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George Santayana had irrational faith in reason - I have irrational faith in TV.
Chuck Todd interviews me about alternate histories
A superb quartet of concluding episodes of the second season of Bosch: Legacy, put up last week and tonight on Amazon Prime Video. Every one of these episodes had the masterful dialogue, riveting action, and mix of surprise and satisfaction that comes from seeing characters behave as you ultimately expect -- all of which typify Bosch at its best, which this second season of Legacy certainly is, as I've been saying all along.
Here are some of the highlights for me:
[And of course here's an advisory about Spoilers ahead ... ]
1. Maddie saves Harry, literally, just as Harry saved her at the beginning of this season, albeit in very different circumstances. Maddie gets even closer to her father as a result. But one of the fundamental, seemingly inviolable principles of this series and these characters is the two can't be happy together at the end, however close they may have become. Whatever demons Maddie maybe be able overcome in her relationship with her father, which means everything to do her, he will always do, or will always have done, something that can and maybe does undermine that father-and-daughter unity. It's tough to see, but realistic, given who Harry is.
2. I said in an earlier review that it was good to see Mo get some love. Well, it turns out that the love was not physical, and worse than that, the attraction was not completely mutual. But Mo is put in a position where he would have had to turn on Harry and Honey, and of course he's not going to do that, and so he can't continue with the woman he was falling for, even though she truly had at least some feelings for him. Tough world, tough life -- there's that word again -- for just about all the main characters in this series.
3. Speaking of Honey, she's on her way to an unexpectedly big job. At least, she hopes so, and I hope so, too. Will be fun to see her in this new job next season.
4. As I've been saying in these reviews, the acting this season was outstanding, and especially impressive was Madison Lentz as Maddie. By the conclusion of this season, I'd say she was on a par with Titus Welliver as Bosch, which is high praise indeed.
5. But speaking of acting, it was good and sad to see Lance Reddick one more time in his role of Irvin Irving in the season finale. A great actor in everything from The Wire to Fringe, and I'm glad we all got a chance to see him one more time, filmed before he left us in March of this year.
It's the theme song of Bosch (written by Jesse Nolan, performed by Caught a Ghost) because it's the story of Bosch's professional life. It's animated every season in this best cop drama ever on television, and never more so than in it's seventh and final season on Amazon Prime Video.
What Bosch can't let go of is satisfying his profound sense of justice, or bringing to justice the perpetrators of the murders he's investigating and haunted by, or haunted by and investigating. In season seven, the victim is a 10-year old girl who dies in a deliberately set fire.
The eight-episode season is powerful and memorable for other reasons, too. Episode six contains one of the most intense short shoot-outs I've seen on any screen. Paul Calderon is practically shaking with tension and fear as his Jimmy Robertson tries to protect Bosch's beloved daughter Maddie from a skilled hitman who has just taken out a judge who is Bosch's current lover. The acting, by the way, is superb on the part of every character, both in this scene and the entire series.
Titus Welliver in the title role gives the performance of his career. Jamie Hector as Bosch's partner Jerry Edgar may be even more than impressive than he was as Marlo in The Wire, which is the biggest compliment in my book, in case you didn't know what I think of The Wire. Speaking of The Wire, Lance Reddick is always good, and he's as good as ever in Bosch. I've seen Amy Aquino in a few prior series, but she became an essential character in Bosch. Madison Lintz has really grown into her crucial part as Bosch's daughter, and I'm looking forward to seeing her in the Bosch spinoff.
Bosch began on Amazon at the dawn of our age of streaming, and helped establish it. The series went out every bit as strong as it began, something you can't say about every great series. Similarly, it kept a consistency of character and focus, something you can't say about too many things, period, in this our uncertain age. But I'm certain I'll be watching the Bosch spinoff, and I'll see you back here with a review of that when it's up on Amazon.
Have I said before that Bosch is the best police drama on television? I can't recall. But I can tell you that whatever I thought after watching the previous five seasons of Bosch, which I very much enjoyed, I think Bosch is at the apex after just binging the sixth season on Amazon Prime Video.
[I'll try for no spoilers ahead.]
