In Which Bosch Has Tread Upon Our Last Nerve

Nobody Counts

by ETHAN PETERSON

Bosch
creator Eric Overmyer
Amazon Studios

LAPD detective Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver) lives with his teenage daughter Maddie (Madison Lintz) in a glass apartment overlooking Los Angeles. One night he sees a fire in the distance, and gets a worried look on his face. You can only tell this from his eyebrows, since the rest of Welliver's 56 year-old countenance is generally frozen. His cheeks resemble those of a chipmunk's, or a victim of two parallel toothaches. In Bosch's third season, which rewrites Michael Connelly's minimalist source material present in three books into ten episodes, he almost never touches or is touched by anyone. You would be forgiven if you thought he was an angel or Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense.

Breaking up the monotony of Bosch's days – he picks up takeout, he kisses his daughter on the head, he sleeps – is another, far better character. Irvin Irving (Lance Reddick) actually has things happen in his life that affect how he lives it. The LAPD's Chief of Police lost his son, his wife, and his house, but he is still very annoyed by Harry Bosch, and rolls his eyes at the guy after every single scene they share. After getting Bosch out of an IA complaint when he threatens the city's district attorney, Bosch screams, "I don't owe you!" at him. It is about that time when we start to conclude that perhaps Bosch is a miserable piece of shit.

Bosch's motto is "Everybody counts or nobody counts," and he has a very soft spot for the following groups of people: runaways and orphans, because he was one, prostitutes, because his mother was one, and cops, because he is one. He meets Sharkey (Bridger Zadina), a homeless teenager, and has great sympathy for the boy despite the fact the kid has a loving mother and spends his evenings robbing men he picks up outside a liquor store.

In the show's least believable plot, Bosch is set up for a murder by an angry Hollywood director, who plants various items in the dead man's room before killing him. The concept of Bosch being a murder suspect would be an exciting twist to the series and it made for a great novel (A Darkness More Than Night), except Bosch creator Eric Overmyer (The Wire) finds this and so much of the original material ludicrous and has this angle fall apart within an episode. Bosch has never had a single believable adversary during the entire run of this show.

But maybe that's for the best, since looking slightly uncomfortable or subtly upset is not really in Titus Welliver's wheelhouse as an actor at this point. Welliver received his break portraying various characters on David Milch shows – NYPD Blue, Brooklyn South, Deadwood - throughout the years. Milch loved his coldness and lack of feeling, and it sort of works to carry a show like this, since the dialogue and action-heavy plots do not lend themselves to much emotionality.

The best part of the novels was being able to follow Bosch through the years, as he met a daughter he never even knew existed, and learned to live a different sort of existence. This element is completely scrubbed from the Amazon series, which began when Maddie was twelve. Bosch's parenting is not particularly on the mark, but we never see him struggle with his daughter at all. She just wants to be a police officer and learn how to drive, just like her dad!

It is never completely explored why Maddie would like to be like this monster, which probably represents some dark aspect in her own nature. The other women in Bosch share the same fate, but we never really see what they like about Harry – it actually makes sense that a woman would be attracted to such a malevolent figure, but most women who date Bosch seem to basically be fucking him until they get bored.

Other supporting characters besides Lance Reddick are intriguing enough to ensure that Bosch never gets dull no matter how much food Welliver stores in his cheeks, or how often he not-so-dramatically tilts his head to the side like a beagle. His captain Grace (Amy Aquino) has an interesting home situation and an intense mien; his partner Jerry Edgar (Jamie Hector) is dealing with a complicated divorce and gifted children; his ex-wife Eleanor (Sarah Clarke) looks to be slowly decaying from the inside. What a nuanced cast, all waiting their turn to be like, "Haaaaaaaary."

So why has Bosch been the most successful of the original offerings Amazon has presented over the past few years? (The show has already been funded for a fourth season.) It is gratifying to watch a series that requires so little to succeed, and that actually has long term stories, however flimsy they may be once you unpack them in your mind. Watching Bosch is like consuming a light-crispy pastry in the morning. You forget it as soon as it passes through you.

Ethan Peterson is the reviews editor of This Recording.

