If you thought Harry Bosch was a stubborn son of a bitch who followed his own set of rules, what do you think the man would do when someone kidnapped his daughter? That’s the setup of the sophomore effort of the Freevee series Bosch: Legacy, a mere extension of Prime Video’s flagship series, Bosch. Yes, there is more focus on his daughter, his “legacy,” if you will. However, the series still has intriguing cases, many entertaining supporting characters, and the great Titus Welliver, who makes one of the great gumshoe characters in popular fiction history his own.
The season picks up when Bosch (Welliver) finds his daughter missing in her apartment. Her place is a mess because it looks like Maddie (Madison Lintz) put up a fight. The young patrol officer stuck her nose where it didn’t belong, and now, the serial rapist who wears the Lucha Libre mask, Kurt Dockweiler (now played by David Denman, replacing Will Chase), appears to have taken her. Helping track her down is Mo (Stephen Chang, so interesting here), Hieronymus’s jazz-loving hacker and IT expert.
While Bosch is dealing with his daughter’s disappearance, defense attorney Honey Chandler (Mimi Rogers) defends a former client, David Foster (Patrick Brennan). He’s charged with the sexual homicide of a member of the mayor’s staff. All this happens while Chandler and Bosch experience the high heat brought on by Special Agent Will Barron (Anthony Michael Hall) over last season’s death of Carl Rogers. To summarize, there’s a reason Harry’s hair has gone as white as freshly fallen snow. In short, enforcing righteous justice by his code is nothing short of stressful work.
This season of Bosch: Legacy is loosely based on the Michael Connelly novel, The Crossing. As usual, the series wraps up a mystery from the previous. Connelly and showrunners Tom Bernardo and Eric Overmyer go on to develop a season-long mystery, followed by an additional storyline that will remain unresolved until next season. To go along with the winning show’s formula, the villains are brutally vicious, the concept that Bosch is right. At the same time, everyone else is wrong, some series favorites pop in (like Jamie Hector), and the opposing supporting characters operate in ethical purgatory.
On the surface, Bosch: Legacy has never been a gritty, authentic police show. For one, it could be more procedural and often follows a handful of cases throughout the season. The other trades in some NYPD Blue-type grit for some Hollywood glamour, with Hollywood landmarks popping up in the background like Pink’s Famous Hot Dogs, Musso and Franks, Paramount Water Tower, and the legendary The Record Parlor, giving the series a unique City of Angels feel.
Perhaps that makes Bosch: Legacy an elevated “your dad’s favorite show” in the genre. Maybe no show since David Simon’s Baltimore trio of Homicide: Life on the Street, The Corner, and The Wire captures the live wire variety pulse of the man who created it, Michael Connelly. The acclaimed author has been a veteran crime reporter for years in Los Angeles, knowing in great detail how officers and attorneys work and look at the criminal justice system.
That’s what makes the role of Harry Bosch so beloved. He’s an alter ego of Connelly himself (or anyone who wishes they took the path not taken in law enforcement), a man with a code who doesn’t give a damn about his coworkers and bosses as long as he brings some justice to any case he works on. That’s brought to life over the years by Welliver, whose cumulative performance has been iconic. Welliver is gritty, uncompromising, and rugged and brings a resonant screen presence that few can pull off without coming across as showy.
No crime character has brought this moral stoicism since the late Michael K. Williams’s character, Omar Little. Yes, Welliver is that good. While Bosch is dragged through the wringer initially this year, he’s never brought to the point of expanding the beloved character beyond its heroic limits. However, the ending suggests perhaps, finally, something more darker for Bosch fans than previously thought possible.
That’s okay. Bosch: Legacy will never be Chinatown because the mysteries are too straightforward. Nor will Bosch ever reach three-dimensional antiheroes like Vic Mackey. Nor will the character even be as morally complex as Andy Sipowicz because he’s too purely just. Still, let everyone have a dose of good versus evil. Some of us still want a series with a consistently thrilling mystery carried by compelling characters. That’s why watching a season of Bosch: Legacy is like the perfect summer reading. Yes, that book you may find resting on your father’s beer gut as he snores the Saturday afternoon away on a beach chair in front of the pool or lake.
Sometimes, all you want is a hero who will do what is right so you can live vicariously while the rest of us continue to be a spoke on our wheel. Welliver and Connelly give the viewer that type of machismo escapism that’s easy to enjoy but even harder to produce.
The second season of Bosch: Legacy begins streaming on October 20, 2023, exclusively on Amazon Freevee.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wsp-o_o_6E]
Welliver is gritty, uncompromising, and rugged and brings a resonant screen presence that few can pull off without coming across as showy. No crime character has brought this moral stoicism since the late Michael K. Williams's character, Omar Little. Yes, Welliver is that good.
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I am a film and television critic and a proud member of the Las Vegas Film Critic Society, Critics Choice Association, and a 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes/Tomato meter approved. However, I still put on my pants one leg at a time, and that’s when I often stumble over. When I’m not writing about movies, I patiently wait for the next Pearl Jam album and pass the time by scratching my wife’s back on Sunday afternoons while she watches endless reruns of California Dreams. I was proclaimed the smartest reviewer alive by actor Jason Isaacs, but I chose to ignore his obvious sarcasm. You can also find my work on InSession Film, Ready Steady Cut, Hidden Remote, Music City Drive-In, Nerd Alert, and Film Focus Online.
