Of all of the cop or detective shows I’ve seen over the years, I can relate to this one better than any of them. You see, years ago, I was a detective. I wasn’t a cop and mostly did internal investigations for a large Florida retail chain. While I was a fair detective in most areas, I did eventually develop a specialty of sorts. When other detectives ran into a brick wall interviewing their subjects, they’d often call on me to get whatever information they were trying to extract. No, I didn’t beat it out of them. I was never a physically intimidating guy. I was just good at getting them to talk. I guess I was a little bit of a con artist who was working for the good guys instead of preying on hapless marks. I never lied to a subject and never threatened violence. It was a battle of wits, and I always won. That’s exactly how you would describe Brenda Johnson (Sedgwick) in The Closer. While the series was, in many ways, your standard procedural police drama, each episode would end with Brenda getting some reluctant perp to spill their guts. She relied on southern charm. She looked and sounded harmless enough that she could get the person to lower their guard and fall for one rather simple trick or another. Case closed.
Brenda Johnson was brought to L.A. from Atlanta, where she had a reputation of getting things done. She was brought in to help the department deal with a bad reputation when it came to murders. Chief Will Pope (Simmons) hired her to get the department back on track. She was given the title of Deputy Chief and a team of elite investigators. The Priority Homicide Unit investigated high profile or particularly difficult murder cases. The team included veteran detective Lt. Provenza (Bailey) who wasn’t above bending a few rules to get the bad guy. Lt. Michael Tao (Chan) was the tech-savvy guy in the group. Commander Taylor (Gossett) is often her biggest critic in the team. He believed that he should have gotten her job. Sergeant Gabriel (Reynolds) and Detective Irene Daniels (Ravera) are an on-again off-again item in the office, providing for some extra tension. Brenda’s engaged to FBI Agent Fritz Howard (Tenney), whom she marries by the fourth season of the show.
The show is a basic procedural. Each week a new case is brought in, and the team attacks the various angles. But there would be some serious changes as the season went through seven seasons. There really isn’t anything unique about the show’s cases. What makes it work is the chemistry the team has and the ease with which they can work. But unlike many such shows, this isn’t all a collection of yes-men. There are internal politics, and not everyone likes everyone else. The standout character has to be Lt. Provenza, played by MASH’s G.W.Bailey. The character is actually a lot like that show’s Rizzo. Just pretend that he finally got out of the Army and got into law enforcement. He’s always complaining and getting into trouble, but he’s smart, and his instincts are often dead-on. The Brenda/Fritz relationship is very much a distraction to the show. Whenever we’re involved in their domestic lives, we can’t wait for her to get back to work. It’s not that it’s a very touchy-feely relationship, because it’s not. But Fritz is the only character she doesn’t appear to share any chemistry with. The scenes together just fall dead. Finally J.K. Simmons from Law & Order and the Spider-Man films is wonderful, yet again, as Brenda’s boss.
Tony Denison plays Andy Flynn. As the series begins, he’s actually planted as a spy for Commander Taylor, played by Robert Gossett, who is angry that Brenda was hired outside of the current force. He thought Brenda’s job should have been his, so he plants Flynn to spy. Eventually both characters end up supporting her, and the Flynn character shared great chemistry with Bailey. They started to write episodes that featured these two often getting into trouble that the team has to get them clear of. There’s a lot of comedy gold here that survives when this show ends and is spun-off as Major Crimes (more on that later).
Corey Reynolds stars as David Gabriel. While he’s the lowest on the team in rank, Brenda takes a liking to him, and he ends up being her partner often when she’s out in the field. His character likely evolves the most from the start to the finish of the series, and it’s a credit to Reynolds, who does a great job of allowing Gabriel to go from green to a much more mature officer by the end.
Michael Paul Chan is Mike Tao. He’s often the more tech-skilled officer and usually the calming influence on the team. Raymond Cruz is Julio Sanchez, who has an ear to the city’s gang situation and is a bit of a quiet character, which never quite seemed to fit for me. There’s not a lot of life in the ,and it stays that way pretty much through the seven years until the spin-off where he becomes a much more fully rounded guy. Gina Ravera played Irene Daniels, and she left the series in 2009. The worst part is you never really miss her. That’s not the fault of the actress. It was a pretty diminished character that wasn’t ever really given any meat, and she’s really the only main character that didn’t last all seven years.
Finally, Phillip P. Keene plays Buzz, who is a civilian but runs all of the tech. He video records the crime scenes, and toward the end of the series ends up mixed up with Flynn and Provenza for some interesting episodes.
Kyra Sedgwick announced before the start of the seventh season that the show would end its run, as she planned to leave the show and she was, after all the titular character. But by January of that season, the powers that be at TNT decided the show needed to continue. It was their best-rated original show, and in its sixth year it was the number-one rated television drama. So they decided the show would go on without its star. They tacked on an extra six episodes to the usual 15 to serve as a kind of transition to the new show, to be called Major Crimes. Reynolds and Simmons were pretty much the only actors who did not return.
Season 5 would introduce Mary McDonnell as an internal affairs captain. Raydor would start out as a kind of nemesis for Brenda. By the end of the show they became allies when the Chief of Police job came open and Raydor would support Brenda’s attempt to win the job. What hadn’t been planned then but worked out as if it had was that Raydor would take over the team when Brenda left the show.
You get the complete series here, with all of the extras from the series releases ported over. Mostly they include deleted scenes and a few behind-the-scenes segments scattered throughout the set.
This one flew under my radar for far too long. If you have missed out on this one as well, don’t wait to get on board. Fortunately, you can start anywhere and not feel like you’re missing anything. The characters are wonderful, and that’s what sells the show. There is continuity, but each episode is a complete case.
I found the show interesting enough, but I just never really became a fan of Sedgwick or her character. Other personalities were much more interesting, and I actually enjoyed the spin-off better than I did The Closer. The show has its ups and downs, and if you’re a fan of Major Crimes, this is where it all really started, and I encourage you to jump at a chance to have the entire series together for the first time. It’s an easy show to binge, and the evolution of these characters that we would get to know even better in Major Crimes makes this a nice collection to own. “Let’s go watch some TV.”
