Major Crimes - Season 4
Major Crimes is an American police procedural starring Mary McDonnell as Captain (later Commander) Sharon Raydor originally airing on the TNT network. A spin-off of The Closer, Major Crimes follows the activities of the LAPD Major Crimes squad, charged with solving high-profile crimes in the city of Los Angeles, along with the members of the squad. The show features an ensemble cast including McDonnell, G. W. Bailey as Lt. Provenza, Tony Denison as Lt. Flynn, Michael Paul Chan as Lt. Tao, Raymond Cruz as Det. Sanchez, Jon Tenney as FBI Liaison Special Agent (later Deputy Chief) Fritz Howard, and Kearran Giovanni as Det. Sykes, as well as Graham Patrick Martin as Rusty Beck. Major Crimes, created by James Duff and produced by Greer Sheppard and Michael M. Robin, was the highest rated scripted cable drama of 2012.
Major Crimes - Season 4
Jonathan Del Arco (Deputy Medical Examiner Dr. Morales) and Robert Gossett (Assistant Chief Russell Taylor), previously recurring cast members, are now series regulars. Nadine Velazquez joins the cast as DDA Emma Rios, the prosecutor in charge of the Phillip Stroh case. Originally scheduled for 15 episodes, the season order was increased to 19. According to creator James Duff, the theme for season two is identity.[12]
Jon Tenney is upgraded from recurring to regular status as Special Agent (soon-to-be LAPD Deputy Chief) Fritz Howard, but is only credited in the episodes in which he appears. Recurring guest stars include Tom Berenger as Sharon's husband Jack, Bill Brochtrup as Rusty's therapist Dr. Joe Bowman, Malcolm-Jamal Warner as SIS Lt. Chuck Cooper, Ransford Doherty as Coroner Investigator Kendall, Kathe Mazur as Deputy DA Andrea Hobbs and Laurie Holden as Special Operations Bureau (SOB) Commander Ann McGinnis.[32] The theme for the season is expectations.[33]
Robert Gossett departs the series in the eleventh episode of the season, in which Asst. Chief Taylor dies in a courtroom shootout. The theme for the season is balance.[77] The final eight episodes focus on connections.[78]
Daniel Di Tomasso (Detective Wes Nolan) and Leonard Roberts (Assistant Chief Leo Mason) previously recurring cast members, are now series regulars. Jessica Meraz also joins the cast as Detective Camilla Paige, a new transfer who has a past with Provenza. Series star Mary McDonnell departs the series in the tenth episode, following Sharon Raydor's death from a heart attack. The themes for this season are faith, reason and risk.[100]
Major Crimes Season 4 Episode 15 did this especially well. Throughout the hour, the mystery of who killed Kyle Gillam touched on character history and affected the detectives in different ways. Flynn's recuperation provided a counterpoint to the main story, too, making "The Jumping Off Point" one of the more emotionally gripping stories of the season.
Luck seemed to be a major theme in "Snitch," with Sykes claiming good luck led her to the gun, Rusty questioning why he had the luck to get off the streets, and the cops engineering some bad luck for their main suspect in order to get a confession.
I don't think it was nearly as simple as Rusty just wanting to use TJ. He's been struggling with his feelings towards him all season and been afraid to get too involved with him. I think the real cover-up is the one Rusty is doing on himself, convincing himself his interest in TJ is merely for what he can do to help him with the case. Rusty did seem to realize this, even if it was too late.
Julio really took little Kayla's death to heart. It wasn't clear whether he was just horrified in general or whether this somehow reminded him of the personal tragedy he's been dealing with all season.
The rest of the cast is as uniformly excellent as they were on The Closer, though young viewers in particular may be confused by the fast-moving dialogue and the zippy plot, which doesn't slow down to explain complex legal concepts. Those who don't have a basic understanding of the law and criminal cases will be a bit lost, though fans of police procedurals will be able to keep up just fine. Also excellent: Unlike other cop shows, the crimes being committed are heinous, but not exploitative, i.e. no rape victims shown in torn clothing with the camera lingering lasciviously over exposed body parts. Crime is not glamorized on Major Crimes, nor is police work. Though in real life, Captain Raydor's hair might not look so perfectly blown-out after a long day on the job.
(Facebook/MajorCrimesTNT)"Major Crimes" season 4 has come to a close with episode 23 titled "Hindsight Part 5" on March 14. It was revealed the one murderer who killed them all, including her own husband: Stephanie Dunn.
