Episode 12 of “The Drift That Follows Will Be Gradual,” a novel-in-stories that threads together a reporter's cherished past—1980s, Los Angeles—and his mentally ill millennial son’s determination to claim his own season in the sun. Part father-son drama, part roman a clef of a changing LA, the twelve linked episodes—bittersweet, sometimes funny, deliciously messy—stumble toward redemption through themes both So Cal and global: the ache of cultural drift, the alienation of the awkward and the uncelebrated in the 21st Century, and the timelessness of young dreams.