TV Bender

Tonight will be a very exciting night to many TV fans. Why? There’ll be a shoot out, a murder and a kidnapped child. Besides those weekly shows such as My Dad is Better Than Your Dad, Christine, Gossip or House.

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I hope you all saw the Closer on Monday night. It probably didn’t make my top five list for that show. The crime involved the shooting of two Latino gang members in L.A. The motive for the crime ended up not being race-related. Still, it brought up some interesting issues. Black/Latin relations are in in the news all the time, and it’s interesting to see those issues brought up in fictional situations on television. The LAPD Priority Homicide Unit is an ethnically diverse team, and occasionally things will seem a little tense as a result of that. However, I think it’s great to see the reality of diversity depicted in these shows.

Don’t you love the way that The Closer intertwines Deputy Chief Johnson’s private life with her professional aptitude? I hope you all managed to view this week’s episode of the Closer. I won’t give anything away in case you’re waiting to watch the re-airing on Thursday evening (at eight) but I will say that Brenda gets ahead solving the case with a revelation that comes upon her while she is house hunting with Fritz finally.

I am turning into a huge fan of the official websites for crime drama shows. While I wouldn’t ever abandon my favorite fan sites, the bar for the official sites seems to be raised constantly. Now they almost all offer extensive video clips (or even full episodes) in addition to the character and actor bios and other features they’ve had for awhile. Speaking of character bios, these are definitely worth having a look at. You might feel like you know all relevant information about a favorite character, and maybe you do, but I was surprised to see what kind of details I was missing when I was perusing the TNT website for The Closer. Seemingly minor information about a character–past job, divorce, country of origin–can help you read a character and his or her actions. Don’t ever rely on just watching a show to get your background info–who knows what you might miss!