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'The Closer': Things fall apart.
This week on The Closer, we learn that the gentlemen of the press are nefarious, that Brenda doesn't like soap operas, that Tao has a flare for misdirection, and that Provenza likes to be well shod. Oh, and there's a crime, too!
This spoiler wants you to live! (In jail.)
The corpse of the week is special for a couple of reasons: One, Brenda gets the call about the body not from dispatch, but from Ramos, the reporter who tagged along with her in the season opener. Apparently he's trying to mend fences, because he figured she'd be interested in reason two: Said corpse is wearing a wire. Is he an undercover cop, a police informant, someone working with the Feds? Difficult to tell -- there's no ID, and various agencies deny all knowledge. And while the wire was transmitting to a receiver, that receiver could be anywhere in the downtown area.
Luckily, Provenza recognizes that the body is wearing custom-made shoes and uses that to find the victim's name. He's Ben Masters, a former real-estate agent who fell on hard times when he got laid off. His wife didn't know about the layoff, and besides, if he's really unemployed, where did he get that recent $100,000 bonus? Good question.
After a long search, Flynn, Sanchez and (a very bitter) Provenza find the receiver. Apparently, he had wired himself -- he wasn't working with anyone. Weird. The murder is caught on video, but we don't see the killer's face. Provenza is able to find a distinguishing characteristic (a rather gaudy ring), and, as a bonus, they find out that Ramos didn't perform CPR when he found the victim, as he claimed. Instead, he apparently rifled through his pockets. Nice! (Because if this show teaches us anything, it's that members of the press are eeeeeevil, and a bit stupid. Thanks, guys!)
Brenda and Pope force the reporter to run a false story claiming they were still looking for the receiver. They run into a wrinkle: When Fritz helps them decipher the victim's cellphone, he realizes that the guy was linked to a large South American drug cartel that he's been trying to take down. He wants to turn the murderer to help his case. Fritz wants casually asks Brenda where Masters lived, anyway. Brenda tells him -- sort of. She gives him Masters' home address, but fails to mention the condo Masters was squatting in downtown. This effectively sends Fritz in the wrong direction.
At the condo, Brenda and the team nab Dean Murphy, who Masters' widow identifies as an old high school buddy of Ben's who got into drugs. Brenda has Tao perform some slight of hand with a dopp kit and breath freshener, which appears to "prove" Dean's guilt. Brenda gets a confession -- I hooked Ben up with the drug mule job, then "borrowed" a bit of coke for an outside deal, and Ben was going to turn me into the cartel! I had to kill him!
Of course, that's only half the battle -- Brenda still has to get Dean to jail, instead of into the Feds' tender care. She spins a story about how the Feds can't possibly protect him -- look at how Ben died despite the wire! -- and that he'd be better off plea-bargaining his way to life in prison. He'd be locked up, but he'd be alive. Ben refuses, and an irate Fritz comes in to talk to him. When Fritz comes home the next day, he announces that Brenda won -- Dean ultimately decided to go to jail rather than risk death by working with the FBI. Fritz is furious, and Brenda can't quite get why. Things don't look good for these two.
Highlights, thoughts and odds and ends
- Again, sorry for the delay. Last week, the sea loins did a good job of getting me the episode on time, but this week's delivery was hampered when the loons declared a national holiday and sat around drinking beer. Curses. Next week, I'll have parachuted back into home base, so our long national late-recap nightmare will be over. Apologies.
- Ooooh, this is an uncomfortable episode on a lot of fronts. First off, Gabriel and Daniels have gone from shooting each other dirty looks to having whispered fights to shouting at each other. Gabriel tells Brenda they broke up, and, for the good of the team, one of them should go. He nominated Daniels. Lovely. Brenda is just as disgusted as I am -- Daniels' forensic accounting skills are more necessary than Gabriel's generalist resume, so he can transfer his own damn ass out. Yeouch.
- That development only ratchets up the tension between the exes. In the end, Gabriel and Daniels get into a screaming match in an interview room. Provenza and Buzz are watching (with popcorn!) much to Brenda's (eventual) disgust. She orders the exes into her office. This, too becomes Daniels' fault in Gabriel's eyes. Sigh. At least Brenda scares them into submission.
- Things are even more tense between Brenda and Fritz. Fritz is livid -- you asked for my help, took what you wanted, jerked me around and then got the result you thought was right with no consideration for me. Brenda protests she's working for justice, but Fritz isn't buying it. She just cares about closing her cases! It's hard to argue, since Brenda had said that she didn't want the killer to get "a few months in a powder-puff prison and a nice house in Idaho on the federal government." I get her point -- criminals should pay for their crimes -- but she's fooling herself if she thinks she's looking out for the victim alone. If that were the case, she would have been a bit more sensitive to the widow. I have to side with Fritz here.
- Of course, Fritz lashes out at Brenda with something calculated to make her the most uncomfortable: "I'm going to find my sponsor, I'm going to go to a meeting. Maybe two." We all know Brenda can't handle references to Fritz's addiction.
