Low Winter Sun Season 1 Finale: Best for Last

Well,  Low Winter Sun certainly saved the best for last for its first season - a two-hour finale that pulled out all the stops, offered a swerving ride with surprises at very turn, and even managed to wrap it up with a big provocative question mark at the end.

The first hour was a classic, excellent cop throws it all away episode.  Agnew, despondent over Katia's death - that is, murder by Geddes - gives away his money, almost takes his life, has some kind of heart-attack-like episode, and confesses it all to his former partner Sean, now a druggie staying at Agnew's place. Agnew veers from confessing it all to the world to planning an escape to Germany, but can't quite do either. He walks in to the Detroit Police building - only to discover along with the audience the huge surprise of the evening: Sean has confessed to the McCann and related murders.  And, since Agnew earlier confessed to Sean, Sean is in possession of details that only the killer would know. Brilliant!

Of course, this won't satisfy Internal Affairs Boyd, who's pieced the real truth together, and the second hour features a great pivot by Agnew, who's regained his sense of self-preservation, and now is thinking fast about how he can walk away from this without a murder charge against him.  He does feel bad about Sean going down for this, but not bad enough to really stop Sean, and in the end Agnew throws in a phone which offers physical evidence in support of Sean's confession.

But the factor that tips the balance against Boyd as the higher-ups meet to sort this out is that Katia is nowhere to be found, depriving Boyd of the one witness who would push his story into the believable column even with Sean's confession working against that.  And so, in one of the crowning ironies of the series, Geddes' dispatching of Katia last week saves the day for not only Geddes but Agnew tonight.

But there's one last pulsing question mark left hanging in this story:  Agnew goes to claim Katia's body. The coroner or whoever asks Agnew for Katia's name.  Agnew hesitates and there the story ends (I hope, for just now).  If he says Katia, that will give evidence which Boyd at some point could dig up and use against Agnew.  If he says another name, that would in effect be disrespecting the woman he loved.

I'm betting AMC will give us a chance to see what he does next year.

See also Low Winter Sun 1.1-2: High Hopes ... Low Winter Sun 1.3: Katia and the Bridge ... Low Winter Sun Penultimate Review

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The Bridge Season 1 Finale: Marco Joins Mackey and Agnew

Hey, The Bridge has been renewed for another season and I'm glad - not only because I like the series but because the last few minutes of the season 1 finale opened up a whole new can of dark possibilities.

That can would be Marco asking Mexican mob boss Fausto - well played by both Demian Bichir and Ramon Franco - if Fausto would take care of a little something for Marco: killing Hastings/Tate in prison. Marco is of course entirely justified in doing this, seeing as how the sociopath Tate killed Marco's boy Gus - but the request and Fausto's agreement still make Marco an entirely different character for next season.

Marco has now joined the ranks of iconic anti-hero cop Vic Mackey of The Shield and, more recently, Frank Agnew of Low Winter Sun.  Mackey is one of the most compelling characters ever to have been seen on the television screen - right up there with Walter White and Tony Soprano - and though Agnew is a long way from that, the territory of a cop killing another cop is rich with dramatic possibilities.

Marco, of course, is asking Fausto to kill a special kind of cop.   Not someone investigating his corruption, as was the case with Mackey, or someone who might have killed the woman that he loves, as is the case with Agnew.   Neither of those two motivations are as powerful and justified as the grievance Marco has against Tate - his former partner, who goes on to kill Marco's son.

Further, what's noteworthy about this turn of events in The Bridge is that we've come to know Marco as an honest cop - we've seen him working honestly and courageously at his job all season.  In contrast, Mackey and Agnew killed their respective cop in the very first episodes of their series.  This means we never got to know them as honest cops, before they went over to the dark side, and we can only guess what they were like before they took their plunge into the abyss.

Marco has been a great character to watch all season - as has Sonya and Hank - and I'm looking forward to more in 2014.

See also The Bridge Opens Brooding and Valent ... The Bridge 1.2: A Tale of Two Beds ... The Bridge 1.6: Revelations ... The Bridge 1.7: A Killer and a Reluctant Professor ... The Bridge 1.8: Some Dark Poetic Justice ... The Bridge 1.9: Trade-Off ... The Bridge 1.10: Charlotte's Evolution ... The Bridge 1.11: Put to the Test

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Low Winter Sun: Penultimate Review

Low Winter Sun has been struggling.  AMC's positioning of the series right after Breaking Bad hasn't worked so well, because, well, after Breaking Bad, no one's much in the mood for a noir cop drama in Detroit.

But I've been watching the series - on DVR - a day or two after its airing, and I think it's pretty good. The two-hour finale will be on next week, so here are some thoughts about what has been happening since episode 1.3, which was the last episode I had a chance to review.

The set-up - of two detectives investigating the killing of a detective whom they themselves killed - has held up well and works.   Frank Agnew, in particular, is one of the more interesting anti-hero cops to come down the pike on television.  Not as vicious as Vic Mackey on The Shield, Frank has a keen intelligence and persuasiveness.   You almost believe that he is really trying to find the killer as he goes through the complex charade of an investigation into who killed McCann.   His goal, of course, is to pin the killing on a plausible suspect other than him and his partner Joe Geddes.

