Bosch, Season 2

It's time again for one of the best opening themes in television again (I'll just wait while you rewatch the Season 1 credits):

That's right, everyone, Bosch is back.

If you don't remember and are too apathetic to read my review of Season 1, Bosch is a police procedural based on the mystery novels of Michael Connolly (fun fact: The Lincoln Lawyer -- the book and the Matthew McConaughey movie -- are a spin-off of the Bosch novels; apparently the Lincoln Lawyer is Bosch's half-brother).

As we left Season 1, Detective Heironymous "Harry" Bosch (played by Titus Welliver) had stopped a serial killer, solved the murder of a little boy, and gotten himself deeply in trouble with the police department for reasons completely unrelated to his gruff personality and "pragmatism" when it comes to police procedure. It's now six months later; Bosch is back to work solving crimes when a mobbed-up Armenian pornographer is found shot dead and stuffed into the trunk of his Bentley.

Suspicion immediately falls on the victim's wife, Victoria Allen (played by Jeri Ryan), as Starfleet is always suspicious of the Borg:

Seriously, though, it's because Tony Allen was a man who launders money for Armenian organized crime and spent a lot of time in Vegas in the company of strippers not his wife. She just maybe was jealous and looking for some of the money.

But clearly she didn't double-tap Tony on a lonely California highway and shove him in his trunk. So who did?

Bosch applies his trademark lack of tact and vengeful need to get the perp to this case, even when it makes him enemies with the mob and the FBI. In the meantime, we continue to follow some of the other characters from Season 1; Deputy Chief Irving is still trying to finagle a chiefship out of Los Angeles politics and his son is working undercover for Internal Affairs. Surprisingly, these plots intersect with Bosch's main case in a way that is neither too brief nor too contrived.

I really enjoy Bosch. It's gritty; Los Angeles in this show is a hot desert full of nasty corrupt people, and that's just the police officers. But each person has a personality, real motivations, and are played well by a cast of people who generally aren't "Hollywood pretty." Even the villains are people, which is refreshing, because that wasn't true even for this show last season.

Last season, Reynard Waits was kidnapping mothers and leaving their infant kids behind in strollers crying. Reynard was a monster; remember that we are introduced to him with a dead prostitute in the back of his literal murder van. There are no monsters this season, just people who have decided to do evil. And the distinction is clear. Bad people still do normal things, like hang out with old friends and then go back to their hideouts to have trouble opening a tin of disgusting-looking Vienna sausages (maybe it was the lighting, but they looked super-gross). The show is better for it.

This gunfight, from the literally explosive final episode, was also one of the most "real" I've seen -- everyone's shooting blind, hitting things by luck alone, and desperately ducking not to get shot.

One warning: this season does not end "tidily." Yes, the bad guys are caught, but it's more of just a thing that happens than a denouement, because life continues to go on. It's interesting, it's plausible, but it's not an NCIS "got the bad guys let's high-five and have some drinks" kind of ending.

Latest TV News

We now interrupt your usual Fall TV blogging with some breaking news. I swear that Supergirl review is coming soon, but I've been seeing and reading so much good stuff on the internet lately (all hail the internet) that I just had to share.

First up! The return of one of television's most beloved franchises: Star Trek. CBS announced yesterday that it would create and air a new Star Trek series in 2017. The catch? While the pilot episode will premiere on CBS's television station, all other episodes will only air on the network's paid streaming service, CBS All Access.

I'm not sure I can adequately express how important this news is, not just for me, but for geeks everywhere. Star Trek: The Next Generation was one of my first fandoms and the first show I remember watching as a family. To this day, my brother and I have a tradition of seeing all the new Star Trek movies together (well at least at the same time since we live on different coasts).

As this most excellent article from The Verge points out, CBS is clearly using one of its most promising and popular established properties to send a clear signal that it is doubling down on its streaming service. Will it work? Only time will tell--but I'm not making any plans to subscribe just yet and I consider myself a big Star Trek fan. My current prediction is that CBS will only succeed in making it one of the most pirated shows on the internet (all hail the internet), but that's because the quality of Star Trek series since TNG has not been great. If CBS is really serious about making this work, they're going to need to get an amazing showrunner and fantastic writers to pull it off. If they try this shit with another Enterprise, well, it won't be pretty.

Speaking of networks upping their profile with new shows, Starz is really knocking it out of the park lately. They got on the map with Outlander, are developing American Gods (based on the Neil Gaiman novel) into a series, premiered Ash vs The Evil Dead on Halloween, and I am really excited about Flesh and Bone, an upcoming drama about ballet.

Center Stage fans, REJOICE!

