The Closer
For most of our last season, the questions we've been asking about love deal with its passionate side. In the five winter episodes, we have veered slowly towards the costs of that passion. As I have noted before, the only real promise you ever get with love is that it must end; that we go on loving, in the face of certain loss, is one of the nobler traits of humanity; in fact, it may be our saving grace as a species.
Devotion and adoration are not restricted to things that are good for us...
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Kyra Sedgwick, Frances Sternhagen, Barry Corbin
One of the greatest side benefits of my work on The Closer has been the time I get to spend thinking about our themes. This last season, which revolves around love, has provided me countless hours of reflection, examining the best of all human emotions and, to my mind, the most powerful. When you have a choice, and love is one of the options, the decision usually becomes obvious.
For me, life is broken down into a series of families...
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Kyra Sedgwick, Frances Sternhagen and Barry Corbin
In our season-long examination of love, The Closer would be remiss if it didn't pause to consider the fuzziest of all human passions: a fondness for our own golden past.
Hardly anything tickles warm, childhood memories like the holidays. Gifts, decorations, friendly gatherings, family feasting and favorite songs blend to paint a glowing patina over our best memories. Unfortunately, the American brand of nostalgia borders on amnesia, and holding on to our youthful attachments oftentimes requires overlooking a host of problematic truths, or so our intrepid civilian tech, Buzz Watson, discovers when dragging his younger sister, Casey, on their annual trip to a local Christmas fair...
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Kyra Sedgwick
As The Closer returns for its last winter season ever (on its way to its series finale next summer), I think it's only right to begin with a seasonal expression of gratitude. We could not be finishing our story on such a high note if you had not come along for the ride.
So what can you expect between the first Monday after Thanksgiving and the last Monday in December? The Closer sets off by investigating the death of a high school principal...
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Kyra Sedgwick
The Closer often uses legal terms for titles, not merely to reference the jargon of police officers, but also to describe the plight of our characters, and to tie all that together with the theme. Our next episode is a case in point, as we consider the love of the chase in our summer finale, "Fresh Pursuit."
We begin at the end of a very long hunt. Brenda sits in a courtroom, backed up by her husband and the Major Crimes Division of the LAPD, while her attorney, Gavin Q. Baker duels with opposing counsel, Peter Goldman, on whether the case filed by the family of Turell Baylor should be dismissed...
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The Closer
Of all the darker passions lurking in the ordinary psyche, none is more brilliantly deceptive than the love of glory. Fame-seeking destroys decent people in ways only an addict could truly comprehend. Wars, political debacles, the dispassionate way one's personal honor is laid aside in order to bask in the bonfire of a media burnout: the infamy of fame knows no limits and, once embraced, can hardly ever be fully released.
Sadly, most of us are more susceptible to the influence of celebrity than we would like to admit...
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Mary McDonnell and Kyra Sedgwick
In "Family Affair," we examine one of love's deeper, and darker, demands. Sooner or later, in any relationship, one's worst qualities become impossible to ignore. Living together, for example, is the quickest known way to obliterate the softer edges of romance. "Will love remain," we cannot help but wonder, "when all my faults are finally laid bare, and others know the worst?"
This is the question our victim would ask, if only she could talk, as her inquiring mother shows up, insisting her daughter did not overdose on drugs; to prove it, our distraught parent must come to terms with several ugly truths about a child she has not seen in years. Will the grieving mother still love her daughter when she knows all?
Chief Johnson and Captain Raydor find themselves in something of the same dilemma as they try to discover, once and for all, how Major Crimes ended up being sued over the death of Turell Baylor....
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Kyra Sedgwick
One of the more profound questions we encounter in any loving relationship is just how honest we need to be? Does the true heart share its every thought and deed? Is taking an action without informing one's life partner dishonest? In short, does love require complete disclosure?
In the middle of remodeling their pricey home in the Hollywood Hills, the owners are forced to tear down a recently constructed retaining wall because their contractor did not bother obtaining a permit. Unfortunately, further delays occur when an inspector finds a body buried beneath the wall's recently laid foundation. This is just the kind of discovery that can set a home improvement project way, way, back, since it requires Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson and the rest of her Major Crimes Division to figure out how one neighbor ended up buried in another's back yard....
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Michael Paul Chan
In my own little world, nothing has meant more to me than family: It is the foundation of my daily life. Properly attended, our immediate kin can be extended by fresh relationships, more marriages and new children; its growth nurtured by the best instincts of the human heart.
So when an organism like a family splits apart, it can provoke a nuclear reaction, a shattering force every bit as powerful as the one that held it ...
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G.W. Bailey, Tony Denison and Adam Arkin
I have seldom met anyone who didn't think earning a quick four thousand dollars — cash — for an hour or two of work, wasn't a wonderful idea. Of course, everything must be relative. I wouldn't shill for the tobacco companies, no matter what they paid. But serving a subpoena — a subject that we will visit again this summer under less pleasant circumstances — is just the ticket for Flynn and Provenza, who rope the erstwhile civilian tech, Buzz Watson, into their scheme by promising him a third of their take: two hundred dollars. For those who have a bit of trouble with division, Lts. Flynn and Provenza may have misrepresented their fee to the gullible Buzz. On the other hand, the love of money can do strange things to people.
For regular watchers, this is our seasonal Flynn and Provenza episode...
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