It's All About the Secondary Characters

 I just finished watching the final episode of Bosch the other night.  Yes, it's been out since June 25th, but before watching the new (final) 7th season, I wanted to go back and watch the previous 6 seasons.  (This is something I don't usually do.  It's got to be a really good/riveting series for me to sit down and seriously focus.  Bosch ticks off that box for me.)  I wanted to savor every episode before viewing this new season, which I hoped would be amazing.  Alert:  it was!  In my mind I have ranked all 7 seasons of the show and from best to worst (with "worst" still being pretty darned good) it would go:  7, 2, 4, 3, 1, 6, and 5. (Feel free to discuss why I am right or wrong.)

The thing is as anxious as I was to get down to season 7, I also wanted to hold off.  This is it.  The end of the series.  Yes, I know that there will be another series with some of the characters down the road.  It's no secret who the three main characters will be and now I'm anxious to view what has yet to be filmed on this new series which I affectionately call "Honey and The Bosch."  (Very few people will get that joke/reference completely...and if you do, congratulations.)

I didn't start this series when it originally came out.  My husband did and loved it.  I wasn't "ready" to watch it until the summer of 2018.  (I have to be in the right mindset...that's just the way I roll.)  It was HOT that July and I can remember sweltering in our living room watching the story unfold during the holiday season.  It was hot, but I kept watching episode after episode with my husband (who also thinks the series is worth re-watching).  As much as I tried to slow down, before I knew it were had wrapped up season 4 and we had to wait nearly a year before season 5 was upon us.

Now it's all over.  I suspect that I will go back and watch it all again before "Honey and The Bosch" is released.  (When exactly I don't know.)  I love the show, but I have to admit that for me, the character Bosch is not the main reason why I keep coming back for me.  (No offense to Titus Welliver or author Michael Connelly.)  Bosch is a great character and Titus Welliver is a great actor (he'll always be the Smoke Monster to me), but those secondary characters...

Kudos to the writers and actors for making them so fascinating.  For making me care about characters who in lesser hands could have been nothing more than background noise.  Characters Crate (Gregory Scott Cummins) and Barrel (Troy Evans) could have easily been dismissible.  They could have been cartoon characters of the "old school," but they never were.  They were funny, but they were serious.  (When are they getting their own show?) Grace Billets (Amy Aquino) and Honey Chandler (Mimi Rogers) could have been caricatures; bitches instead of strong determined women that I cheered on. (Well, maybe I didn't cheer for Honey in the first season but that's understandable.) I could see how they influenced and taught Maddie (Madison Lintz) to become an independent young woman.  (Ok, so maybe her parents had something to do with that as well)  Sergeant "Mank" Mankiewicz (Scott Kace) could have just blended into the walls of the police station, but instead was the place's heart.  And I want to have a drink with Jimmy Robertson (Paul Calderón), but not get in a car with him behind the wheel.

Even tertiary (or whatever may come after that), were fully dimensional.  Characters like "Lucky" Rykov (Matthew Lillard -- although I admit that every time I saw him I would call out "I want to have mixed drinks on the beach" in homage to his role in another one of my favorite series: Twin Peaks), who I hated and then loved.  And let’s not forget Ida (Joni Bovill), Chef Irving’s assistant.  She may not have had much screen time, but I KNEW she was devoted to her boss every time I saw her.

The show wasn't afraid to have strong and incredible women in a wide variety of roles:  judge (Bess Armstrong), detective (Jacqueline Obradors), soft core porn star/conniving wife that you had to admire in a strange way (Jeri Ryan), elderly, nagging  mother of a serial killer (Veronica Cartwright), FBI agent (Julie Ann Emery) and the list goes on and on.  All of them true and realistic. 

True and realistic; it’s what I want more of in a series.  It's this quality of writing and acting (and to give credit where credit is due; directing!) that kept me coming back.  It is the reason I can't wait until next summer for the new incarnation of Harry Bosch.  (Do you hear me Amazon?  I'm counting down the days!)