Summary
Bosch kicks off its final season with a powerful episode about the death of a child and ends with Harry deciding he’s super-pissed about it.
This recap of Amazon original Bosch, season 7, episode 1, “Brazen,” contains spoilers.
The last time we saw our part-time curmudgeon, the stoic detective was tossing a bomb into the back of some empty holding cells during a trial that would determine his innocence of wrongdoing decades prior. He saved his daughter, partner, members of his squad, innocents, and even the bad guys and girls; that’s how Bosch rolls, you see. He had a code long before Omar showed up on The Wire. Michael Connelly’s series of detective books are as good as any gumshoe series out there. An insanely popular series that very few thought could be brought to the screen, especially with an actor that many would recognize the face of but never know his name. They did, however, as Titus Welliver brought the great Detective Bosch to life. The Sherlock Holmes of the LAPD doesn’t need to quip something clever to solve a case.
What has separated the last few seasons of one of Amazon’s staple shows was its unexpected grittiness and office politics humor, a hallmark of one of the great police shows, David Simon’s The Wire. Simon was a former crime reporter covering the drug trade and murder police in Charm City. The same for Connelly, a newspaperman who covered L.A’s finest in the City of Angels for decades. Just because the streets of Los Angeles are sun-soaked doesn’t make the show any less authentic. Down from the casting of every single character, the series has always been remarkably comfortable within its own skin. How else do you explain casting Welliver, Jamie Hector, Amy Aquino, and Lance Reddick in key roles and make it last for seven seasons?
This season takes us to the Hispanic section of Los Angeles, where gang violence has erupted, costing a little girl her life. Bosch arrives to find an apartment building smoking from a fire that was just put out. He finds the fire escapes were nailed shut, causing the child to die of smoke inhalation. When celebrating New Year’s Eve at Lt. Billets (Aquino) house, the team gets the call. Though Bosch wasn’t there, he was dating Judge Sobel (Bess Armstrong), who apparently can’t resist his stoic charm.
When he gets there, Bosch is in command. He leads his team and directs the detectives to canvas the area, but notices his partner, Jerry Edgar (Jamie Hector), is noticeably absent. That’s because he has slept through the numerous phone calls, sleeping his daily bender off. He is still shooting the murderous kingpin who killed his Uncle at the end of last season. Why does he give a damn? Because he put some hot lead into him even after he gave himself up, hands clearly in the air.
Meanwhile, Bosch can handle most scenes, a dead innocent adult just as much as a criminal whose time ran out. But he can’t handle the picture of an innocent dead child who was robbed of a chance to have a life. That’s what he found when he made his way up the stairwell of the crispy apartment building. That and the door the child tried to open at the fire escape was nailed shut. Clearly, the perps planned this fire down to the finest detail. As he drives away, later, we see the emotion come to his face. His brow noticeably wrinkles, he covers his mouth, and his hair even seems a slight shade of white. Has Detective Harry Bosch finally had enough?
Finally, Chief Irvin Irving (Lance Reddick) quit the mayoral race last season to assure his post for the future but now may find himself out of a job. The new mayor, who is Hispanic, has noticed the dead little girl, Sonya Hernandez, call Chief Irving out on his lax police force. The media has even coined her “The Little Tamale Girl,” which adds a racial element that turns up the political heat to solve the case sooner rather than later.
To end the episode, Jerry finds out his fate. He has had a hearing to see if the shooting on that Haitian kingpin was justified. He basically gets a slap on the wrist, acting within the policy for the shooting, but not for notifying anyone he is staking out the house and call for backup. Afterward, Bosch and Jerry have it out, but in a way only the two most quiet detectives can. A few curt words from Harry telling his partner to get his ass together. Though, by the end of their day’s worth of investigation, they ask themselves this: Was this a gangland attack, or did someone pay the killers to burn down the building to kickstart a case of gentrification?
Bosch doesn’t know. But before the end of his shift, he visits the coldest motel in LA, the morgue. He pulls back the zipper of our little tamale girl, looks sad, then disgusted, then looks up towards a point in the room where we do not know what he has locked eyes on. But one thing is for certain– he looks pissed.
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