The final season of Titus Welliver’s L.A.P.D. homicide detective series Bosch debuted on Amazon Prime last week. While it’s handled like a finale, offering some comforting callbacks to old characters, places, and storylines, there’s good news for fans that aren’t quite ready to let it go. It was announced that while Season 7 will be the last of the series, some characters will live on in a, as of yet untitled, spinoff to air on Amazon’s IMDb TV. That said, Bosch in its current form still wants to close things out in compelling fashion.
Bosch (Titus Welliver, Castlevania) has always had an affinity for solving cases involving young girls that most people move on from, and this season sees him presented with another challenge. After a fire is intentionally set in an apartment building, a young girl, dubbed “tamale girl” by the press, dies when unable to escape the smoke. When things get complicated, and the FBI becomes involved, even Chief Irving (Lance Reddick, John Wick) is satisfied with half-measures; but Bosch’s philosophy of, “everybody counts, or nobody counts” won’t let him not see things through to the very end.
To a casual observer, Bosch may just fit the mold of an average police procedural, but fans of the series see beneath surface level. They love the intricacies of office politics and the characters’ quirks, almost as much as Bosch enjoys sipping a Fat Tire beer listening to Coltrane (Jazz music, not his adopted dog). The dialogue in Bosch has never been its strong suit. It’s not necessarily campy, it’s just dry at times, and has a tendency to seem unnatural, like the timing is off. In some ways, it may be more authentic to how real conversations are, with people thinking before they speak, but in Hollywood standards, it’s slower and goes against the norm. To someone trying to start the show now, it may be off-putting at first, until you can appreciate the rhythm, but 7 seasons in, you’re speaking the same language.
The show has always remained a love-letter to Los Angeles, often working famous locations and restaurants into the storylines and dialogue. That trend continues, as does the show’s desire to work in some controversial topics like harassment, immigration, and excessive force. There has always been a dose of social commentary to accompany each season’s main plot line. While the writers may get a bit heavy-handed at times with Bosch’s moral compass speeches, they also are keen on presenting certain situations, showing how their characters maneuver through them, and putting a spotlight on gray areas.
If there is one significant element to this season that is not the norm, it’s the behavior of J. Edgar (Jamie Hector, Queen of the South). Following the questionable shooting that ended last season, his character is left reeling. He’s facing potential disciplinary action, but more than that he’s shut himself off from his family and friends, and his drinking is impacting his work. It’s an odd place to find his character, who is usually the level-headed counterpart, and it feels a bit unnecessary at times, especially based off of the events that led to his actions.
Meanwhile, Maddie (Madison Lintz, The Walking Dead) is assisting Honey Chandler (Mimi Rogers, Two and a Half Men) as she tries to help her new high-profile client Vincent Franzen (Reed Diamond, Designated Survivor) avoid serving time. He agrees to start naming names, which has disastrous results for everyone involved, including Bosch’s daughter. Still, Maddie is the biggest winner this season as she is finally able to retire the bratty teenager side to her character and move towards being a confident professional adult. Her relationship with her boyfriend is progressing, and she’s become a key contributor at the law firm. Her character has suffered tremendous loss at a young age, tragically losing her mother earlier in the series, and there is a phenomenal scene of her discussing that with her boyfriend. It is a really nice moment that both serves as a callback to a character lost, and a chance for Lintz to show her talent.
The Franzen case, and its fallout, serves as the more captivating story for the majority of this final season until everything from Bosch and Edgar’s case comes to a head. That said, as entertaining as both stories are, the best moments come from the fan service of seeing so many characters that played pivotal roles over the last 7 years come back to make their final mark. That, and Crate (Gregory Scott Cummins, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) and Barrel (Troy Evans, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) of course. It seems like about anyone you could think of returns, from the guy Bosch threw through a window (Mark Derwin, The Secret Life of the American Teenager), to Dr. Golliher (Alan Rosenberg, Shameless), and delightfully when the FBI became involved, prayers were answered, and everyone’s favorite agent Luke Goshen (Matthew Lillard, Scooby-Doo) appeared as well.
Bosch has come to a close, and its ending should be as satisfying to fans of the series as an In-N-Out Burger. It would be sufficient even if it were the final time we get to see these characters, but it also does a great job setting things up for its future iteration. You can’t ask for more than that from the beloved series.
