Premierewatch: The Closer -- Burn, baby, burn

Brenda Lee Johnson is back with her dysfunctional family of detectives on The Closer, dealing with one hell of a crime scene and an interfering reporter in the fourth season premiere. Plus, one of my favorite creepy/charismatic villains returns, and I get yet more confirmation that LA is a scary-ass place where no one should live.

This spoiler is burning for you.

Fire rages through Griffith Park, and it looks like arson. At least four people are dead because of it. Make that five, as a heroic firefighter schleps in another crispy corpse before collapsing from smoke inhalation. As far as Brenda is concerned, this is a ginormous crime scene.

But that's not the end of her worries -- Brenda is saddled with reporter Ricardo Ramos. She is officially pissed off. Yeah, yeah, she promised she'd let a reporter ride along on her next case, but does it have to be this one? Yes, says Pope. Phooey.

It turns out body number five may be the source of the blaze -- she was dressed in highly flammable rayon and cotton, and doused in alcohol. And far from being homeless, as was originally thought, she seems to have bleached teeth and other signs of living comfortably. Unfortunately, they can't make n ID on her without fingerprints... And Gah! The only way to get those is to rehydrate one of her flambéed hands, then have Brenda don the skin like a glove so they can get fingerprints. Ew. Pardon me while I scrub my hands with bleach.

Of course, the arsonist looks obvious as soon as Buzz tapes the crowd -- Bill Croelick, the scary-snaky arsonist who escaped prosecution in season 1 is in the crowd, admiring the flames. Ramos wants to run his picture, but Brenda tells him Croelick tends to enjoy stalking people who piss him off. Plus, if the newspaper runs Croelick's pic, any half-decent lawyer can say that any witness who may come forward was influenced by the story. Ramos backs down.

Croelick himself shows up at the squad room later on, all but twirling his non-existent moustache in wicked glee. He spars with Brenda, and eventually seemingly backs her into a corner, blackmailing her to show him the source of the blaze. But it's a trap! Brenda and Co. follow him to the origin point (which isn't where one of the firefighters said it would be, curiously), but Croelick seems to be able to find it without trouble. After sharing much information about how the blaze could have started, he seems to slip up -- he reveals that he knew the victim was dead before she was set ablaze. Aha! How could you know that unless you killed her! Says Brenda. Croelick looks at Ramos and grins.

Yeah, about that -- it seems Ramos ignored Brenda's warnings, tracked Croelick  down and interviewed him, which is where he let slip the fact about the victim. Any case against Croelick is screwed. Taylor chews Ramos out, but a conversation with the reporter gives Brenda an idea... whoever started the fire knew how police and firefighters work. Hmmm.

Which leads us back to Tom, the heroic firefighter who retrieved the fifth body. He's in the LA Police impound lot, retrieving a car that just happens to belong to the victim. Turns out Tom was having an affair with the dead woman, and she threatened to tell his wife. An argument got out of hand, the mistress hit her head, and Tom decided to burn the body. He carefully cleared away all the flammable brush and such before torching her, but unfortunately a rat got set a light and scampered into the dry brush, causing the conflagration. Brenda arrests Tom for arson and the deaths of the other four victims of the fire.

Highlights, thoughts and odds and ends

• Brenda and Fritz are renting a place while they look for a new house. The landlord has a strict no-pets clause, so things are tense at home -- Kitty must never been seen, so the curtains must stay shut and the landlord can't come in to fix the toilet. Also, Brenda refuses to unpack as they're going to move as soon as possible anyway. Fritz once again deserve a medal for putting up with this.
• Brenda is horrified to discover that Fritz gets around the non-functioning toilet issue by using the shower as an alternate facility. Yes, it made me laugh.
• Fritz finally gets the better of Brenda by bringing Kitty into her office for the duration. This, of course, prompts Brenda to finally smooth things out with the landlord so Kitty can come home.
• There's something weird going on with Gabriel and Daniels -- he seems to be overly solicitous, and Daniels is getting pissy about it. $10 says she's pregnant.
• I kind of love Sanchez, especially when he took out his frustrations by using Ramos as a demonstration dummy for explaining how the killer dealt with the corpse. Hee! So much for improving relations between the police department and the media...
• I kind of love the white coat Brenda was wearing in the first scene, but I have to deplore her choices -- who wears white to a firestorm? It's worse than white shoes after Labor Day. Also, did she put on brown gauchos when she changed? Oh, Brenda!
• I loved Brenda's talk with Ramos when he suggested printing Croelick's picture: "You have two excellent chances of visiting the county morgue this week, and one of them is with me." Ulp!
• Is it wrong that I immediately pegged firefighter Tom as the killer just because he annoyed me so much as Leo on Charmed?
• Croelick was his usual menacing, snaky self when he appeared at Brenda's house at the end of the episode and giving Brenda some candles as a housewarming (if not house-burning) present. I hope we haven't seen the last of him, as Jason O'Mara certainly lights my fire. But why oh why didn't Brenda tell Fritz about Croelick's appearance? That little lie of omission is sure to come back and bite her in the butt.
• The opening sequence was yet more evidence that LA should be declared uninhabitable. Yeah, yeah, I know, fire happens everywhere (Chicago, my hometown, hosted a particularly great one a while ago), but California seems to burst into flames more often than most locales, and fire's pretty darn scary (behind only earthquakes and tsunamis as the Natural Disasters That Most Freaks Me The Hell Out). Even Brenda looked shell shocked by the conflagration.

Discuss 'The Closer' on the Zap2it Forum.

E-mail

• Digg
• Facebook
• Fark
• Yahoo Buzz
• Stumbleupon