(No spoilers.)
Lea, the boys, and I just finished the penultimate season of Bosch on Amazon Prime. It is an all-time top 5 show for me.
Harshly put, it’s “just” a police procedural. But it’s the best one I’ve ever seen. The writing is phenomenal—appealingly complex, but never fussy. The camera work is positively artistic. Bosch is as much a love letter to Los Angeles as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was to Chicago. (I don’t have any particular affinity for L.A., and I noticed. It’s that good.)
There are at least three, and maybe as many as five, “secondary” characters who are strong enough to carry a series. Yet this show never belongs to anyone but Titus Welliver’s Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch.
Bosch is a Desert Storm special forces veteran (changed from Vietnam in the books), an LAPD detective, and maybe the first TV character I just straight-up want to be since Richard Hatch’s Captain Apollo on Battlestar Galactica. He’s highly intelligent. He’s appealingly sure of himself. He has strong morals and ethics. He loves his family and friends. He has a relentless sense of justice, which means he occasionally loses the (perceived) larger narrative in its pursuit.
Oh, and he wears a Rolex Submariner, listens to an extensive vinyl jazz collection on a vintage Marantz turntable through McIntosh tube amps, and enjoys one of the best views of the city from his hilltop house. (He’s not ostentatious, but he’s a man of a bit more means than the average LAPD detective because he was paid very well to consult on a hit movie.)
I’ve never really cared one way or the other about jazz, and mostly I consider vinyl a silly affectation in 2020. But then I watch Bosch listening, looking out over the city, and pulling on a whiskey, and I think “yeah, I want to be him.”
What a badass.
As of today there are six seasons of ten episodes each out there, available to Amazon Prime members. Each season is largely self-contained, with its own cases and stories, though there are larger arcs than span multiple seasons. The seventh and final season has been announced, probably to drop next year around this time (but maybe a little later if the COVID-19 is affecting things).
If you haven’t seen the show, then I’m envious. I’d love to have five dozen episodes of it to see for the first time. Make haste.
10/10
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