Flesh and Bone is about a dancer getting her last shot! at living her dream! and dealing with mean dance company directors! But it also looks really beautiful, dark, and painful. So I'm on board. Flesh and Bone premieres on Starz on November 8. Break out your pointe shoes and set the DVR now.

Next in the "items I feel compelled to share" category, is this great bracket series over on Vulture dedicated to determining the Best High School Show in the Past 30 Years. If you're looking for something to distract you from the mind-numbing minutia of your everyday life, this series is it. The articles will fill your brain with happy memories of the shows that perfectly documented the angst and pain of teenage life. Early winners are Buffy and Daria (duh), but decisions are going to get really painful the more we need to cull the herd. I recommend reading this while at work, when you don't want to do work. Prefect time waster!

And finally...Jon Stewart is returning to television! Kinda. At some undetermined time. According to EW,"As part of a new four-year production agreement with the premium network, Stewart will create daily short-form content that will be showcased on the company’s streaming outlets HBO Go and HBO Now, as well as on other venues." It sounds kind of like Stewart has carte blanche to release short videos of himself talking about whatever strikes his fancy whenever the hell he wants. That's pretty sweet. But if it means more Jon Stewart in my life I am all for it.

That's all the news that's fit to print! See you soon with a Supergirl review and more fun from the internet (all hail the internet).

Bosch - newish from Amazon Prime

Hello, blog readers. I'm Ben, author of the instant classics guest posts on Daredevil and Peaky Blinders. Maggie Cats recruited me to come on full-time because I already had a clever Blogger handle: "the Pedant." As a name, it's both a promise and a threat.

I'm one of those "cord nevers" the cable company likes to pretend don't exist; I use my DSL to consume from streaming services, as well as taking advantage that someone else's parents pay good money for HBO GO. As a result, my posts will mostly be about the things that I dredge up from Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Today, I'm going to tell you about the fun new(ish, came out in February) Amazon Prime-only series Bosch. It's based on a series of books by writer Michael Connelly, which I haven't read, but I'm told are pretty good. In both books and show, LAPD detective Heironymous "Harry" Bosch solves crimes and gets justice, law and "the rules" be damned.

Harry Bosch is played by Titus Welliver, whom you may remember as "SHIELD Agent who Deathlok stomped into a coma in season one":

"Wait, Patton Oswalt gets a regular gig on this show, and I don't?"

Or perhaps as "Starfleet officer murdering intelligent beings for spaceship fuel" in Star Trek: Voyager:

"The Paramount folks found this expression too intense for Star Trek."

He's generally a character actor for shows (Sons of Anarchy, The Good Wife), which is sad, because Titus Welliver is actually a pretty decent actor, which I did not define by lowering the bar to "not having a brow-heavy glower in every scene."

While Harry Bosch does have his share of brow-heavy glowers (how could he not?), he's a troubled soul with a large arsenal of non-glower facial expressions. The season starts with Bosch shooting a suspected serial killer who turns out maybe to be unarmed, and he gets sued for it.

Bosch being in trouble for doing the right thing in sort of the wrong way is a recurring theme. His respect for police procedure and "the rules" is at his convenience, but he does get caught for it. Usually, though, he gets off with only a minor penalty because he did in fact stop a very bad guy, although it's not because the bad guy was bad, it's because punishing Bosch would be politically inconvenient for the LAPD. 

And then, for the first season's story arc, some other police find Evil Clone of Mark Ruffalo (Jason Gedrick, previously on Dexter) with a murdered male prostitute in the back of his panel van.

"I swear I have no idea how that rent boy got into my panel van to then stun gun and strangle himself to death."

Dark Ruffalo is named Raynard Waits, and after a day of pretending he knows nothing about anything, he then claims to have murdered a bunch of folks, including a a long-dead child whose remains Bosch has just found. But Bosch is pretty sure Dark Ruffalo didn't commit that murder. 

Finding out who did, and whether Dark Ruffalo will get his due, provides the tension for the season. And it is tense. Promising leads go nowhere, Bosch makes ill-considered decisions in his personal and professional life, and the higher-ups in the LAPD (mostly The Wire's Lance Reddick, playing a different high-ranking policeman) and District Attorney's office are scheming to take maximum political advantage of the fallout. 

Did I mention the opening theme? It's Caught a Ghost's "Can't Let Go," which is the best expression of jazzy jadedness towards life since Morphine's "The Night." It predisposes you to a story of grit, of perseverance against near-certain failure, of an ugly world that still needs saving. It's a great theme. 

So, if you have Amazon Prime, spend some time watching Bosch. Unless you hate gritty detective stories, you won't regret it. 