I found this sixth season a little tighter than the previous ones, which had an occasionally distracting profusion of up-front plots. This new season has a least three plots, and several subplots, but there's only one plot that first and foremost. The characterization is superb, as always, but I especially liked the growth of Jerry Edgar, in both his relationship with his partner Bosch, and what he does on his own. Father and daughters can easily be old hat in cop dramas. But Maddie's relationship with her father Harry is richer, more developed, than its been before, with a nice, well-motivated twist at the very end. Bosch's colleagues are also in fine form, and Detective Johnson was especially outstanding, with more than one crucial move.
The dialogue in Bosch has always been hipt. Harry talked about getting an Uber before half the world had heard of it. In Bosch 6, we get such nuggets as "you can’t play social media as you would a news story," spoken to Irving by his opponent in the LA mayoral race. Now there's a savvy take on media which many in traditional media, as well as politicians, have yet to grasp.
The acting is letter perfect, too. Titus Welliver acts like he was born to play this hardboiled detective with an unshakeable devotion to his code and an invincible devotion to his daughter. Jamie Hector, whom I have admired since The Wire, just gets better and better as J. Edgar. Madison Lintz is coming into her own as an actress playing Bosch's daughter with the same first name. And as long as I mentioned Det. Johnson, I should mention Troy Evan's portrayal of Johnson puts Evans on the map as an unforgettable character actor.
The essence of Bosch is really straightforward - it's passion, to do the right thing, as he sees it, to protect those he loves, to seek retribution for those unable to get it themselves. I haven't read the Michael Connelly novels, and I likely won't. The books won't have Caught a Ghost's "Can't Let Go" playing at the beginning of every chapter, and the faces, accents, and walks in every scene. For that you need the television series, and it needs to be streaming at that, so you can see as many episodes as possible at one time.
Amazon Prime put up the fifth season of Bosch last Friday, and I've got to say, though I really enjoyed all the prior seasons, this one was the best (I've said this after every season). It has more of Bosch's customary panache, with the punch-in-the-face surprises, top-notch acting, and well-drawn nexus of plots we've come to expect from this drama. At this point, it's not only the best cop show on television - in Los Angeles terrain that surpasses the many excellent homicide-cop shows that take place in NYC and Chicago - but must be counted among the best cop shows ever on television (I think I said this after most of the seasons, too).
The repartee is sharp as ever, laugh-out-loud funny, profound when need be, and cutting-edge current, as always. A female detective says she's "polyamorous". Back in the office, an old-salt high-ranking officer complains about the lousy coffee, "you might as well drink straight stomach acid, cut out the middleman". Harry asks Maddie if she remembers the MLK quote from her senior high school year, "the arc of the moral universe ..." Earlier, she advises Harry to "watch your six with her".
Maddie has really come into her own this season. She was always Harry's daughter when it came to doing what she wanted, and now she's applying this to directly helping her father. In fact, I not only thought Maddie had her best season, so did Lt. Grace Billets. Plaudits to Madison Lintz as Maddie and Amy Aquino as Billets. Come to think of it, attorney Honey Chandler (well played by Mimi Rogers) had her best season, too, and delivered some of the best twists in the narrative, starting with taking on Harry as her client. Speaking of which, Titus Welliver, always outstanding as Bosch, was even more outstanding in this fifth season. Jamie Hector as Jerry Edgar and Lance Reddick as Irwin Irving are excellent as ever, too
Getting back to the locale, Bosch always captured the unique Los Angeles mix of stunning beauty and rotting degradation. Bosch's apartment is high up and indeed has a "killer view," as Maddie says. But his job takes him through the dregs of society. There are never any outright happy endings in Bosch - we have to be happy that at least he survived - but this one really goes to the dog(s). If that's not clear, give yourself a treat and see season 5, after you've seen the previous four.
I binged Bosch 4 on Amazon Prime the past few days. I've enjoyed every season so far, but I enjoyed this fourth one the most (come to think of it, I said the same last year about the third). Herewith some highlights with minimal spoilers:
This season has Bosch enmeshed in two major, unrelated cases (well, in a sense three, in that one of the cases is connected to the murder of his mother - a call-girl - many decades ago). There are at least two shocking surprises, one at the very beginning, the other in the middle of an early-to-mid episode. All of this is played out in the vivid LA cinematography to which we and our eyes have become accustomed in this series.
