still an ass.

Sammy and Ben have been partners for months now but when Ben sees John for the first time he can barely utter a civil hello. I know John had some serious problems but it looks like he's got them under control. Despite the tough time, John taught Ben a lot about being a good cop. Maybe Ben should get over it and shake the man's hand.

There's never a quiet episode of Southland and this one featured plenty of scenes that made me gasp (and worse.) An armed suspect runs into an elementary school with Ben, Sammy and Dewey right on his tail. When he's cornered in the bathroom he bleeds out from the bullet hole in his neck as the cops watch.

When Sammy and Ben chase down another suspect who was trying to rape his girlfriend's 14-year old daughter, he runs in front of a moving truck. That wasn't pretty. He, too, bleeds out on the pavement.

As if that weren't enough bloodshed, a gunman walks into the precinct and opens fire. Why? Who the Hell knows?

Afterward, Sammy admits he wet himself as he's throwing up on the curb. New guy Officer Danny Ferguson (Lou Diamond Phillips, above) takes a shot to the vest and one to his jaw but he'll survive to come back and hopefully go a few more rounds with Ben.

Thank goodness Sammy survived. New baby Nate needs his daddy. Goodness knows his mommy is still a flake. The kid needs at least one responsible parent and it looks like Sammy's the one stepping up.

Finally, we have Lydia with new Detective Dorian. Lydia wakes up to find a former CI with whom she went to high school sitting on her doorstep. Danelle ditched her relocated home to come back, but now the gang she testified against wants her dead. Go figure.

Lydia still has a heart of gold and tries to save Danelle from her self but the junkie seems determined to get her wish. She also wants to see the ocean. In the end, she gets both, as we see her bloody body on the sand when the waves wash by.

As the narrator says at the beginning of the episode:

 Cops wake up different every morning from the rest of us. Our worst nightmare is just their Wednesday. | permalink

More than any other cop show, Southland tells me I'm not made to be a cop. I like my Wednesdays just the way they are.

C. Orlando was a TV Fanatic Staff Writer. Follow her on Twitter.