TV #57 of 2023:
Bosch: Legacy, season 2
I’m still mad that the first season of this Bosch spinoff sequel ended with — spoiler alert — its young female lead getting abducted from her home by the serial rapist she’d been investigating. It was a cruel cliffhanger and threatened fridging, and while I have no idea whether there were any serious conversations among the production team about using the event to potentially write her out of the franchise or not, the possibility seemed frustratingly real to me as a viewer who’d watched her grow up from a child on the original series and now had to wait a year-and-a-half to see the matter resolved. It remains an indefensible writing choice.
But given the baggage of that damaging lead-in, I think this second run acquits itself fairly well. Maddie’s kidnapping rightfully dominates the first couple hours, and since her name stays prominently in the credits, I don’t consider it a spoiler to mention this deep into my review that she’s safely rescued in the end. She’s also pointedly not assaulted sexually by her captor — it appears he’s such a racist that he only preys on women of color and targeted the white cop on his trail simply as a bargaining chip — and going forward, the incident seems to complicate but not derail her burgeoning career in law enforcement. It’s probably the best resolution to that particular plotline we could have hoped for.
The remaining episodes largely adapt Michael Connelly’s novel The Crossing, with Honey Chandler stepping in for the Lincoln Lawyer as usual due to the rights issues and that character’s own show over on Netflix. The meaning of the book’s title is twofold: retired LAPD detective Harry Bosch, now a private investigator, has ‘crossed over’ to work for a defense attorney for the first time, and he’s hunting for the elusive point when the true killer(s) crossed paths with both the victim and the innocent defendant. Honestly, I think this story works better on paper, where we get to see the two half-brothers team up, the bad guys are a little more devious and hard to identify, and Bosch feels more obviously conflicted about his new allegiance. But it’s not bad here in its streamlined version.
That’s the program in a nutshell, really: not bad. Never going to win any major awards or attract a large fandom or anything, but a solid middle-of-the-road product that still winds up better than some ambitious bombs I’ve seen lately. This season even manages to make a seemingly-filler subplot about Harry’s hacker friend Mo ultimately connect back with the larger thread about the FBI investigating Bosch and Chandler, which is a pleasant surprise. I’d have to say it’s a perfectly cromulent show overall, especially when it’s not actively threatening its heroines with rape.
[Content warning for gun violence, torture, and gore.]
★★★☆☆
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