Even the view of his apartment is stunning, as always. It's a pleasure to see Bosch in it, whatever the demons that plague him and the darkness that more than impinges on his life. He continues to struggle to have a relationship with his daughter, endeavoring to walk the fine line between being an understanding father and stepping between her and the evil that's all around. He continues to struggle to have an effective relationship with his colleagues in the Homicide Division of the LAPD.
That last part is one reason I liked this season the best. The nuances of the major detectives in the unit, most of whom we've seen before, are more clearly, or at least more satisfyingly, drawn. In previous years, jealousy, arrogance, competitiveness, disrespect real and imagined, shutting people out, deserved or not, ran rampant in the squad. Season 4 smartly builds on the premise that everyone knows each other at least a little better. This permits the friction to slip at least a little into the background, which frees the characters to be more compelling, smoother and sharper, rather than the scratchy record we've heard many times before.
The top levels of police and city government are also done well. This is an LA not just beset by crime, but streets on the verge of erupting and airports that service international espionage. We've seen this before, but never in a mix quite like this. Bosch started as a worthy member of the neo-crime syndicate of TV series and movies like LA Confidential. In its fourth season, it's begun to transcend that. Slickly but deeply written, with an ear as always for the latest apps. Brilliantly acted, again, by everyone, but especially Titus Welliver in the title role, with a character who's not only memorable but who, when you consider myriad the facets of his life and persona, is not like any other we've seen on the screen.
Binge-watched the third season of Bosch on Amazon the past few nights, and found it better than ever.
Among my favorite parts of this unconventional season of an unconventional hard-boiled LA noir cop series are: a serial killer who comes in and out of the story, and apparently has no connection to the central story lines, rides by Bosch, untouched, and likely to play a central role in season 4; Bosch discovers that he has not solved his mother's murder, and the new suspect is, well, I don't want to give that much away; and, Frank Herbert's Dune makes a cameo appearance.
Bosch has a gut connection to The Wire, and not just because Jamie Hector and Lance Reddick play major roles. There's nothing in Bosch like The Wire's drug crime and culture of Baltimore, but the police part of Bosch has the same compelling intra-gritty cop story.
Loyalty is always put to the test, in an environment in which almost no detective is thoroughly ethical or reliable. Bosch epitomizes this - he's par excellence no angel, but someone you'd want on your side and not on your case. Titus Welliver delivers the best performance of his career - by far - and is well on his way to portraying a character as iconic as Sgt. Friday. In fact, I'm feeling more and more that this Bosch series of Dragnet meets The Wire will be as significant in our popular culture as those 1950s network television and early 21st century cable series.
Unlike many other fine police shows - such as Chicago PD, which deals with a different case just about every week, and has a Sergeant who is not quite believable in the violence he dishes out - Bosch sticks with its several cases throughout its 10-episode season, with some of those cases even going a lot further than one season. And the quality of the detective life portrayed on Bosch feels to me more realistic, though I have no direct knowledge myself of what police life is actually like. It's testament to the writing, acting, and production of the series that it feels so real.
I've enjoyed Bosch from its first season two years ago. But having just seen the third season, I'm thinking Bosch is not only the best police drama now on screen but on its way to being one of the best police dramas ever on television.
I just finished the second season of Bosch last night, streaming on Amazon Prime. Like the first season, this gritty, fast-moving, wise-cracking LA cop series is the living incarnation of Dragnet - that iconic very early television series featuring Jack Webb as Joe Friday - which is to say, very good indeed.
There were some differences between this second season and the first. Almost no romance - which I missed - but made up for by a stunner in the middle of the season, and one of the best shoot-outs ever on television a little after that. Indeed, my main complaint about this second season is that it took a little too long to get there, after which the action was lightning on the screen.
The repartee, as it was in the first season, and in Dragnet, was nonstop and top-notch. It's also pretty hip, with Bosch invoking Uber - not using the app but invoking the name - at one crucial juncture. As was clear in the first season, Titus Welliver inhabits this role with perfect intensity and laconic style, and there's no doubt that, although he's played cops on television often in this past, this will be the defining role of his career.