DragonCon: Star Trek The Next Generation Panel

Greetings, fellow nerds! (I'm just going to assume for the sake of that opener that we're all nerds here. If you aren't feel free to go read something more in line with your tastes).

I just got flew in from Atlanta and boy are my arms tired! Ok, fine, I've actually been back for about a week, but you haven't heard from me because I almost immediately went back out of town. This is actually pretty much the regular state of things for the next few weeks, so stop complaining and be happy I can post at all.

That sounded way bitchier than I intended.

Anyhoodle, I'm back for now and it's time to catch you up on the amazing television-related fun I had recently at DragonCon, a huge pop culture, multi-media, gaming, comics, sci-fi, etc. etc. convention in Atlanta every year over Labor Day weekend. There are panels for everything and television is definitely well represented--specifically sci-fi and fantasy themed television.

As we wander in the wasteland between now and the start of the Fall tv season (which is actually coming a lot sooner than you think), I am going to post about all the panels at DragonCon that I think might be relevant to your interests. First up....Star Trek: The Next Generation (ST:TNG).

This panel was on my must-view list, especially since it contained my favorite Star Trek actor of all time. No, it's not Patrick Stewart or George Takei (wrong Star Trek, people), but John de Lancie, who played the omnipotent Q. He was fun evil, funny, enigmatic, and everything awesome. And because I am a kind tv blogger who loves my reading audience, I took notes!

There was a surprisingly large number of questions for John de Lancie about his other acting work, especially his voice acting. Hopefully you are aware that he voiced a popular character on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. The character was essentially Q (in pony form) and he told an amusing anecdote about how he had never heard of the show when his agent called and told him they wanted him on the show. He was surprised how good the show was when he read the script, went in and recorded for the episode and promptly forgot about it. Until the episode aired and his email blew up with people freaking out over how amazing it was and how great the character was (by the way--the people emailing him were not little girls, they were bronies). Since that first episode, he has come back 4 or 5 times and will even sing a song in an upcoming episode. Later, de Lancie learned from the creators that his pony character was actually inspired by Q and the network had specifically requested that he do the voice.

John de Lancie was also asked about his recent work on Breaking Bad. He talked about how terrific the writing is and what "consummate actors" Brian and Aaron are (though referring to actors that way kind of seems like a cliche to me). He also mentioned that when the writing is that good, all you have to do as an actor is get out of the way of the words.

Moving on to Brent Spiner, he was asked how he felt about the ending of the last TNG movie, Nemesis. Spoiler alert: Data dies (gasp!) but there is a second Data called B4 (beta Data?) who could have conceivably carried any Data-centric story-lines. The ending of Nemesis was fairly controversial among the fans with most people basically hating it. But Spiner said that he was fine about the demise of Data and figured the writers would always find a way to bring him back in the next movie. And in the end, since there did not end up being another movie, it became a big dramatic moment for Data.

Someone also asked Spiner about the rumor that he never actually watched a full episode of ST:TNG. He responded that he did watch some of the earlier episodes...but just flat ran out of time to watch in the later years. Suuuuuuuure.

Marina Sirtis also had some really interesting things to say about the character of Troi throughout the run of the show. She mentioned that if you go back and look at it, Troi was actually always right when she warned Picard against some course of action....but he more often than not ignored her. Sirtis also complained that Troi often had stupid lines (her words, not mine) along the line of "He's hiding something." On one memorable occasion she said her line to Patrick Stewart ("he's hiding something") and Stewart shot back, "We know that, you stupid cow." Apparently she got all up in his face calling him "Your Majesty" and he had to go and hide behind Brent Spiner. She's a spirtfire, that Marina Sirtis.

Other random Troi-related facts: the only time you saw her real hair was in the pilot (when it was all frizzy). After that, it was wigs. Also, the development of Troi as a character throughout the series is kind of fascinating. She basically went from mere window-dressing to a full-fledged officer. Sirtis notes that Gene Rodenberry wanted a counselor as a prominent member of the crew to show the importance of both mental and physical health to the society of the future. But then the writers didn't really know what to do with her. It was only when Denise Crosby left the show and Troi was the only woman left on the bridge that the writers really started thinking more about her character.

In closing, I just want to say that it was a real thrill seeing these actors in person. Say what you want about Star Trek, it was my first fandom and the first concrete thing I can remember having in common with my brother. In fact, we still bond over it to this day. It was also fun sitting in the room surrounded by other Trek fans--and since it was DragonCon, you know a lot of them had really fun costumes.

 Trek cosplayers march in the DragonCon parade on Saturday morning.

 Coming up next: the Buffy the Vampire Slayer panel!