It is Halloween in Los Angeles, and the mansion scene is off the hook. Like in Beverly Hills, where one couple emerges from a throng of partiers. She’s in ’90s fly girl Gucci, he’s rocking a clock on a rope gold necklace. But these costumes are more than one layer deep. It’s a trick to talk their way into an upstairs bedroom – “Don’t be in there acting like you’re on OnlyFans,” the security guard says – and that’s where the treats come out. An electronic jammer to block the security system. Two pistols for the man now dressed as a 1920s gangster. And a timer. So she can track his precise return to the room after they’ve robbed this joint blind.  

This is Nemesis, co-created by Courtney A. Kemp and Tani Marole, as Kemp’s first major project for Netflix after she created the sprawling crime world of Power and its spinoffs for Starz. The couple taking the candy on Halloween are Coltrane Wilder (Y’lan Noel) and Ebony Wilder (Cleopatra Coleman). And on a back staircase, he moves down to the main floor, where he meets his crew: loudmouth Deon (Quincy Isaiah), Darren “Stro” Stroman (Tre Hale), Deon’s nephew, and wheelman Chris Choi (Jonnie Park). When these guys hit the high-stakes Halloween poker game, all their movements are timed. Except for the part where Deon pilfers a Patek for himself, it’s clear they are about that no mistakes life. While Coltrane slips back into the room and his clock necklace costume, the crew loads bricks of cash from the poker game into sacks and walks out the front door of the mansion. Smooth. Those masked men were just costumed revelers. Right?

“The city of Angels calls me Black Superman…” LAPD Detective Isaiah Stiles (Matthew Law) is rocking Above the Law in his Dodge Charger as he rolls through Inglewood. It’s his monthly check-in on his dad, Amos (Moe Irvin), and it goes about how it usually does. “You off to play hero?” Father and son seem to be on opposite sides of Isaiah’s chosen profession. But he flips his badge over his Black Mamba Lakers jersey and heads back to work. 

Stiles is a lieutenant, and according to James “Jimmy” Sealey (Michael Potts), on the fast track to replace him as captain. If only he would stop chasing his obsession. It’s a robbery crew responsible for a series of bold, often complex heists – and the same guys who killed Isaiah’s former partner, Manny Shaw (Tristan Mack Wilds). “I wanna bring them in,” he tells the captain, “and I can’t do that stuck behind a desk!” 

Nobody else on the force is ready to believe these heisters are even real, but for Stiles, it’s everything. When he and his partner Yvette Cruz (Ariana Guerra) hear Rick Viggiano (Mike O’Malley) talking about a primo Patek Philippe that went missing in a house robbery, Stiles fixates on the detail. The “It’s All Connected” board, with strings and tacks and photos and clues written on cocktail napkins? He’s got one in his office. Stiles adds the new tidbit. 

“My name may be Coltrane, but I do not play improvisational shit when it comes to jobs!” The watch is also a topic of conversation at the thieves’ hideout. What they stole was specific for a reason, and Deon’s personal project to pay his gambling debt could get them all caught.

It’s also been a minute since this bunch robbed anything. While the Halloween heist was “just like old times,” Ebony says she can’t take the pressure of their crime life anymore, ever since the miscarriage that took their baby son Zahir. And though Coltrane is sympathetic, he needs to keep taking jobs. He has a responsibility, as mastermind of the crew, who wish to be made whole. And he’s also gotta pay Charlie (Sophina Brown), Ebony’s sister, her $170k cut from the poker job. Because in the crime life, Charlie is Coltrane’s boss. And we’re pretty sure she isn’t gonna let anybody just up and quit. 

How obsessed is Isaiah Stiles? “You can’t afford to keep treating our son like your father treated you,” says his wife Candace (Gabrielle Dennis) at home. “Different reason to run the streets, different reason to own a gun, same working hours.” She’s equating Isaiah’s always-on-call, 24-7 workaholic’s nature with Amos’s past life as a leader of a neighborhood set for the Crips. They argue about their son Noah (Cedric Joe). And Candace accuses Isaiah of forgetting their wedding anniversary. After dinner, he trudges to the cottage over the garage. The detective’s obsession is in danger of destroying his marriage.

Not even enjoying a delicious burger and fries with Noah at Moonlark’s Dinette will stop Stiles. When a call goes out on the radio about a three-way jewelry store heist happening downtown, Isaiah puts Noah in an Uber and leaps to his Charger. He knows it’s the crew he is hunting. Knows it. But Coltrane’s latest high-end heist, this one with glittery masks for the doers and explosives to blast through a retaining wall, is already happening.

The broad daylight job is brazen, and packed with the precision Trane’s group is known for. With building plans, an inside man, and the location of the specific jewels they were meant to steal, all provided by Charlie in an advance packet, it is also going to be their latest lucrative, violence-free masterpiece. That is until the security guys go for their guns and Deon kills them both. 

“Whatever it was, it was worth this crew turning a 2-11 into a 187 on the drop of a fucking dime.” At the crime scene, with two men dead and six million dollars in untraceable diamonds missing, Stiles is incensed. How come his fellow cops won’t take these crimers seriously? He decides to send a message right through the TV, and though the detective doesn’t know it, Coltrane Wilder – his nemesis – is watching.

“Before today, you had all the options in the world,” Isaiah Stiles says, with the glare from TV news cameras lighting up the crime scene. “Now you have two. Jail or the morgue. You make the call.”

Cops & Robbers for Episode 1 of Nemesis (“A Long Time Coming”):

• We’re going to need a lot of space for Nemesis needle drops. There are jams all over the place in Episode 1, from SWV’s “Rain” and Curtis Harding’s “Welcome to My World,” to Volume 10 with “Pistolgrip Pump,” Nipsey Hussle with “Grinding All My Life,” and to close things out, “Murder Was the Case.”

• So what’s so great about a Patek Philippe? The watch Deon lifts is said to be worth $250,000, and vintage models from the luxury, everything handmade Swiss watchmaker have been auctioned for millions.

• “Chill don’t pay the bills!” While Trane’s crew is hitting major jobs, Stiles makes a connection that could come in handy: Miguel Álvarez (Manuel Iriza), boss of the Viejo cartel, who drives around Los Angeles in an armored Sprinter. The underworld kingpin says he owes the cop a favor. 

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.