But it's not easy, not least because the other detectives are watching his every move.  Dani is the most difficult in this regard.  She trusts Frank implicitly, but she's bright and is beginning to suspect Joe.  She sees that Frank is not conducting the investigation up to his usual standards, but chalks this up to Frank's turmoil over losing Katia (for more of whom, see below).  Frank, likely sensing that Dani is getting too close to what actually happened to McCann, sleeps with Dani.  The result is she tells him her suspicions about Joe, and likely she's a little less likely now to suspect Frank.   But how long that will last - especially with Internal Affairs pressing its investigation - remains to be seen.

Frank is indeed obsessed with Katia, and in one of the best sequences of the series last night, Joe gets to Katia before Frank arrives, and Joe kills her.   Katia's death will help Frank and Joe keep their secret. But if Frank realizes that Joe killed Katia, there's no telling what he'll do.

I'm thinking that in two-hour finale next week, Frank will implicate and kill Joe - in a way that will keep Dani and the IA agent in the dark.

At least, for this season.  And I'm hoping they'll be a second season in which this crafty story can further play out.

See also Low Winter Sun 1.1-2: High Hopes ... Low Winter Sun 1.3: Katia and the Bridge




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Low Winter Sun 1.3: Katia and the Bridge

Katia is shaping up as a pivotal character in Low Winter Sun, even though as of episode 1.3 she hasn't had much screen time.

She's Frank Agnew's love interest - a prostitute - and even though Frank's belief, fueled by Joe Geddes, that McCann killed her led to Frank's killing of McCann, we now learn through a series of flashbacks that actually Geddes couldn't bring himself to follow McCann's order that he kill Katia.  Instead, Geddes took Katia over the bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, and set her loose there in Canada.

That US-Canadian bridge is clearly an important structure in this story, and made think that Low Winter Sun is in some ways The Bridge north.   Both are excellent, dark, cop shows, each with its own flavor, and I welcome both of them.

The end of episode 1.3 has Frank driving over that bridge in search of Katia.   Where he'll find the time for this search is not clear, since IA and his Lt. are both in different ways on his case to solve the McCann killing.  It's a sweet situation for intense drama.  As a commercial for the show puts it, Frank is put in charge of a case for which he's the killer.

An eye-witness is therefore the last thing that Frank and Joe need, and they do a great job of weakening the public-minded witness who does come forward.   He saw a black man and a white man and a body in a car - uh oh - but fortunately didn't get too clear a look at anyone.   Also fortunately for Frank and Joe, there are plenty of multi-racial partners in police work - we've come a long way on television since Robert Culp and Bill Cosby in I Spy - so this witness is not as devastating a problem as he might have been 50 years ago.   Still, his testimony is a little too close for comfort, so he needs to be handled with Frank and Joe's customary kid gloves, which is to say a mix of compassion and badger.

The biggest threat to Frank and Joe is Dani.  She has a head on her shoulders, an eye for the unusual, and is not likely to be talked of what she sees and comes to understand.  And the biggest threat to Frank of course is Joe.  That's on top of IA and the Lt., and what makes this such a good, taut drama.

See also Low Winter Sun 1.1-2: High Hopes




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Low Winter Sun 1.1-2: High Hopes

Hey, I don't need another television show to watch, but I couldn't resist Low Winter Sun, and not only because it follows Breaking Bad on AMC, so how could I miss it?  But it has the same dark, brooding quality of The Bridge, The Killing, and Justified - which I find just the thing at the end of a long day - and a set-up much like one of the greatest shows ever to have been on television.

That would be The Shield, which had Vic Mackey coldly executing a cop on his team, in front of his partners, in the very first episode, and ripped through seven seasons of harrowing, adrenalin-pumping story line. That's a lot to live up to for any new series, but Low Winter Sun is making a strong start.

Frank Agnew is not quite as hardened - as yet - as Vic Mackey, but he has all the trimmings.  He's a good cop as far as catching criminals, but can't allow himself to be brought down by an Internal Affairs investigation.   Like Mackey, Agnew is saddled with partners - or, at least, one detective, at this point, Joe Geddes - who is not quite as clever as Agnew, and whose interests are not quite the same as Agnew's either.   Agnew has to therefore be on guard not only against Internal Affairs, but against Geddes, who in fact had to talk Agnew into murdering Geddes' corrupt partner McCann in the first place.   The Lieutenant puts Agnew in charge of the McCann investigation, which on the one hand is a good thing, but also puts everything that Agnew does in greater view.   This is the motif of the series: double-edged swords.

Low Winter Sun also has a gritty Detroit ambience - much like the short-lived Detroit 1-8-7 - and will likely benefit from Detroit's recent bankruptcy in the news.  You certainly get a palpable sense of life in Detroit when Agnew walks out of his house, and you see a crumbled, abandoned house right next door.

So count me in as someone with high hopes for Low Winter Sun, as well as a weakness for the easy pun.



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