The Closer is an American police drama starring Kyra Sedgwick, who plays a Deputy Chief of Police at the LAPD. Sedgwick plays Brenda Leigh Johnson, an ex-CIA interrogator. She is a southern belle and her easy going charm has surprised more than one criminal during an interrogation. She always gets the bad guys. She was put in charge of the Priority Homicide division of the LAPD.
She’s had to deal with conflict from Commander Taylor, chief of detectives, since she was promoted over him from the outside to her current position. Her team are seasoned veterans, some close to retiring like Lt Provenza, others like Sgt Gabriel just a few years into their police careers.
Her personal life wasn’t always as stable as it is right now. She’s currently engaged to an FBI Agent named Fritz Howard, who helps her from time to time on some cases. They’ve just sold Brenda’s bungalow and moved into a temporary space as they search for a new house to buy.
Brenda is a severe workaholic, to the sacrifice of her personal relationships. She tends to micro-manage her investigations and take a close look at details. She loves junk food and sweets but is currently trying to lay off them. She usually hides all types of junk food in drawers, purses, and other places. She is also known to be a “bit of a slob”, commenting that she does not often get around to housework every day in one episode, and in another, during a small argument between her and Fritz over where her mail was, Fritz comments that “if she looked at her mail daily instead of once a week, she would know where they keep it”.
The Closer is one of the best police dramas on television right now and is in its fourth season on TNT. Each summer sees 13 episodes. A feature length episode is shown over the holidays.
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This was a great episode. The chief has to investigate a sensitive case involving the son of a high ranking police officer. She is able to salvage the investigation from Taylor, who is thankful that she is able to do something with it.
This was a very powerful episode, involving politics, social issues and justice. Johnson was able to prevail and give justice to someone that was already written off by the whole department. Taylor knew that he could count on her.
Warning: Spoilers ahead.
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Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson is examining her latest murder scene. A young teenage girl was found murdered in her room. She looks positioned. There are signs of a struggle. Michelle Clark, 16 years old, was found hanging from the ceiling. Her father cut her down.
Taylor thanks Johnson for looking at the case. He tells her that it’s a sensitive case.
Taylor tells her that she was at the precinct being questioned. She was raped. She knew her assailant. He gave her some pills. Ecstasy. She says that she was raped by a relation of an LAPD officer. She says Darren Yates. Commander Marc Yates, he is Darren’s father.
The chief asks Buzz to leave the room. She tells him that nothing that was said should leave this room. Buzz was showing her footage of Taylor’s interview with Michelle. Taylor believes the girl. He is waiting for a DNA match. They have got a sample from Yates’ shower. Yesterday, the commander gets an earful from Yates. Someone at the lab must have tipped him off.
The chief thinks that he slow-walked the case, in a way that he would have never done so if the suspect wasn’t a relation to a police officer. In addition, he left Michelle exposed to her attacker, who was at school with her on a daily basis. She doesn’t know how or why she can clear this up. He no longer has a case, but the chief might have a case. The alarm of the house wasn’t set. If she looks at the body again, she might find something. He wants her to make sure that this isn’t a case, just a case of suicide.
Michelle was restrained during the sexual assault that happened last week. She had cuffs on. There are also carpet burns on her legs, like she was forced on her knees. Severe tearing of the vaginal wall, bruising of the buttocks from slaps, there was a fissure on her back somewhere. It’s unclear what it is, but the chief looks at it and is completely appalled at what happened to Michelle. This steadies the chief’s resolve to solve this case. The chief wants a full toxicology screen and a full work-up. Daniels doesn’t understand what the chief is trying to do. The chief says that they aren’t investigating her rape, they are investigating her murder.
Taylor and Johnson tell Pope what is going on. He understand why Taylor didn’t come forward to Pope about the rape. Johnson gets the green light to go ahead.
Taylor, Pope and Johnson get an interview with Yates and his son. The commander gives his son’s alibi. Yates has to scream at his son to shut up. Yates calls Johnson honey. She shows him the photos of the rape. He calls Johnson a bitch.
Tao found a footprint on the windowsill. The chief tells the squad that she considers this a murder.
Taylor arrives with a recording of a previous attack that Yates did on another girl. It’s a recording of a sheriff’s officer talking with dispatch about a girl who isn’t pressing charges. She was raped. The officer says that the boy involved is a relation to a high up in the Sheriff’s department.
Johnson loses her temper when Daniels keeps questioning about taking on this case. She says that she would appreciate it if the detectives from her own squad would give her the same support as Commander Taylor is giving her.