More major crimes are expected to be solved when the hit TV series returns for its fifth season. TNT had officially announced the season 5 renewal of the show in December last year. Although they originally intended to make 10 episodes, the latest update confirmed that "Major Crimes" is getting 13 episodes. Avid viewers are hopeful, though, that the number will increase, as what happened with season 4. Originally, TNT ordered 15 episodes for the fourth season, but was later on increased to 23.
In the end, we do think that this was a strong ending to a season, and a case that we feel was worth the time. We just wonder how in the world the show is going to follow all of this up. Grade: A-.
Swanson said there is also a correlation between the unemployment rate among men ages 18 to 26 and the crime rate. The unemployed men are more likely to commit violent crimes and property crimes, he said.
At the risk of pointing out the obvious -- David Simon betrayed Prop Joe. Joe was incomparably careful and even nervous when he gave Marlo's poker game to Omar in season four: Joe was worried, and rightly so, that it would fall back on him one day. Knowing full well that he is caught between Omar and Marlo's lines of fire, indeed, knowing full well that he placed himself there, he finds reason to suspect his own blood when Marlo touches Butchie. He knows that the Cheese stands alone. Prop Joe knows well enough to tip off Slim Charles to the fact. And then, in his overcautious wisdom, he keeps Cheese as his security. This complaint comes after the fact of his foolishness in not recognizing Marlo's plot for what it was. He claims to Marlo that he adopted him, like a son, and although there's reason enough to see Prop Joe as simply angling for his life with that line, there's no more reason to believe that it's true than there is to believe that it would work. At the same time there's no alternative explanation for why Prop Joe was so careless.
There was a previous sequence in The Wire that also proved to be pretty fantastical -- at least as fantastical as the absurd and patience-testing development that two serial liars might be bilaterally collaborating on a fabrications of municipal proportions: Hamsterdam. The difference between Hamsterdam and McNulty's ripper is that the former was established after several seasons developing the structural problems that make change impossible. Hamsterdam was an experiment, an exception to prove the rule. Add to that the fact that it was an outstanding allegory for (what was then the in-vogue justification for our ongoing presence in) Iraq and you have a very justifiable departure from reality.
Spencer Ackerman: Kriston, I'm really not sure I understand your point about David Simon betraying Prop Joe. There was nothing implausible about Joe's murder. Joe was not careless at all. He was boxed in. We learned in the final arc of season four that there is only so far Joe is willing to go to give up "my sister's boy." He tells Slim in episode five that he wants to diminish Cheese's role in the East Side operation while he leaves town. What else could Joe do? Pushing Cheese aside is both an admission of weakness to the co-op and a nod to Marlo that Joe recognizes Marlo's game -- right as Joe himself is trying to co-opt Marlo. From every angle, Marlo outplayed Joe, exploited Joe's desire to control him, and boxed him into the mistakes that made his death inevitable.
Kay Steiger: What struck me after watching episode six was that the season seems to be getting steered a bit back on track: The hierarchy of the drug dealers is taking more of a prominent role, Bunk is digging up the evidence on 22 murders, and Omar is back. But the brief experiment into the fantastical, as Kriston calls it, reeks of series writing like you might find on a soap opera or sitcom -- or, god forbid, 24 -- rather than The Wire. It seems that the writing has gotten away from the writers. Now they have to rein in the story.
Previews suggest that McNulty wants out of the pseudo serial killer plot, and by god, I do, too. The storyline is so ridiculous that it has restrained the rest of the season. Instead, Bunk is digging up the murders again. If they'd have used the newspaper to leak a story about department incompetence on real murders instead of trying to invent a serial killer, they would have saved everyone time and frustration.
Kriston Capps: Spencer, Prop Joe was leaving the city when he was murdered -- it's not exactly the time for keeping up appearances, and though I agree that that's one reason why Prop Joe would keep Cheese close rather than try to discover the truth or shut him out fully, it's not good reason for taking any chances. I recognize that none of this would have happened had Prop Joe been more cautious and so complaining that Prop Joe wasn't cautious risks missing the point. But, as you say, Prop Joe was trapped -- that's when you expect him to reach out and grasp at straws. Did he or didn't he know that his fall was imminent? In season four it seemed that he knew there was little he could do to escape that trap. But by season five it seems that he forgot he was in it.
Sam Rosenfeld: I, too, took Omar's flying leap as the clearest tweak yet by Simon at commentators who continue at this date to blockheadedly praise the show's unvarnished documentary-like ultra-realism, despite the obviously mythic qualities of some of the show's major characters, Omar most of all. And while Kriston's right to point out that the show doesn't typically end episodes on a cliffhanger ... well, what's wrong with a cliffhanger? I'm not above a little suspense. 041b061a72