It's the end of our summer season and, regretfully, it's time to say good-bye. Coincidentally, our finale — a longer version of which will be available on-line and on iTunes after-air — seems mostly about going away. That's not only a clue to Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson's personal life, but also to solving the mysteries confronting Major Crimes.
I say mysteries because I like to remind people that The Closer is not merely about catching the criminal, but also getting the confession. This task ...
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Our next-to-last episode of the season presents Brenda and Fritz with the unexpected problem of providing constant supervision for their imperfectly behaved teenage niece, Charlie, while continuing to do their jobs. This problem, which will be almost too familiar for most of our audience, challenges our heroic couple in ways both small and enormous.
Exactly how much responsibility does one assign to a child? How should a kid be raised? What are ...
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It isn't easy to change the way people look at us. Our parents, for example, take years to recognize us as adults. Bosses often refuse to view us as capable of any other job than that for which they hired us in the first place. And inexperience, denial or willful ignorance often leads us to believe family members are perfectly all right when they are anything but. All these situations are at play in "Smells Like Murder."
Certainly, Sgt. Gabriel wants ...
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The dual nature of human personality has been too well examined, and by far more intelligent people than I, to discuss it at any length here except to say it serves as the theme of our new episode. Those who prefer puzzlers will hopefully find themselves trying to discover whether a father has half-way confessed to a murder in a desperate attempt to protect his mentally ill son, or whether he's gaming the system to get a lighter sentence. Bruce Davison brings to life one of our more unusual villains with the kind of affecting performance for which he is justly famous. The case also includes a schizophrenic witness, who might also be a suspect, the return of Brenda's mother, Willie Ray played by the always-brilliant Frances Sternhagen, and a new character who will test Fritz's desire to have children.
Let me go back a few years. When Kyra Sedgwick first started on The Closer, she had just finished an independent film entitled Lover Boy. It was a startling movie with an equally startling performance by a young girl named Sosie Bacon, Kyra and Kevin's daughter. Playing her mother's character as a young girl, Sosie's film acting debut was subtly wonderful, a bit of light in an extremely dark story dramatizing the inevitable (and ironic) consequence of being raised by overprotective parents.
After watching the film, I ...
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Tom Skerritt with Kyra Sedgwick, The Closer
Elysium is that section of Hades reserved for the eternal rest of ancient Greek heroes. In the City of Angels, however, Elysian Park, perched near Dodger Stadium and the LAPD Academy, turns out to be the unceremonious burial ground for a man dragged behind a pick-up truck and then shot in the head.
Enter former robbery/homicide Detective Olin, played by the always-intriguing Tom Skerritt. Asked to return from a lonely retirement because of his familiarity with the victim, Det. Olin — or Joey O., as he's known to his former co-workers in Major Crimes — seems more intent on wrapping up an old case of his own than helping Brenda close hers. Ghosts of Those Who Got Away haunt the hallways of Parker Center and, as Deputy Chief Johnson's obsession with the elusive rapist/murderer Phillip Stroh returns to cloud her judgment, she finds some uncomfortable and eerie parallels between herself and the annoying, (but dogged) Joey O.
Though the word "elysium" came to represent the halcyon rest for the honorable dead, its original meaning was ...
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Mary McDonnell, The Closer
The inability to change creates huge stumbling blocks in every aspect of our lives and, in "Strike Three," The Closer runs into this particular roadblock at full tilt, resulting in one of the very best episodes in our five year run. Obstacles created by resistance to change not only provide the hateful ideology that binds a vicious criminal gang together, but also the motive for a truly terrible triple murder. And when Major Crimes arrives at the scene to find two officers and a civilian dead on the street, they have only begun to encounter the inflexible barriers erected between them and their dangerous suspects.
Enter Captain Sharon Raydor, played by the always brilliant Mary McDonnell, who performs her role as ...
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Most of us play many parts in life. I am a writer, a godfather, a producer, a spouse, a son, a brother, a boss and a friend, to list just a few (of the more repeatable) things I am called during the course of an ordinary week. The concept of identity is a little like the illusion of motion and matter, for even the most solid object constantly moves. That's why assuming someone's persona is poured in concrete is a recipe for disaster.
So is standing beside Lts. Flynn and Provenza, both of whom often demonstrate a casual disregard for being sucked into career-threatening sinkholes. Fortunately, as active detectives, they are used to finding themselves on the wrong side of ...
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The Closer
The desire to change our lives for the better, to give more meaning to our daily existence, is one of humanity's nobler urges. When we struggle to better ourselves, we can also improve our families, our neighborhoods, our cities and even our country. The impulse to help out at a community center, for example, or to reclaim teenagers lost to gangs, or the ambition to graduate from college, or to drive a nicer car or own a bigger home, or the desire to get married and have children, or to build churches and governments: all are activities that, in one way or another (spiritual or material), exemplify our confidence in civilization over chaos.
So if we are constantly driven to do better, why is it that ...
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Within the intelligence community, the phrase "walking back the cat," loosely translated, means trying to figure out how an agent or an operation went south. Analyzing a professional disaster can be every bit as complicated as... well, convincing a cat to go in reverse. So when Special Agent Fritz Howard decides to ask his wife to help him locate a missing person, he leaves out details that might make his seemingly simple request sound overly complex or irritating. Yes, Fritz actually manipulates Brenda by purposely underplaying what he needs her to do. Can you believe it?
Well, turnabout is fair play.
And for those anxious to discover how marriage has changed our happy couple, here comes Fritz Howard, unabashedly pursuing his own agenda, demanding that Brenda follow him on trust alone. Can she do it?
Lt. Provenza also has something to report: the answer to his new wardrobe and curious mood swings.
And, finally, what are we to do with Kitty's ashes?
I know many of you were upset that Brenda lost her cat ...
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"Who will watch the watchers?"
This is an old question that keeps popping up whenever we talk about law enforcement agencies or any organization where the abuse of power under the color of authority continues to be a serious problem. Internal Affairs Departments are notoriously unpopular with the police they monitor. And the Force Investigation Division of the LAPD is no exception.
In this week's episode, "Red Tape," Sgt. Gabriel fires his weapon at a fleeing murderer, in self-defense. A boy is shot. But no gun is found. Enter Mary McDonnell as ...
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