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The Closer: To Protect & Serve
(S02E05) I had a hard time with this episode. I never really understood what Brenda's motivation was to help Lt. Provenza and Det. Flynn cover up their major blunder. At the end, she makes it clear that she was protecting her own but it seemed awfully out of character for her. Or did it?
But I'm way ahead of myself. This episode began and ended as a comedy. Lt. Provenza and Det. Flynn, decked out in their LA Dodgers gear, find a body in Provenza's garage. They decide not to call it in because they won't get to see the game from their Skybox seats. Besides, the body will be there when they return. But, it disappears. They discover that Robbery/Homicide is investigating a dead body at a park and it turns out to be the same woman who was dead in Provenza's garage. Well, these two goofballs drop Dep. Chief Brenda Johnson's name and decide to take over the investigation.
Brenda wrangles most of her Priority Homicide team, except Sgt. Gabriel, to help with the off-the-books murder investigation. She and her cronies play all sorts of tricks-- from accidentally advising a suspect to get a lawyer, to disabling the recording gear in an interview room (complete with a shout out to The Sound of Music?), to calling in a bomb threat to their own police station. Brenda also gets her boyfriend, Fritz, to take over part of the investigation before the victim's boyfriend admits to finding the body in Provenza's garage and then dragging it to the park.
The team manages to discover who killed the woman. It ends up being the father of a little girl whom the victim gave birth to through a surrogate pregnancy. Brenda gets the man to admit his crime and the DA to draw up the charges without revealing where the killer left the woman's body.
Well, I had been asking for Brenda to screw up. She didn't get caught doing it and everything worked out-- but she definitely screwed up big time with what she did. I found the story parallels amusing-- the investigators were cleaning up after their own crimes as they investigated another one. I wonder if any of them will use this in the future to hold over Brenda when she really pisses them off? I think we also learned a lot about how Brenda feels about her teammates. Everyone is definitely not equal. She obviously adores Flynn and Provenza, because she went way out of her way to cover up their asses. To me, her actions said she has less respect for the three other members of the squad, Det. Daniels, Det. Sanchez, and Lt. Tao. And, obviously, by keeping Sgt. Gabriel in the dark, she respects him the most. She said she kept him out of it so she could get an unbiased/untainted view on the investigation, but it seemed like the real reason she had him doing paperwork was to keep his nose clean. Interesting dynamic.
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