I started watching Major
Crimes this season, and while I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the entire season,
this is definitely my favorite episode of the season. While most of the
episodes have been pretty dramatic and intense this season, this was definitely
the most lighthearted episode of the season. That was definitely one of the
things that made me enjoy it so much. It was definitely different from a lot of
the episodes of Major Crimes that I’ve seen at this point, but I think it was
different in a good way.
The case that the team was
working on this week involved the murder of a woman named Zelda Lambert, the
long-time stalker of a famous TV star, Jonny Worth, who was played by Luke
Perry. Right off the bat, I have to say that one of the greatest strengths of
this episode was definitely Luke Perry’s portrayal of Jonny. Jonny was
incredibly vain, shallow and self-absorbed, and Perry played that quite well. TVLine
gave Luke Perry an honorable mention for his performance in this week’s
“Performers of the Week” column (Lizzy Caplan & Michael Sheen: Performance in Masters of Sex ‘Fight’ Episode | TVLine), and I definitely think that it was well
deserved. Whether he was taking a selfie next to a picture of himself as he was
standing next to a picture of himself that was hanging on what he referred to
as “the murder board”, which was the board that the team was hanging all of the
evidence and writing all the facts pertaining to the case on, or interacting
with Rusty, who he initially believed was someone who worked undercover for the
bureau, Perry stole every scene he was in.
Due to the fact that Jonny
is a famous actor, the team had to be careful with how they handled the
situation, otherwise he could “lawyer up” as Raydor explained to Rusty at one
point in the episode. Fortunately for Jonny, he was ruled out as a suspect
pretty early on in the episode and helped the team as they worked on the case
throughout the rest of the episode. One of the many recurring bits in the
episode was Provenza’s repeated insistence that Zelda’s husband had to be the
person that killed her, saying that “It’s always the husband”. Provenza’s
repeated insistence that Zelda’s husband had to be her killer really seemed to
annoy everybody, and Raydor pointed out that if he always guessed that it was
the husband who killed their wives, he was bound to be right every now and
then.
Things didn’t look good for
Jonny at first though due to the fact that he apparently had a long history of
being stalked by Zelda to the point where he had to file multiple restraining
orders against her and Zelda’s dead body was found in a storage container that
belonged to him. It was quickly established that Zelda had apparently had a lot
of psychological issues though, and she even had spent some time at a
psychiatric facility at one point in her life. Due to Zelda’s psychiatric
issues, her husband didn’t even bother reporting the fact that she had supposedly
gone missing for several days, mainly because she apparently had a history of
going off on her own for days at a time, only to come back. This is something
that only served to fuel Provenza’s repeated insistence that Zelda’s husband was
the one who killed her.
Having watched the episode
several times now, as far as I’m concerned, Provenza had pretty good reason to
assume that it was her husband since she apparently had a lot of mental health
issues and was totally obsessed with Jonny to the point where she was writing
bad fan fiction about him, had multiple restraining orders filed against her by
Jonny, and they were in a lot of debt financially because she had spent so much
money on memorabilia related to Jonny. I think that would be enough to drive
just about anybody to kill their spouse under the right conditions.
One of the many other things
that I particularly enjoyed about this episode is the fact that the team had
somewhat of a personal connection to case due to the fact that Tao had a
side-job, working as a consultant for the crime solving show that Jonny was
starring on, Badge of Justice. Tao explained that since he and his wife
currently have all three of their kids in college at the same time, the
consulting job was really helping them out financially. The fact that Tao had
gotten a consulting job working for a TV show was something that Flynn became
somewhat fixated on throughout the episode, namely wanting to know how much Tao
got paid for the job, much to Provenza’s irritation. Although, now that I think
about it, Provenza shouldn’t have been too frustrated with Flynn since he was
really fixated on the idea that it’s always the husband who kills their wives
throughout this episode. Unfortunately for both Jonny and Tao, the show had
been struggling in the ratings and was considered to be “on the bubble”. Just
in case anybody reading this doesn’t know what that means, a bubble show is
basically a TV show with ratings that are at a level where it’s fate could go
either way, it could either be renewed or it could be canceled.
Badge of Justice’s ratings
woes led to a number of what I would consider in-jokes in the world of TV shows
that reminded me of a lot things that I’ve heard people criticize various TV
shows for over the years. According to Morales, Badge of Justice’s portrayal of
what a morgue is like is very unrealistic, and he apparently felt like the
show’s ratings woes should be blamed on the lack of a realistic portrayal of
the way the crime solving process works. The realism of crime solving shows is
definitely an example of something that I’ve heard a lot of people complain
about over the years when it comes to people complaining about TV shows.
There was also a subplot in
the episode involving the fact that Rusty had graduated from high school, but he
wasn’t really in the mood to have a graduation party or do anything to
celebrate his graduation. When Raydor suggested that he invite some of the kids
from his school that he liked for a small get-together, Rusty mentioned that
none of his classmates had invited him to their graduation parties and that to
him, walking out of his school for the last time knowing that he wouldn’t have
to see any of them ever again was his celebration. Raydor was bothered by
Rusty’s lack of a celebratory attitude, saying that she found it hard to
believe that nobody would want to invite him to their graduation party or that
nobody would want to come if he had a party and invited them.
