Friday, October 27, 2017
Strong Coffee with a lot of pepper
BOSCH – SECOND SEASON – 2016
The old cold-standing case of the murder of Bosch’s mother when he was young and she was a prostitute becomes solved. A phone call, a visit to a dying old woman who was a friend and colleague to Bosch’s mother, a pseudo, a hotel, a room number, then an old register book from this hotel and some discrete inquiry in the narcotics service of LAPD and he finds the real name of the pseudo, and then some leverage and he finds where he is and is supposed to be. The case can be solved, and closed.
The main central case of this season is the killing of a pornography film producer who is, in fact, laundering money with bonds and other manipulations under the radar from Las Vegas where he resides and Hollywood where he more or less works. The money is not clean and when you are dealing with drug money or casino money you have to be careful. He is not and steals from the drug dealer and other illegal financiers. Bad Boy. Dead. At the same time, his wife who is only after her money and would like to get rid of the husband but in a clean way so that she can keep the money is surrounded by a gang of ex-cops and rotten cops for her security. She may have used them too in the field, which means two masterminds for one killing, or more. Dangerous.
The drug dealer wants to get his millions back. The widow wants to get the millions, full stop. But the pornographer was going around with a younger girl and he was getting ready to divorce the marital climber who would have gotten little, and marry the younger one. He deposited a big box full of several million dollars in a bank under his name and her name. As soon as he was killed the young girl gets the box and the millions out in a suitcase, gets some refuge time in an Armenian Catholic church in LA, and finally, disappears.
You can imagine the wife, the band of rotten cops and ex-cops plus the narcotics dealers all meeting outside the bank on the day the wife can finally ask for the bank deposit box to be open so that she can recuperate the money. Quite a few dead people on the ground and a couple who escape too. The wife manages to get out of custody easily since she did not do anything illegal, but she learns about the Armenian church and that is slightly iffy.
She kills the priest who refuses to give her back the money, the little share he actually managed to get from the girl he helped. Then we can let her live the aftermath of it in prison and in court. That might not be that easy to manage to convince her for anything.
On the side, his ex-wife being kidnapped with their daughter by a band of narcotics dealers in Las Vegas, some kind of a hardly professional subset of criminals, Bosch cuts it short fast and takes his ex-wife and their daughter to Los Angeles for a few days. He has some information that could help an FBI case be solved. Since his wife has been approached to spy on him, he proposes her to “steal” the information the FBI might appreciate having, and sure enough, the case is closed and the ex-wife manages to get a recommendation to be reinstated in the FBI. She has to solve the problem she has been developing with her current “boyfriend.” Their affair has come to an end but she is slightly too vain and too proud to admit it. But if she is reinstated in the FBI she will have to do something about it.
On the other side of rottenness, the election for mayor of Los Angeles is going on. The incumbent is a Latino who does not have a chance to win and would prefer dropping out of it. The main challenger is the white deputy District Attorney, an Irishman by name, who is not very competent except in giving orders that become very dangerous when implemented. The deputy chief of police is a black man and his son manages to be shot within his undercover operation to infiltrate the network of rotten cops and ex-cops when the main man in this network finds out he is wired through his watch. Bosch will get the chap and clean up the plate after the out-of-the-bank shooting. But in the meantime, the incumbent Mayor appoints the deputy chief of police in the top job with the understanding that he will resign after a while after having appointed a Latino in the deputy position so that when he resigned this Latino will be able to be appointed chief of police. White supremacy at times has some strange sidelines.
This series is good because of the rather clear unity of a season. It is also interesting because all elements are connected, be they personal or professional or circumstantial. Nothing is outside the main tense and dense atmosphere of the police and the criminals. Some may regret there is little about the rest of the world, but it gives the series a palatable and drinkable cocktail taste that is not a mixture of badly blended elements, like too much lemon juice and a lot of sugar to cover it up.
You will enjoy the title song of course. It hasn’t changed, nor the opening credits with their inverted half frames. We can rest a little before getting to the third season where a few things and a few people are going to change.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 2:16 PM 