Jamie Hector is also excellent as Bosch's partner, and although this hasn't quite yet attained what Hector did as Marlon in The Wire, it's a strong contender. Lance Reddick, whose career also began to catch fire on The Wire, is excellent as always in a top brass role, and in the second season he plays an especially pivotal role.
Back to the lack of romance in the second season, there are also fewer really memorable women on hand. But this is just one season, and with Bosch already renewed for a third, there's every reason to look forward to stories with all sorts of people in bed in what has become the best cop show on television.
I binge-watched the first half of Bosch on Amazon Prime Instant Video last night. Herewith a brief, nonspoiler review.
The series is superb, and a worthy addition to streaming masterpieces such as House of Cards and Peaky Blinders on Netflix, and what The Man in the High Castle promises to be on Amazon. These shows are spearheading a new revolution in television viewing, as far ahead of most cable today as cable was to network television when it first unveiled The Sopranos in the late 1990s. The capacity to binge watch - available with cable usually only for series already aired, or after the DVD was released - has been coupled on Netflix and Amazon with a pace in the narrative that we've not quite seen before on the television screen.
All I'll say about the narrative of Bosch, at this point, is that it's a story that seems old for an instant - about a Dirty Harry kind of cop - which quickly pivots to originality, and surprises with twists and turns in every episode. The writing is joyfully literate. In the very first episode, a character asks, can you "humor us about the humerus bone"? Bosch's love interest, a lawyer turned cop (itself a pretty original character) who wants to be a detective, is said by Bosch to have gone from "the briefcase to the billy club". And there's a meta-quality that runs through the entire story - Bosch lives in a fancy apartment, with a great view, far above his pay grade, because he was paid a lot of money by Paramount for a movie about one of his cases.
The acting is outstanding. Annie Wersching - of 24 fame - plays Bosch's aforementioned love interest, and she's never been better. Titus Welliver puts in the best performance of his career in the title role, and that's saying a lot, since he hit the note so well in his stint on Sons of Anarchy. Jamie Hector from The Wire plays Bosch's partner, and Lance Reddick of Fringe as well as The Wire is on hand as the Deputy Chief aka Bosch's main boss.
It's tough, as I said, to get a fresh take on a police procedural, a genre as old on television as Dragnet in the first golden age of TV in the 1950s. But Bosch - based on the novels by Michael Connelly, who co-created the series with Eric Overmyer (The Affair, Treme, and Boardwalk Empire are some of his credits) - has somehow managed to give us a police story we haven't seen before, and it's a riveting tale indeed.
A good who-done-it on The Closer 6.2 last night, with two likely suspects, each played by an actor with arrogant vibes (Titus Welliver of recent Lost and much more, D. W. Moffat of Friday Night Lights), but the real killer is a guy who seems perfectly nice and indeed works for Immigration (Department of Homeland Security).
The killer in fact comes this close to killing Brenda Leigh, which of course gets Fritz, who manages to kill the killer just in time, about as upset as we've seen him. Nothing keeps Brenda Leigh from closing a case, including shouts from her team to move back, out of the killer's gun range.
Captain Raydor (Mary McDonnell) was also back in the show, charmingly getting in Brenda's way as Raydor tags along for the evaluation she's doing. Brenda figures she's being evaluated as part of Pope's likely ascension to Chief of Police, but the ending has another little bombshell: Raydor's evaluating Brenda because Raydor thinks Brenda would make a good Chief, and she urges Brenda to submit an application.
Pope would likely go crazy were Brenda to get the job instead of him, and I'm thinking we might see Raydor herself end up in this top position. Whichever way this goes, there should be some fun bumps ahead.
Let's begin at the beginning of the Lost Season 5 finale ... Two men are talking on the shore of our island - Jacob and a man played by Titus Welliver. The man says he wants to kill Jacob, and says he'll one day find a "loophole" to allow him to do this ... This happened a long time ago...
Back in our time - that is, the past few decades - Jacob visits most of our original, now still surviving, Flight 815 passengers. Some, like Saywer and Kate, are visited when they are children. Others, like Jack and Locke, when they at low or desperate points in their adult lives. Jacob visits Sayid, distracts him, so he can't stop Nadia from being hit and killed by a car. Hurley's visit is the most recent - its purpose to convince Hurley to get back the island.