If I didn’t know otherwise,
I would have guessed that Rusty was Raydor’s biological son given the way she
gushed over him in this episode like he was her own one of a kind special
snowflake. Don’t get me wrong, I like Rusty, but it always annoys me when
parents gush over their children to nauseating degrees and then get mad when
other people don’t think that their child is as special and as unique as they
do. Since it’s their child, naturally they are going to think very highly of
their children and view them as their greatest pride and enjoy, but they are
obviously going to be bias towards their own children.
I can definitely understand
where Rusty was coming from though. I was bullied a lot in high school due to
the fact that I’m attracted to men. Although, I didn’t identify as being
bisexual back then like I do now. Since I was bullied by a lot of my
classmates, like Rusty, I couldn’t wait to graduate from high school and when
it came to most of my classmates, I didn’t really care if I never saw them
again once I graduated. I’ve also never been a fan of big parties, mainly
because I don’t like being in really noisy places where you can’t hear people
very well since I wear hearing aids and I’m just a person who would rather have
a fairly small and intimate gathering where I invite the people that I’m fairly
close to and consider to be fairly important to me instead of having a huge
party where I invite what feels like a gazillion people that I barely get to
talk to when they come to my party. When I graduated from high school, I had my
graduation party at a Cold Stone Creamery and I only invited a few of my
closest friends and the teachers that I viewed as being the most important to
me. My parents paid for all of my guests to have a dish of ice cream, and I
have very happy memories of my graduation party to this day, but I digress.
Raydor’s frustration over
Rusty not wanting to celebrate his high school graduation also came into play
and she found out that Julio Sanchez had returned to work after being injured
and the team hadn’t really done anything to acknowledge his return. I have to
say that was one of my favorite scenes of the episode, especially when Provenza
pointed out that they did send him flowers and that he would be receiving a
medal and would be seeing a psychiatrist to talk about the whole thing.
This episode really did have
a lot of moments that were genuinely funny, especially when it came to how all
of the women were fawning over Jonny and commenting on how good he looked
throughout the episode. I found that especially amusing.
In the end, Provenza was right;
Zelda’s husband was the one who killed Zelda. The team managed to coax a confession
out of him with Jonny’s help by having him tell Zelda’s husband that he had
once been romantically involved with Zelda. Honestly, I was actually surprised
that Zelda’s husband was the one who killed her. Maybe I’m alone in thinking
this, but when I was watching this episode for the first time, I was expecting
Zelda’s killer to end up being Jonny’s assistant, Kiki. There was just
something about Kiki and how she was always so wrapped up in texting on her
cell phone that made me think that she would turn out to be psychotic or
something and that she would end up being revealed to be Zelda’s killer. When I
was watching this episode for the first time, the fact that she went to Mexico
in order to take care of something for Jonny is something that I originally
thought the writer of this episode would utilize to create drama and suspense
once the team figured out that Kiki killed Zelda, but obviously the writer of
this episode didn’t go that route. I may have been wrong about who Zelda’s
killer was, but I suppose it’s always a good thing to be surprised when it
comes to the outcome of a mystery. Whether it’s a book, TV show or a movie, the
mystery genre is one genre where you definitely don’t want the ending to be
predictable.
It turns out that once word
got out that Jonny was working with the police to help solve the mystery of
Zelda’s murder, online streaming for Badge of Justice reached an all-time high.
This was good news for Jonny, Tao and Tao’s bank account, because apparently
that meant that Badge of Justice was no longer in danger of being cancelled. This
was probably the only aspect of the episode that bugged me, but I would say
that it’s a pretty minor complaint. Personally, I thought that was a little
ridiculous, because anybody who follows the ratings for TV shows or knows
anything about the Nielsen ratings system and how it factors into network
executives’ decisions about canceling or renewing shows in the real world should
know that online viewership for TV shows typically makes little if any
difference when it comes to deciding a show’s fate. Although, I know that the
CW has cited online viewership and high DVR numbers as factors in their
reasoning for renewing ratings challenged shows in the past, so I suppose it’s
not entirely unheard of, and it allows the episode to have a happy ending for
Tao and Jonny, so I’ll let that slide.
Jonny also congratulated
Rusty on graduating high school on live TV and presented the team with a check
for a charitable organization that they work with and to pay them for “the
murder board”, which he wanted to buy. The episode ended with the team having a
small party with Jonny to celebrate Rusty’s graduation, and Rusty admitted to
Raydor that he was enjoying his party and she joked that she never gets tired
of being right. One thing that I liked about the last scene of the episode was
the fact that they played the song “We Are the Love We Give” by Imaginary
Friend in the background during that scene. People who watched the short-lived
online revival of All My Children might recognize that song as the song they
used for the show’s theme song for the duration of the show’s revival. I love
that song, so I love that they featured it in this episode.
All things considered, this truly
is my favorite episode of the season at this point. I found both the case of
the week and the subplot involving Rusty graduating from high school highly
entertaining. This episode had a great blend of drama and humor, and Luke Perry
really shined in the role of Jonny Worth. I really got the sense that all of
the actors that appeared in this episode had a lot of fun filming this episode,
and if that was indeed the case, that’s always great to see on a TV show. This
episode truly was a major win for the show.
That being said, my final
score for this episode is 10 out of 10.
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