Michelle says that Darren hit her like a horse. His friends, Tony, Danny, Tim and Kevin, were in the next room laughing when he finished. When they look at her in school, they pretend to paw at the ground and make neighing sounds. Fritzi watches the DVD that Brenda brought home.
Fritzi looked over her case notes. He says that it was pretty rough. Fritzi says that homicide is not his specialty. Hearing that boys were in the next room drinking a beer, while a girl was assaulted this way, makes Fritzi want to arrest the lot of them.
The chief and Gabriel question the principal of the school. The chief says that either she cooperates or Johnson will lockdown the school and question all of the students in school. The school administrator says that Anthony Lambert is a friend. He was kicked off the tennis team for fighting. Tim Swick was suspended in April for smoking weed on the school grounds. Daniel Zebrowski is on the basketball team. He was in detention for attendance. Kevin Ward is Darren’s next door neighbor.
The squad arrests all of them. They all get taken in. Darren just watches on. They all insist that they were at the movies with Darren on the night that the rape occurred. They also say that on the night of the murder they were driving around Hollywood. This conflicts with Yates’ previous alibi. Kevin won’t talk without a lawyer. Johnson is told that Daniels repeatedly told Kevin that he’s a witness, not a suspect, therefore he has no right to a lawyer. Johnson decides to pose as a lawyer.
Buzz wonders if the chief can do this. Taylor says that as long as they don’t find out anything that they have to prosecute, it’s fine. She says that they are after another boy. Kevin says they are after Yates. She tells Kevin that the Clark girl was murdered.
Johnson says that they consider Kevin a suspect in both the rape and the murder. Kevin says that Darren was the one who raped her. He was the one who posted her picture in the social networking site LookIt of their school. Kevin calls it a game. It’s called Cherry Picking. They each put in 50$ to see who would sleep with the most virgins. Whoever sleeps with the most virgins wins the pot. Michelle was one of Darren’s cherries. He pushed her a bit more than the rest of them. He had to push her more. He took a few shortcuts. He said that he got a couple of girls that way. They are posted on his page. Tao finds a bunch of pictures of girls.
They match the recording of the Sheriff’s department to a girl named Ally, who lost her cherry on March 18th.
She wants to check up on the boys’ alibi for driving around Hollywood. She also wants a search warrant for the Yates house. Pope doesn’t understand where the chief is going with this, because none of this is admissible and she only questioned Kevin about the rape. The chief says that it led them to another victim, Ally Mitchell.
The chief talks with Ally Mitchell. She questions Ally. She asks her for help. She tells her how it happened. She says that Darren was only the second boy who asked her out. He took her to the movies first. He grabbed her hand. Afterwards, they went driving for a while. Then they parked at the spot where they are right now. While she thought about love, he pushed her seat down. By the time she realized what was going on, he had already handcuffed her to the seat. He pulled down her jeans. When she tried to call the cops, he said that no one would believe her. No one would believe that Darren would need to rape a girl like her. It’s too much for Ally, she just wants to go home. Ally notices that the sweater that is hanging from the ceiling belongs to Darren. He’s been accepted to that college.
Johnson plans on questioning Yates. She needs to find out if they were able to break Darren’s alibi. They tell Johnson that the alibi is solid. They have the kids on three different timecodes on cameras in Hollywood. She says that it’s exactly what she wanted to hear. Commander Yates is very aggressive. He’s losing his temper.
Yates confirms that his son was with him during the night of the murder. The chief wants to have a word with Yates and Taylor. The squad doesn’t know exactly what is planned. The chief arrests Yates for aiding and abetting a felony. His testimony directly contradicts the physical evidence that they have discovered. He demands an attorney for his son. The chief says that his son is an adult, and can request a lawyer for himself. Yates can’t do it for him.
Gabriels and Sanchez have to grab Yates away. He’s kicking and screaming. She goes to see Darren again. She shows him shoes that match the footprints on Michelle’s windowsill. She asks him about the sweatshirt from UNY. He fumbles with his explanations. She shows him photos about Michelle. He says that he got carried away. He says that he put those marks on her a week before her death. If she would have just relaxed, it would have been fine.
Darren just confessed to rape. Taylor tells Pope that the only way to make a sexual assault charge stick on Darren was to have him confess to it. Pope asks him if the whole murder case was just a ploy to get him to confess. Taylor says that the chief doesn’t confide in him.
She tells Darren that he might end up in the cons cherry picking club.
Taylor thanks Johnson. Taylor tells her that establishing a pattern of behavior might put Darren away for good. He shows her that Ally is waiting for her in her office.
Man, that was a powerful episode.
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