Tonight's episode, then, among the many intriguing, fabulous things it is, is the story of Jacob. It provides at least part of an answer to something I've been saying since the beginning of the second season - that the key to understanding Lost resides, somehow, in the inexplicable coincidences in the flashbacks, in people who presumably first met on Flight 815, or on the island, crossing paths in the past - such as Desmond and Jack running into each other on the steps of the stadium, Kate's mother serving Sawyer in a diner, etc. We didn't see Jacob in those intersections tonight, but we saw him in enough places and times to make it plausible that he could have manipulated those coincidences to happen, too...
But Jacob's story is also as short as it is long. And it ends with one of the best surprises in the series: Locke did not come back to life when Flight 316 crashed on the island this season. No, not at all. The Locke who has been walking around on the island is the man who was talking to Jacob on the shore all those centuries or whenever ago. He has somehow taken Locke's form - as well as, inexplicably, at least some of Locke's memories - and in that form goads Ben into killing Jacob. That, apparently was the loophole - the man could not kill Jacob himself, but he could drive someone else to do that...
Which may explain a lot of things. Let's say no ever came back to life on the island? Coming back to life certainly seems like news to Richard - his people can cure the critically wounded, not the dead. That's why young Ben but not Faraday was saved. Did this shape-shifter look like Christian, to manipulate Jack; look like Alex to manipulate Ben; and who knows who else?
Dead is dead, that seems clear now. And it brings us to the other great part of tonight's story.
Jack brings the core of the hydrogen bomb to the Swan site. There are some wonderful scenes with Jack and Sawyer - who, as he's been throughout much of this season, is a more admirable character than Jack. The plan is that the bomb will wipe out the island, 815 won't crash, and nothing we've been seeing for the past five seasons will happen. Sayid is badly wounded, so this might be good for him (though Richard could well cure him) ... but for everyone else?
As I wrote last week, and in previous weeks, the plan can't succeed. Faraday was right when he said the past can't be changed (and he was too torn by grief to be thinking clearly when he said it might be changed, after all). Miles seems to best get this now - he says maybe the bomb going off will cause the "incident" to happen - will cause the reality we have seen to occur.
Jack drops the bomb into the shaft, as the digging already going on unleashes a magnetic force that starts pulling the equipment apart. Phil from Dharma gets killed - good riddance (but good acting by Patrick Fischler). Juliet gets pulled into the shaft. She's hanging on. Sawyer and Kate try to save her (great line from Sawyer - "where you going, Blondie?") But the force is too strong. Juliet leaves go because doesn't want to pull Sawyer in and she falls down the shaft.
But she's not killed. And at the bottom of shaft, she finds the core of the h-bomb, still intact. She pounds on it. And - it goes off.
Have the past five years been destroyed? Will they never happen?
Of course not. Of course they will. I'm sure Miles was right. And we'll see how this all plays out - with the new "Locke" next year... The fact is that we can't be sure what the blast will do, other than that it won't change the past and wipe out five years. Conceivably, it could throw our people from 1977 back into the present ... it could even, perhaps, save Juliet in this way.
Minor quibbles ... I found Jacob coming in and out so fast a little unsatisfying,* and we could have used a little more precedent in the story for the shape shifting. But, all in all, a splendid resolution to this season and a powerful set-up for the next, and final, season.
And, oh yeah, Rose and Bernard! Someone asked me, in a comment somewhere about one of my Lost reviews this season, if I thought we'd ever see those two again. I said I was sure they'd turn up in the final episode of the season, as they usually do. And, sure, enough, they did (taking care of Vincent!) - both looking better and happier than ever!
Binge-watched the third season of Bosch on Amazon the past few nights, and found it better than ever.
I just finished the second season of Bosch last night, streaming on Amazon Prime. Like the first season, this gritty, fast-moving, wise-cracking LA cop series is the living incarnation of Dragnet - that iconic very early television series featuring Jack Webb as Joe Friday - which is to say, very good indeed.
I binge-watched the first half of Bosch on Amazon Prime Instant Video last night. Herewith a brief, nonspoiler review.
