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Tuesday 22 May 2012

The Closer - 6.6: "Off the Hook" Review


Brenda investigates the murder of a parole board member, who was stalked and called for help from a detective, but dialled Gabriel's number instead.

Gabriel (Corey Reynolds) receives a call  from a woman asking for a 'Detectiv...errico' as there's an intruder in the house.   Her gun is missing.  Taylor (Robert Gossett) wants the names of all detectives handling stalker cases, leading to a Det Verico, (Jon Seda) she mixed his name up, and when attempting to call him dialled the wrong number and got through to Gabriel instead.  Ross was shot and killed.   Pope (JK Simmons) sets up 'Operation Swift Justice' coordinating with other forces.  

As Ross (Jossie Thacker) was on the parole board,  Medina (Rolando Molina) was a prisoner who could have hired someone to kill Danielle Ross as he did with his wife.   Brenda (Kyra Sedgwick) refuses to interview him as she doesn't know anything about him.  

Visiting Ross' s house they find security bars everywhere and she was being stalked, but there's no gun anywhere and in her bedroom they smell the lingering scent of gardenias.   A box cutter was found and was used on her after she was already dead, having been shot with her own gun.    Det Verico arrives at her house and regrets not being here sooner.   She was being stalked and her car was broken into, nothing was taken.   She had refused police protection.   Pope berates Verico for not doing his job and letting this happen, before suspending him.  So if she was in contact with Verico, why didn't she have his home number or his cell number, instead of reaching him at the PD.

At her home, she and the team meet with Verico, he used to check up on Ross but he was working seven days off and one week on and this was his week off.   That wouldn't have stopped him checking on her, if he was really that worried about her.   Brenda warns Tao (Michael Paul Chan) off feeding her cat at the table, yet she did the same thing in the previous episode.

During the interrogation, Medina keeps calling Gabriel "boy" and refers to Ross as a "black bitch."   Brenda has to control Gabriel, not that he would have lost his temper at Medina, though he should have.   Pope's in her ear telling her to ask all sorts of silly and irrelevant questions.

Brenda uses Flynn's (Tony Denison) card to swipe into Pope's office so they can use the conference room as an HQ away from the others, thus giving Brenda an idea as to how Ross's killer got into her house unnoticed.   Conway (Falk Hentschel)  was a prisoner who got out early as part of the Early Release Programme and was a drug addict.   He killed a man for cash.   The CS photos from that murder are similar to the photos concerning Ross's shooting.   Verico thinks Ross's stalker was a woman, so Gabriel suggest the killer may have a wife or girlfriend.   Conway doesn't have a wife or girlfriend.   Ross released him as part of the programme but he wanted to stay in jail.   He found the box cutters in the Vic's toolbox and a set of box cutters was found in Ross's house.   He wants them to tell the Vic's  wife he's sorry.

An episode where you can't immediately tell who the killer actually is, cos the gardenia scent could just be a red herring, and also since the Vic's wife, Ann (Olivia Burnette) wasn't mentioned until near the end.   That made a change since the rest of the time the suspects are glaringly obvious and I always work out who did it.

Ann is brought in and Gabriel informs her they arrested the wrong man for her husband's murder.   She's wearing gardenia perfume, the scent lingering in Ross's house.   She seems to be genuinely upset so they offer to drive her home, but as with Brenda you know it's just an elaborate plan on her part to catch her out.   Setting up plenty of police roadblocks so they can drive to Ross's house and stop in front.   Brenda grabs hold of Ann's garage remote and opens the door to Ross's garage with it.   Ann modified it when she stole it from Ross's car when she broke into it.   She blamed Ross for releasing Conway early.   Well it was too late now to get her revenge, it wasn't going to bring her husband back.

Pope tells Verico he's back at work but tells him he was unfortunate in responding in the way he did for holding him responsible for Ross's death, but doesn't apologize.   Then he makes excuses to Brenda about needing  to put the LAPD officers in a good light and says he's doing the best to protect LAPD officers.   Brenda adds there's still no apology.   Pope shouldn't have this job and she tells him she'd be disappointed if she couldn't do better than him as Chief.

Brenda: "This whole Chief selection process, it has not brought out the best in you and if this is how you intend to run the Department, I'm not even sure it's a job you should have."
Pope: "Do you think you could do better?"
Brenda: "I'd be really disappointed if I couldn't." And so would we. Of course she can do better, since she sees more than red tape and bureaucracy, she sees the human side and has far more compassion to get the job done, irrespective of whether the Vics are ordinary people or even criminals themselves.   See next episode where the Department agrees.

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