December 4, 2006: Same People, Different Books
This two-hour special event for TNT's
The Closer absolutely was special
and an event, at the same time addressing the state of the scandal-fractured Priority Homicide Squad and thrusting Brenda Leigh into a high-stakes investigation, at the bequest of "The Company."
I liked (yet was saddened by) how this outing opened, seemingly just another fresh death to be looked into by Flynn, Gabriel and the rest of the gang.... 'Cept there was no rest of the gang, just Taylor and a pair of gangly
regular homicide clowns named McHale and Ross. To add insult to injury, Taylor had the nerve to mock the on-leave Brenda by lampooning her Southern-fried thank-yous. Not nice.
Taylor would get
his later, though, when Brenda leveraged her freelance CIA assist into a posthaste reassembly of her squad, right down to Tao, who was perfectly aghast at the dusty state of his keyboard. And Flynn, such the come-and-go softie, telling Brenda, "I've missed hearing the word 'please'"? Awww.
As for the actual case at the core of this special event, maybe my
Closer mystery-crunching muscle atrophied a bit during hiatus, but I got a bit lost. Still, it was charming to see Brenda at first fly under the radar with Provenza "not legally" (as Pope stressed/hinted) at her side, later joined by Flynn. And wasn't
William Daniels just perfect as a crusty yet adequately suspect Company spook? I also enjoyed the actress who played Emily Donahue - wonderfully gruff and believable in her frustration. (Great line from Brenda regarding Emily: "The raving bitch and I are old friends.")
Second only in joy to seeing the PHS reunite was witnessing our Brenda in cloak-and-dagger mode, ducking into dark corners, memorizing addresses before they were burned, going by the code name Gwen when asking for "Mr. Schmidt." Provenza could not help but dub her "007" - and lord knows I'd take her over Daniel Craig any day. Thank you for the "special" visit, Brenda Leigh.
PS. What kind of
crazy pastry was Brenda setting her sights on at the end of her first scene? Looked like a pretzel and an eclair had a baby.
