The Closer (TV)

The Closer

Brenda Leigh Johnson : Kyra Sedgwick
Will Pope : J.K. Simmons
Captain Taylor : Robert Gossett
Agent Fritz Howard : Jon Tenney

The Closer, a new police drama on TNT, is about a police detective Brenda Leigh Johnson who transfers from Atlanta to LA to head up a special unit handling sensitive high-profile murder cases.

The first episode introduces us to Johnson and lets us know about her talents and quirks. Johnson, it appears, is a world-class interrogator but has some severe personality problems. Her first day on the job she introduces herself to her colleges by barging onto an crime scene, taking over the investigation and treating all of the other detectives on the scene with total contempt.

Johnson’s underlings, not appreciating her methods, all request transfers that she handles in a sensitive fashion by one by one dropping their transfer requests in the trash. She obviously has never read Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People”.

Throughout the rest of the commercial free hour episode Johnson continues to offend and intimidate all, but slowly wins the respect of her people, because she proves to be so very good at her job.

The case under investigation, involves a murdered women, a missing high tech genius, believed to be the murderer, and his “emotional” platonic lover, a young Catholic women. The case is somewhat interesting and ends with a bit of twist, which I won’t reveal here so as not to spoil it.

Kyra Sedgwick does a good job playing the part of Brenda Leigh Johnson, bringing to life all of her quirks and bad habits but the problem is that the character is just too damn annoying. Quirky detectives are a staple of the genre, but to be successful they have to be likable, such as Lieutenant Columbo with his well worn raincoat or Adrian Monk with his cleanliness fetish. Johnson’s character just hits too close to home; she has weird facial expressions, bad habits and a nasty disposition. Do we really want to spend an hour of our time each week being annoyed by a fictional television character when we would go out of our way to avoid the same type of person in real life?

Another problem I had with this show and with most of the other crime shows currently on television is their insistence on showing us all of the gory details of the crime scene. In this episode we were exposed to a full body shot of the back end of the decomposing women’s body. In a later shot, we got a close-up of her face, or what was left of her face after it was blasted away by a shotgun. I have no problem with these images if they really aid in telling the story, but lately it appears that everyone is adding these cuts to shows for the pure shock value alone.

Then there was the requisite Catholic bashing. It seems that in any movie or TV show containing someone identified as Catholic, we will eventually learn that he or she is a homophobic, unstable, right wing nutcase. In this show the token Catholic would freak out big time at the mere mention of the word lesbian. This is a stereotype Hollywood; I thought all you lefties were against stereotypes.
On the positive side, TNN aired the show with zero commercials. It was really nice to view a show from start to finish with no commercial interruptions.

In the end, The Closer is just another generic TV crime show much like CSI and all of it’s derivatives. It’s mildly entertaining; worth watching if there is nothing better on, but it’s doubtful you’ll be discussing it with your friends at the water cooler the next day.

3 out of 10 Stars

Posted by Al on 01/10/10 at 09:32 PM in Television