In Which We Name Our Detective After The Painter

David Simon's Afterbirth

by ALEX CARNEVALE

Bosch
creators Eric Overmyer & Michael Connelly

Were you potentially interested in a show that is a lot like The Wire, but you know, not? Amazon Studios' ten episode series Bosch, based on the character from Michael Connelly's mediocre novels, gruffly enters the scene. A white man made us and shall save us.

The highest art made from the lowest original source material is a ticklish subject. I guess the right answer would be Wes Anderson's The Fantastic Mr. Fox? This rarely comes up; truly bad books are rarely made into magnificent anything. Bosch is nowhere near magnificent, but simply through Eric Overmyer's involvement, it becomes a major improvement on the novels about the too often fictionalized Los Angeles area.

Hieronymous Bosch (Lost's Titus Welliver) is one hell of a homicide detective. I mean, he allows a serial killer to nearly escape from his clutches, spends two months trying to solve a decades old cold case for no reason, causes a suicide and two other deaths, shoots an unarmed man who he says is a killer, and consumates a relationship with a junior officer in his department (Annie Wershing). Besides that, the man is a damn genius.

Bosch is also a terrible father. His ex-wife is a retired FBI profiler who lives in Las Vegas and competes against whales in high stakes poker. Her new husband is every bit the father Bosch does not want to be, because our detective has "cases." He actually only has one case for most of Bosch, and it takes him forever to solve it. Vegas is only a few hours away, but he never goes there.

Bosch's superior is Deputy Chief Irvin Irving (Lance Reddick), who is basically reprising his exact role from Overmyer's The Wire for no reason I can discern. Reddick's low voice is his signature. Emoting and bringing vibracy to an underwritten scene is not really his signature. There is one moment where Reddick talks to a prosecutor while both sit in cars that happens on all of Overmyer's shows, because it is the kind of thing that occurs in real life, and Overmyer loves stuff like that. But here the tête-à-auto accomplishes the opposite effect — it makes everything seem fake.

The thing that was actually good about The Wire was not the writing or the performances — both varied greatly in quality. What made the show different was that every scene had consequences, unfolding the butterfly effect through bleak streets and inside quiet homes.

Bosch's house, which he supposedly bought from the proceeds of a movie adapted from one of his cases, is completely open to the world. Massive windows look out on the metropolis below. (Bosch's daughter has never even been there.) His girlfriend is not invited to this inner sanctum at any time, but she shows up unexpectedly and Bosch begrudgingly invites her in. What would she want to do with this monster?

In order to make someone so devastatingly banal sympathetic, Connelly has created a detailed backstory that involves Bosch's mother being a prostitute who was murdered, and him being raised in an abusive Catholic orphanage. It turns out the serial murderer (Jason Gedrick) came through that same orphanage, where a dark room with a soiled mattress isolated the most disrespectful boys.

Because we see no actual evidence of how this impacts who Bosch is, the context feels fake. Everything around Bosch is actually more fascinating and vibrant than he is: a lesbian police captain (Amy Aquino) with a child, a repressed homosexual serial killer, Bosch's divorced African-American partner (The Wire's brilliant Jamie Hector), his rookie love interest who has her growing pains, his sympathetic but hard-nosed ex-wife (24's Sarah Clarke). All these characters get plenty of screen time, as Overmyer smartly emphasizes the ensemble.

But the focus is too often on Bosch himself. Welliver tries his best to imbue the thankless role with a brusque charm, but he fails partly because he is never given anything to do. He has one costume change in the entire run of the show. (He takes his shirt off once to have sex.) He never moves quickly or decides something at once — from all appearances the only thing he is any good at is drinking and smoking.

Nobody watched Treme, even though it was the best musical by far that has ever been created. It was also hard to follow without detailed notes. Overmyer takes Bosch in a much simpler direction: instead of a thousand storylines, we get one procedural stretched over an entire season of episodes. The plotline of Bosch would have been wrapped up in mere minutes by any other detective. I understand the idea of following a single character over the expense of a large group makes television easier to follow and understand, but airing as it is on Amazon Prime, Bosch did not need to appeal to that audience.

As long as Bosch waited to become a show, and as much as it cost Connelly personally to buy the rights back from Paramount, did we really need another white cop who doesn't follow the rules, unless he is portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal?

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording.

"Lovit" - Marian Hill (mp3)

"Wasted" - Marian Hill (mp3)

The new album from Marian Hill is entitled Sway and it was released on February 17th.