The Closer

I've been watching a new cop drama called "The Closer" recently. It centers around Deputy Police Chief Brenda Johnson--a Georgia transplant to L.A.. Her speciality is interrogations.

The show is intriguing because very rarely does the viewer have any real idea what she is thinking. It's written in such a way that you see her delegating investigative tasks to other officers, all the while aggregating the results of their investigations. Often the other officers, and the viewers, will have one theory of the crime, and then will discover that Johnson has a completely different theory--one which is revealed over the course of an interrogation.

Most interesting is the interrogations themselves. The episodes often revolve around cases where there is not much in the way of physical evidence. Johnson's task in these cases is to not only solve the crime, but to extract a confession from the murderer. She has to do this while navigating the hamstringing of Miranda. She has to set up the interrogation in such a way that the murderer doesn't want a lawyer, and that the murderer ends up admitting to much more than they plan to. The show is reminiscent of "Columbo" in this way due to its emphasis on verbal chess. It is further reminiscent because of the way that Johnson uses her accent to her advantage, playing "country dumb" to get her suspects to reveal their hands.

Unlike Law & Order, which I also love btw, the focus for Johnson is to get the murderer to admit to what he actually did--as against using legal maneuvering to convince a jury that he did.

Aside from the crime-solving, she also has to deal with the office politics. She is a woman brought in the from the other side of the country to head a division. The police captain under her is resentful because it was a position that he wanted. The detectives that work directly for her are mistrustful because she is an outsider. These elements are not used to tout feminist messages as might first be imagined. Instead, these conflicts are integrated into the rest of what she faces in solving crimes. Over the first season it has been a pleasure to watch as she establishes her authority over the envious police captain, and earns the grudging respect--and then admiration--of her detectives.

So watch it!