(S05E14) "Hello, Beau Bridges? Yes, this is The Closer calling. Would you like an Emmy nomination? You would... Okay, we're sending you the script now."

Perhaps it didn't happen exactly that way, but here was a show in which a gifted actor was presented a wonderful opportunity and he rose to the occasion. The Closer is one of those procedurals that has a deft touch with the comic episodes. Oh yeah, there are occasions when it gets a little bizarre -- and this episode might have gone there but it didn't. Instead, we had a terrific twist in more ways than one.

We also got to see how adorable Kyra Sedgwick looks in a hot pink ski parka. For more on the wardrobe and the old folks getting killed by the faux nurse, read on.

Before Flynn, Provenza's partner was George Andrews, and by all accounts, he was quite a guy. While Provenza was nostalgic about reconnecting with George, Brenda was ticked. I don't blame her. She was ready for a ski vacation with Fritz when this old case was dumped on Major Crimes and Provenza hadn't bothered to tell her. He had a handle on it, he said, but that was before the train with George Andrews arrived.

I hadn't anticipated that George had become Georgette. Provenza was undone that his ex-partner was a transsexual. That didn't matter to the case, except that Georgette couldn't testify as a woman because the confession he/she had obtained had been as a man. I agreed with Brenda about this one: "We need her testimony, not her testicles."

As played by Beau Bridges, Georgette had her pride. She was not going to deny herself to appear in court as a man. That would have been a lie. Provenza tried to bully Georgette to "man up." Strap 'em down and testify.

The Closer is nothing if not clever in the writing. Georgette wouldn't perjure herself, but she would go undercover. That meant pretending to be a man to get Doris Osgood to implicate her son in the crime and connect her to the other -- previously undiscovered -- murders of the older patients who presumably died of natural causes.

Beau was much more attractive as George. As Georgette, he was a very ugly woman, especially because of the eyebrows. A real tranny would have had those brows manicured. But he was great in the interview room.

I also loved how Georgette was still straight, in that he (George), still was attracted to women. He had his eyes on Brenda and her "caboose." It drove Provenza -- who we now know is Louie Provenza -- nuts. Favorite line: "You had a sex change to become a lesbian?"

The big tipoff on the plot was the son. He wasn't that naive to believe that the LAPD wanted to clear his mother's name. He would have consulted with those expensive lawyers of his, so that's when it seemed that Osgood was involved in his mother's crimes.

The subplot of the Big Bear ski weekend was fun, if only to see how Fritz played Brenda. He's getting really good at it; first with Joel, now with this trip. Sending her pictures from the slopes was proper motivation for her to close the case. The fact that she never made it to the ski resort wasn't as important as the pink parka made it to the romantic clinch at the end.