"Bosch" pilot review

Amazon Video: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00I3MPDP4/

Bosch

"Pilot"

Rating: B+

 Image from: http://www.impactonline.co/reviews/1690-reviewed-amazon-studios-bosch

I have never read any of the Harry Bosch novels. (My mom, who has, enjoyed them so much that it made her a fan of jazz.)

But I have to say, this is a pretty auspicious debut for a web series. The characters are well written, the dialogue has flair, the visuals are detailed and sumptuous. And the cast is first rate. In particular, Titus Welliver finally gets the spotlight he deserves after spending so much of the last decade appearing as a glorified co-star on the likes of Deadwood and Lost.

Bosch feels like a cross between a Dashiel Hammett novel and David Simon's epic social treatise The Wire. There is definitely a romantic and pulpy aspect to the proceedings, especially given the hardboiled dialogue and the noir-ish portrayal of Los Angeles, which, much like Baltimore in Simon’s series, begins to feel like a character all on its own.

Yet, that pulpiness then comes in contact with the more nitty-gritty reality of homicide investigations and police work, typically portrayed here without the sensationalism or breakneck speed of something like "Law and Order". To a rookie, being a homicide detective might seem something unique and worthy of veneration. To a cop like Bosch, it’s all part of the daily grind.

Plus, the show has Wire alums Lance Reddick and Jamie Hector in key roles. (Admittedly, Reddick only has about 3 brief scenes, where he mostly seems to portraying Cedric Daniels 2.0, but I hear his character will become a key figure in Bosch’s narrative later on.)

Then there is the pace. Bosch is a deliberate show that isn't in a hurry to unfold its various storylines. It trusts you to keep up, yet it doesn’t try to proceed as if it were on steroids, like the latest Ryan Murphy ventures.Nor does it pause to underline or spell out, who is who or how and what is going on and why. It is relaxed and confident in its storytelling. At times, the show is wise to just pause on Bosch and show the man think, avoiding needless verbal exposition.

But how does Bosch fair as an episode narrative-wise? Well, to quote one of my favorite TV Critics, Todd Vanderwerff:

"The biggest issue one has to face when coming up with a pilot is whether or not you're going to tell a self-contained story that hints at a larger world beyond the story's borders or whether you're going to just offer up an introductory look at the world. To return to our great television metaphors, The Sopranos is a very self-contained episode of TV in its pilot, where nearly every minor conflict that's set up is paid off, and we're expected to trust that the character conflicts will be what carry us through in the weeks to come. By contrast, The Wire is a sample of the world we're going to get to know. Many of the show's most major characters don't even appear, and the main action of the pilot - McNulty convincing a judge to let him set up a task force - is handled in a single scene." (http://www.avclub.com/review/rubicon-gone-in-the-teeth-42081)

Bosch is definitely edging closer to novelistic approach of The Wire. One doesn’t get a concrete sense of how precisely the show will be functioning on an episode-to-episode basis (such as a case-of-the-week type scenario).

That is, it doesn't really tell any sort of enclosed story in its first hour.

The opening scene (preceded by a Geico commercial that counts as part of the episode’s run time), which features Bosch chase down and seemingly murder in cold blood an unarmed suspect, arguably represents the most self-contained narrative element of the pilot. However, its main purpose is to set up an ostensibly big plotline concerning Bosch’s trial, which barely gets off to a start at the episode's conclusion, suggesting a potential courtroom drama about to unfold.

Meanwhile, the titular detective’s investigation into a child’s arm bone discovered up in the hills of LA, which looks to be the central arc of the first season, serves to open up a number of different threads, all of which are interesting by themselves, but have yet to cohere into a singular whole. It never really directly crosses over with Bosch’s trial, yet the character development translates from one to the other. There are subtle implications that, despite his claims to the contrary, Bosch greatly fears the outcome of the trial and decides to take on the arm bone case, as this could be the last case of his career.  

Finally, the episode ends with a sequence that doesn’t really tie together or resolve any of the previous disparate plot points, nor serve as a traditional cliffhanger, making the cut to black feel somewhat (deliberately) abrupt and inconclusive. We have to trust that the show knows where it’s going with this. The real question is – how well will everything pay off once we have the full picture? I am strongly hoping Amazon will pick this show up, as I want to know now.

As a whole, the pilot deftly introduces its world and confidently sets up the various players and plots we’ll see develop over the course of a season. That it accomplishes this shouldn't really be surprising, given the source material and the involvement of showrunner Eric Overmyer, who had worked both on The Wire and its spiritual successor Treme.

Looks like Netflix will have a genuine rival in the original web content business in 2014.