Bosch takes a bow.
And so, here we are. After seven seasons, Bosch has finally come to an end.
It’s always a strange feeling when a beloved show concludes. Some do prematurely, leaving plot lines left tantalisingly untold; others overstay their welcome to eventually become a parody of their former virtues. Depending on your outlook, the departure of Bosch may feel like a little from both columns – but you can’t deny the popularity the show had leading up to this concluding season (although rumours of it’s demise may have been greatly exaggerated).
It’s almost been a decade since the show first launched on Amazon Prime, and Bosch has ran on long enough to see the digital entertainment industry evolve around it at an unprecedented rate. Back in 2014, the major streaming platforms had such a paucity of original content that they parlayed this disparity into allowing any series they owned considerable slack to run past their natural lifespan (Hemlock Grove, anyone?). Nowadays the range of choice and provider is so vast and the window of viewer attention so narrow, that shows are oftentimes cancelled before they’ve even finished airing their debut season. It’s become a ruthless mix of metrics and memberships that will ultimately seal a show’s fate, and it makes you wonder how a series as slow-burning as Bosch would fare if it made it’s debut now. Certainly in its early years, Bosch was considered a headliner act for Amazon and marketed accordingly; now it feels like it’s bottom of the playbill and I actually struggled to find it’s presence on Prime’s home page.
That’s not to say it’s any less of a show, despite it’s demotion over time. While Prime might have experimented with new acquaintances in the years since, Bosch has remained the faithful partner – forever steady, with a straightforward story to tell. In some ways, that’s also been it’s cross to bear – the show’s dogged pursuit of the police procedural format is a constant comfort to its fans and a stale annoyance to its detractors. It’s never really changed up its rigid formula (and when it did so, it was widely panned), and even on it’s best day it only ever let the dim tendrils of modernity tangle with it’s plotlines at their very outermost fringes.
But you don’t watch Bosch for a hot take on modern life (or at least, I don’t). You watch Bosch for Bosch – and the cast of incredible characters that inhabit his world. In that regard, this final season is an absolute home-run – a return to form, and crucially, a satisfying send-off to one of the best shows in recent crime drama history.
The previous two seasons stretched the narrative net a little too wide for my tastes, with slightly misguided plots that attempted to recast Bosch almost like a grizzled action hero. Whilst enjoyable enough, it felt like the show was beginning to drift away from the roots of what made it so moreish in the first place. Thankfully, this season resets the focus directly back into Los Angeles itself with dual cases that bring the whole cast together for one last time, both old and new.
When a young child dies in an arson attempt, the tragic aftermath begins to expose the underbelly of the city’s social and economic issues. Whilst Bosch and Jerry try to untangle the complex affiliations of the Mexican street gangs that may be harboring the fire-bombers, Chief Irving is feeling the heat from new mayor Susanna Lopez to crack the case or see his second term in office duly evaporate. Elsewhere, Honey ‘Money’ Chandler defends a crooked financier with the help of Maddy before the case takes a shocking turn, and eventually the two stories intertwine in unexpected ways.
For a show based primarily on its titular character, Bosch has always had a relatively democratic approach to showcasing the secondary stories of it’s character cast, and as with previous seasons, it’s these adjacent plot-lines that really provide the most genuinely engrossing moments. It’s a little more meaningful this season being as we’ve diligently followed their personal journeys over the past seven years, and whilst some have fared better than others, it’s rewarding to find every one of them reaching some form of a concluding personal arc (for better or worse).
Following in this tradition, the season’s opening episodes are actually more focused on Bosch’s partner Jerry than the main man himself, who has been suffering with the inevitable fallout from Jacques Avril’s death in the previous season. Jamie Hector has been a joy to watch throughout the show’s lifecycle, and it was great to see his character have a more involved individual story-line develop over these past few seasons. Jerry’s concluding story arc here is ultimately a redemptive one, but out of all the cast his journey also feels like the most restorative.
The same could be said for Maddie, who we have literally watched grow up on screen over seven years portrayed by actress Madison Lintz. There’s always an inherent risk of implausibility when a child actor goes on to inhabit the same role as an adult, but Lintz has done an impeccable job across the show’s lifespan, subtly shifting the nuance of Maddie’s presence from merely being a narrative cipher for her father’s actions into a fully three-dimensional character. In that regard, her actions this season speak volumes about how far Maddie has come – and that despite her being in many ways the same as Bosch, she has developed into her own person.
Elsewhere, it’s fair to say everyone gets an equal share of their dramatic weight to bear. Mimi Rogers once again excels as Honey Chandler (although I could happily watch her recite the phone book and call it an acting masterclass, so maybe I’m biased), and it’s been enjoyable to see her character evolve from a villain to a fan-favourite anti-hero. Similarly, Amy Aquino has equally shone as Lieutenant Grace Billets, who has faced more misery than most across the show’s runtime and hit back swinging every time. Whilst her story line this season felt a little compacted in it’s conclusion, it was good to see issues around institutional misogyny be addressed in the show, even if the payoff was ultimately a little too neat to be true.
Bosch has always been a show that felt like a gathering place for talent, with a huge roster of actors and writers that cut their teeth on other prominent series in the crime genre. In this final season, it felt like this all coalesced in a way that only a show so deep into it’s run could pull off. So to that end, the show packs each episode with a wonderful set of subtle callbacks, in-jokes and cameos that will reward long-time fans with a lot of pleasure (my personal favourite being one character asking Jerry if he ever watched The Wire). Much like the season’s internal narrative of Hollywood Homicide closing down forever and everybody moving on to pastures new, these elements contribute one final hurrah to what feels like the show’s extended family send-off, and it’s a joy to watch.
Finally, to Bosch himself. Your mileage may vary on how his character ends this show’s run, which is clearly designed to open up a new chapter in his story some other time on some other network. But one thing is clear, his behaviour is fully in keeping with his character’s one-track mind for justice. Early on in the season he foreshadows his rather spectacular career suicide by opining “Everybody counts…or nobody counts”. It’s a solemn mantra that has guided him through so many cases over the course of the show’s run, and whilst you could call his actions self-centered in this final yard (his self-righteousness ultimately damages everybody around him) it’s almost certainly Bosch through and through.
In this new era of streaming, it’s unlikely we’ll see something on the scale of Bosch again – an odd happenstance of impeccable writing, acting and directing that rarely occurs – and already, it feels like a relic of a previous time where this type of creativity was allowed space to breathe. Bosch is a testament to the deceptive simplicity of how a good story can be elevated to greatness with a formula of bringing the right people together at the right time, and that formula arguably created the best modern police procedural of the last 20 years.
Andy D
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Bosch is available to watch on Amazon Prime