"Paul Levinson's It's Real Life is a page-turning exploration into that multiverse known as rock and roll. But it is much more than a marvelous adventure narrated by a master storyteller...it is also an exquisite meditation on the very nature of alternate history." -- Jack Dann, The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Brenda Leigh's Niece and Lost's Libby on The Closer

It was nice to meet another member of Brenda Leigh's extended family on The Closer last night. Her niece is having problems at home, so she's staying with her grandparents (Brenda's parents). But Brenda's mother has a better idea - the niece can stay for the summer with Brenda!

But lest we forget what kind of show this is and who Brenda is - a police detective show about someone brilliantly obsessed with solving and closing every case that comes her way - you know that Brenda is going to put her niece to some kind of good use in cracking a case...

Which, as fate would have it, is about a psychologist apparently murdered by the father of one his patients, a charming, schizophrenic young man. Well, the father has confessed. But his elocution in court does not match the evidence. Perhaps the son can shed some light on this? Brenda uses his attraction to her niece, whom Brenda sits in an adjoining, visible to the son, to put him at ease.

The psychologist's wife, played by Cynthia Watros, best-known as Libby from Lost, is also a psychologist and may also have a role in the murder. Interestingly, Libby on Lost was a clinical psychologist. Her story is one of the most compelling and inexplicable in Lost, and has yet to be resolved. She befriends Hurley on the island and the two fall in love. She's killed by Michael. But we also learn that she was in the same mental institution - as a patient - with Hurley, well before the crash.

How could this be? It's one of the inexplicable coincidences that I think provide the keys to understanding what is really going on in Lost. But so far, we've been given no clue as to how Libby could have been in that facility, and transformed from patient to healer. Surely all of Lost is more than Hurley's dream from that institution....

So it was good to see "Libby" again, with a different name but the same profession, on The Closer. Now, if only Brenda Leigh Johnson could use her investigative talent to figure out what really happened between Libby and Hurley on Lost...

See also Tom Skerritt on The Closer and Det. Richard Tracy on The Closer and Pres. Laura Roslin vs. Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson








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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Paul, we actually got an explanation for Libby's story a couple of weeks ago:

http://www.tvshark.com/read/?art=arc3736

Paul Levinson said...

Thanks, but (a) a producer's explanation is not the same as an explanation provided on the actual show (since producers may change their minds and/or be deceiving the public for whatever reason), and (b) that explanation wasn't much of an explanation in any case... :)

Alexi Frest said...

The story is intriguing, to say the least. Nothing can be more interesting than criminal psychology and a shattered mind!

Paul Levinson said...

I always say that if you want to spice up a detective story, nothing works like a dead body, preferably without clothes...

Good to have your comments, Mina!

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