Don’t Sleep on ‘Bosch’ Season 2!

When last we met to talk about Bosch, Amazon’s gritty, L.A. cop drama, its second season was going along at a decent but unspectacular level, occasionally coming alive when the case at the center of the show touched the personal life of its main character. Not a bad show. Not a great show. Definitely a show.

But here’s why it can be very rewarding to watch seasons through to the end: Beginning with its sixth episode, Bosch season 2 kicks into gear in thrilling fashion, pulling a decent season up into the realm of the very good, and it does so by streamlining the season’s disparate plot threads and bringing its best characters together. A quick road map to Bosch‘s mid-season turnaround (SPOILERS ahead):

You Want Personal? YOU GOT PERSONAL

I’ve already noted that the drama on Bosch really gets good when it hits close to home. There’s an episode where Bosch’s ex-wife and daughter get kidnapped, though that gets resolved fairly quickly. The same cannot be said for Chief Irving. All season, he’s been keeping an eye on his son, whose involvement in an Internal Affairs investigation into a ring of corrupt cops has been steadily heating up. Then it happens, the moment that changes the entire season: George Irving is gunned down in a convenience store robbery, though it’s pretty clear that it was set up by the head of the dirty-cop operation who found out George was spying on them. It’s a shocking moment and one that very quickly gives Bosch a center and a purpose for the season.

Internal Affairs, Meet Porn-King Murder

The other great decision made at this midpoint of the season is trying together the two major plot threads. The Internal Affairs investigation had thus far been operating completely separate to what was being pushed as the season’s “A” story: Bosch’s investigation into the murder of a porn producer. The first half of the season saw Bosch following down a number or rabbit holes — gambling, organized crime — while still saying focused on the victim’s wife (Jeri Ryan) as his main suspect. But any audience member worth his salt knew there was something up with her head of security, Nash (Brent Sexton). So when Nash gets unveiled as the head of the ring of dirty cops, suddenly our two storylines have merged into the same lane. No more distractions. No more detours.

Bosch + Irving 4Ever

The best part of those two storylines converging is that it throws Bosch and Irving back onto the same case. For Irving, it’s personal. For Bosch, it doesn’t have to be personal. There is an age-old appeal to the cops who go off-book in order to conduct the investigation that the department won’t let them. It means they get results, you stupid chief! It also means we get to watch Titus Welliver and Lance Reddick do their thing together, and that’s a weapon other TV shows just don’t get to brandish. Too many TV shows keep their stellar casts separate for too-long stretches of their story. Bosch corrected that problem in a big way.

The Femme Got to Be Fatale

That porn-producer murder still needed to be solves, of course, and while the story about the dirty cops felt more interesting, Jeri Ryan was a big reason that the murder plot stayed compelling. Never quite allowing herself to be pigeonholed as any one thing — seductress, murderer, victim, — Ryan was able to  keep her character consistently compelling and surprising, right down to her last jaw-dropping act.

All this, plus a final-episode shootout that literally blows everything away. It’s a testament to sticking to a show while it sets up its universe. Bosch sets up its toy soldiers incredibly well, before knocking them all down one by one. It really works.