By Jae-Ha Kim
Amazon.com
May 29, 2007
Deputy Police Chief Brenda Johnson may have put in a year already with the Los Angeles police department, but that doesn’t mean the transplanted Southerner fits in yet.
In the second season of the TNT drama The Closer, Brenda is less a fish out of water, but she’s still not completely at home with her brash colleagues–some of whom resent her potent mixture of brains and beauty. All 15 episodes from the 2006-2007 are included in this four-disc box set.
And aside from a couple episodes where viewers are able to correctly guess the ending about 20 minutes into the show, the cases are taut, provocative, and highly watchable.
Much of the show’s success is due to Kyra Sedgwick (The Woodsman, Something to Talk About), an actress who seemed poised for movie stardom before she took time off to raise a family with husband Kevin Bacon.
As bull-headed as she is soft-hearted, Brenda has a wry sense of humor and delivers her punch lines with a gentle drawl. But don’t mistake gentility for gullibility: Cross her and you’ve made an enemy for life.
Even when she’s stuck in sitcom-like situations–such as trying to hide from her mother that she’s living with her boyfriend–Brenda brings believability to her situation.
From the first episode (dealing with the investigation of a brutally murdered police officer) to the last (Brenda’s attempt to bring down a terrorist organization), Sedgwick is riveting; no wonder, then, that the Golden Globes honored her in 2007 as best actress in a TV drama.
Rounding out the cast are J.K. Simmons (the Spider-Man franchise) as Assistant Chief Will Pope, Jon Tenney (Fools Rush In) as her boyfriend Fritz, and Anthony John Denison (Wild Things) as hard-nosed Detective Andy Flynn.
