I Watch TV: Bosch: Legacy: Season 3

 

Bosch: Legacy Season 3

Bosch comes to an end, or as much of an end as it ever can*. One of it’s interesting features is that storylines – criminal cases or relationships – don’t fit neatly into episodes or seasons.

For example, Kurt Dockweiler kidnapped Maddie Bosch at the end of Bosch: Legacy Season One, and was caught at the start of Season Two. His trial was part of the background of the rest of Season Two, culminating in him being sent to prison, and there murdered by an inmate. At the end of Season Two Maddie picks up the phone for her father, Harry Bosch, and gets a message from Preston Borders, an inmate at the prison Dockweiler was in, saying he took care of Dockweiler.

Eight months later this call, from a prison phone, is reviewed and Jimmy Robertson, a detective from earlier Bosch, and his partner are put on the case. This is political; lawyer Honey Chandler is running for District Attorney. With the police ignoring her (a former defence lawyer) she turns to Harry Bosch (a private detective) for security. This turns out to be needed as a disgruntled former police officer attacks her. Still, the current District Attorney, facing a close race, uses Bosch being under investigation to smear her.

Bosch told Maddie he didn’t know Preston Borders which was true, but incomplete. Maddie has doubts after an old army buddy tells a tale of Bosch committing a war crime as revenge on a bomber. As ever, it’s not quite as bad as it seems; Bosch had another inmate make sure that Dockweiler’s time in prison was hard, in return for a parole recommendation. Learning of this Borders has framed Bosch as part of a convoluted escape plan.

Bosch though has another job. A family has gone missing and when the grandmother came over from Ireland the sheriff recommended Bosch. He digs into their life and business. Because of Chandler’s election campaign and the Dockweiler investigation he keeps getting interrupted. It’s fairly grim and sordid.

Maddie, a police officer, and her partner Vasquez are investigating some “follow home” robberies. Rich people go out for the night, pull into their driveway and are held up at gunpoint. The interesting thing is how professional they are. They pick targets with valuable watches, jewellery and cash who don’t put up a struggle, their vehicle is nondescript and has false plates, and the valuables don’t show up in the usual places. They catch a lead when a distinctive, registered watch shows up; Fortune, a woman who knows record producers, is selling nice items to singers, bands and their hangers on at recording studios. She’s the brains of the operation, the reason why her two idiot male sidekicks don’t get caught, which is interesting as one of the boys has a police relative, you’d think that he would be the one keeping them one step ahead. Denise Sanchez, playing Vasquez, got promoted to main character in the opening credits last season and finally they’ve got a story for her.

Not so much for Mo, Bosch’s tech guy. He picks up some threads from last season, but they don’t add up to much. He’s definitely Bosch’s sidekick, rather than either being active on his own or having things happen to him. Maddie does a bit better, shaping both Bosch’s story and Vasquez’s with her own opinions and actions, and even Chandler’s a bit.

In the second half of the season things change; shortly after clearing Bosch of the Dockweiler murder Jimmy Robertson is himself murdered. With a copkiller on the loose Chandler, as newly elected DA, has a challenge on her hands. They find and arrest a suspect, but there’s flaws in the evidence. With the police convinced they’ve got the right guy she calls on Bosch to investigate. Bosch had worked with Jimmy before (“What are we friends now,” were his last words to him) so it’s personal.

This all ties up in nine episodes, though Chandler is left with one hanging plot line of a city councilman who drugs men he picks up. This leaves us with one final episode, a backdoor pilot. Bosch has been carrying around some unsolved murders of “The Flower Girls,” Filipino sex workers. Detective Renee Ballard comes to get the files from him, as the originals have gone missing. They do a classic fail-to-trust one another dance, team up and solve the case in an efficient one episode story. Something that Bosch and Bosch: Legacy mostly didn’t do!

Does this end with a bang or a whimper? It ties things up a bit too neatly, while leaving things open. Is justice done? A difficult question to answer, the noir elements coming forward in the conclusion. Jimmy’s murderer is captured, but by a tertiary character, and the case is made a federal one, taking it away from Chandler – politics coming in. Bosch solves the mystery of the missing family, and the perpetrator pays a price for it. But not a just one or a clean one or the one Maddie wanted him to exact. The follow home robbers are caught but this hurts Vasquez, and pushes her away from Maddie. And of course Bosch’s hands weren’t entirely clean of Dockweiler’s death, having pushed other inmates to cause problems for him.

The noir elements have always helped to lift the series. Back when Bosch was in the LAPD it showed that cops are human beings, hence corrupt, political, out for their own benefit, violent, abusive, lawless; also cops are the only line of defence against gay serial killers, child murderers, drug smugglers, hitmen, sexy murderous widows, and politicians. Even more so in Bosch: Legacy, when Bosch is free to draw his own lines rather than shade over the police ones. Indeed Jimmy makes that point, that Bosch is a law unto himself, and when they investigate they do some dubious things. “We need to out-Bosch Bosch,” he tells his partner, and later tells Bosch. “You got Bosched”**.

Anyway, Bosch was good, Bosch: Legacy a fine continuation.

Watch This: Noir flavoured crime stories intertwined cleverly
Don’t Watch This: Nothing starts, nothing ends – until the end here when it’s all tied up

* See Ballard; review forthcoming 

** My favourite part of Bosch: Legacy is when Bosch says “It’s Boschin’ time,” and Bosched all over the bad guys