- On to lighter notes: Provenza was in fine form this ep as he talked about his bespoke shoes. "You wear home-made shoes?" Brenda says with some trepidation. "Custom made!" Provenza insists. There is a difference, Brenda, and it usually involves a couple of decimal places. (Which Flynn address -- "Does Medicare pay for those?" Hee!)
- Later, Provenza was exceedingly pissy about having to schlep around looking for the victim's car. "What's the matter, your Medicare shoes don't like walking?" "One of my Medicare shoes is about to walk up your ass..." Provenza snarls.
- Flynn using his head as an antenna was a thing of beauty. Mythbusters strikes again!
- Sanchez has his moments, too, with his take on the Miranda rights: "You have the right to shut up. Any stupid thing you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If your broke ass can't afford it..."
- Finally, I loved how Tao got into the spirit of things with the "blood spatter" testing kit: "This is the latest in LAPD technology." I like to think it's a swipe at the department, as he had earlier complained about not having the same fun toys as the FBI guys.
- Finally, I loved the stand-off between Pope and Fritz outside the interrogation room. "I'll just wait here with you..."
Sea loins? Hee-hee-hee...
There's a great article in TV Guide this week on Flynn and Provenza (as well as the actors, of course, but really, it's the characters everyone cares about), not to be missed.
I usually get annoyed when both the main and sub-story of an episode cover the same topic (in this case, relationship problems, real or potential), because I feel like I'm being beaten over the head with it. Sure, the major blow-up between Gabriel and Daniels was going to happen eventually, but to dovetail it into the end-of-episode fight between Fritz and Brenda was a mite heavy-handed. Sure, I'm all for foreshadowing, but still...too much of anything is not necessarily grand.
The head-as-antenna thing has been known for a number of years, but I believe it's the first time I've seen it used on a fictional TV show. The fact that it both worked and it was Flynn who did it made me laugh enough that I had to head to the bathroom next commercial break.
This is the third time this season when the case du jour did not interest me as much as the goings-on elsewhere. My favorite moment was when Provenza and the others were listening in on the fight going on between Daniels and Gabriel. Brenda did the "I'm surrounded by children, I swear to God" expression quite well...you'd think Kyra Sedgwick was a mother in real life or something. :P (That was sarcasm, by the way, for those who don't possess that particular skill.)
I'm glad they moved this one from last week. It would've seemed a bit clunky, otherwise, in terms of continuity.
Dark Disciple | Aug 5, 2008 3:09:22 PM | #The Daniels/Gabriel thing is tired. Enough already. Provenza was wonderful. More of him. But above all, let's have more of Brenda. Kyra is riveting in this role.
jfms777 | Aug 5, 2008 5:16:33 PM | #I thought Provenza did a great job identifying the shoes and finding the victim's name thereby. I don't blame him for being miffed that he didn't get more credit for that. Also luvved him and Buzz with the popcorn, watching the "soap opera."
As you mentioned, Tau, Sanchez, and Flynn also got some good bits in.
These were not Gabriel's finest moments.
On the other hand, I thought Fritz was quite justified in his complaints against Brenda. She may not have "lied" to him, but she deliberately misled him. I think he was absolutely right to call her out on just wanting to close her case. I felt she was far more motivated by that than by "justice."
meggins | Aug 5, 2008 8:45:16 PM | #Oh, Brenda definitely screwed Fritz over (and not in the good way like in a few episodes ago!)He had every right to be furious.
It's sweet that he thinks he can trust her because she's his fiance, but he really should know better by now. I believe she may have blown it for good (or at least several episodes) this time.
And when Fritz confronted her, she was not contrite so much as she was sorry that she got caught being cutthroat and playing fast and loose with his trust.
The others were great - Provenza and Flynn always make me laugh and I loved Tao's improvisation with the crime kit.
binkythecat | Aug 6, 2008 3:55:36 PM | #Sigh. One of these days, someone needs to invent a context checker -- sure, I'm using real words, but are they words I MEAN to use? Said Context Checker would definitely come in handy for those times when a post is WAY too late and I need to get it up asap. But hey, my mistake could launch plenty of risque movie ideas (Just give me a royalty/finder's fee if you invent either a context-checker or sea-mammal erotica.)
(Yes, I'm sure sea-mammal erotica already exists. Like Brenda, I really don't want to know.)
Yeah, Brenda's behavior at the end of the ep was not good -- she totally missed the point. I didn't lie to you, she said -- and that' true,l but she knew damn well what she was doing when she made that promise not to go near the home. To an extent, I think she (probably unconsciously) trade on the puppy-adorable factor -- yeah, I just peed on the carpet, but look how damn cute I am! She was sort of hoping Fritz would say Awwww, that's ok,. I can't stay mad at you. And she needs to realize that she really is screwing Fritz over. It's a big deal. She can't play fast and loose with the people she wants to trust her -- at least, not if she wants them to trust here AGAIN, and that's what she's expecting Fritz to do. It just doesn't work.
But kudos to the writers for going there with their main character. I love that Brenda is, and always has been, quite flawed.
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