muratmihcioglu

After a mild dose of disappointment with the final season of Bosch: Legacy, I just had to invest in Ballard for the sake of how much I had enjoyed the earlier seasons of the original BOSCH. And the opening episode was promising enough to keep me engaged.

However, by the middle of the first season, I found the story structures to be flailing around with not enough emphasis on what motivated the characters, be they the good guys or the bad guys. It was even hard to figure out if some of Ballard's crew members were meant to be unlikeable.

It didn't help that the female detective's childhood trauma was unrelated to crime as the loss of her father was presented as a surfing accident. Harry Bosch's mother was a prostitute whose body had remained unclaimed. That was why he had as a motto "Everybody counts. Or no one counts."

As was the case with the recent seasons of adaptations from Michael Connelly's work, procedural stuff and politics got too much in the way of clean cut, straight out, soul fulfilling crimefighting.

That said, the show had its moments. We got to enjoy a rare instance of one-on-one sruggle as the heroine took on avivid threat. Yet, it didn't make sense at all why such a character would go for the kill in the most unlikely and risky fashion, while having found his adversary sleeping at home with a misleading feeling of security, not to mention how come the infiltration was possible with the dog around.

The woke aspect of the storyline(s) were not too disturbing. Yeah, it did get in the way of building meaningful empathy with either the victim or the perp as the death of certain frat boy got linked to sexual harassment only on a verbal/emotional base.

The gray area was a much darker tone of gray when it came to how the female members of the crew were facing their nemesis, Olivas. Yeah, it just had to be him who was in on other, more organized acts of evil, probably to show us that abusive characters do not stop at harassing women.

#MeToo sisterhood at play was the essence of this first season, obviously. I feel some kind of stereotyping when a female crimefighter is led particularly down such paths.

Also: I didn't get why and how come LAPD was so reluctant on having a proper cold case unite or why the effort was being undermined by the media. That was the make believe element behind the premise of the show? LAPD doesn't really employ people to work on certain cold cases? It takes councilmen with personal agendas to force that?

The way they solved one case relating to the death of a high school kid made almost zero sense to me. Was that filler material to make the point the team mattered?

The final two episodes were strong. Certain scenes kept me on the edge. A character what was beginning to grow on us got wasted, almost out of nowhere, by the shockingly unexpected true evil of one main story arc. Was that really necessary?

Couldn't they have gone less Game of Thrones in the effort to lead the audience in and out of dramatic pifalls?

The closure was more than okay, though. I particularly enjoyed the reference to Escher's artwork as the major story arc closed.

But the final few scenes of the last episodes were kinda cheap as they reeked of cliffhanger vibe to make us want more and more of the show. Alas, it's not hard to figure out how the situation will get reversed as we have seen many, many examples to such twitst in recent shows, be they from Bosch or The Lincoln Lawyer.

Is Ballard worth a watch? Yeah, sure... The less you expect from it, the more satisfaction you will get. But that's a given already, for any show. Let's hope this one makes a jump in the second season and reaches the level of earlier BOSCH episodes.

Good enough a beginning for the new installment to Michael Connelly's take on LA crimefighters. The lead lady manages to look serious without being boring, and sexy without being slutty.

There were a few surprise moments here and there. I liked that thing Ballard said, which I put up as the title in quotes.

What I didn't like was how the background story between her and her ex partner was hidden to be discovered slowly. I'm quite bored with this now-classical back-and-forth approach. I don't think it serves the purpose of surprising the audience by revealing intentionally hidden pieces of the puzzle while new pieces are being introduced.

The first episode managed to keep me engaged even without the presence of Bosch himself.

Overall, I'm excited, but not blown away.

High on the classical, earlier BOSCH series, I sure did enjoy this spinoff which carried basically the same vibe, this time with the lead character as a PI as his daughter took to the streets in uniform.

I value the universe created by Michael Connelly. Overall, I also believe that they manage the mandatory woke signaling better than most other shows do.

That said, I do have some complaints with this series, especially with its 3rd and final season:

Yes, Connelly bases his stories on solid procedural stuff and the politics behind actual police and DA work. However, the developments begin too look to mechanical after a point. Especially in the absence of creative audiovisual narration. In the earlier seasons of the original BOSCH series we had had the chance to dive into moments, making them more unforgettable than the progression of events surrounding them. For me, the most striking scene was the one in which we saw the late Lance Reddick find his son's dead body in a bodega.

The way they arranged the pace in later seasons and this spinoff show stole away from us such particular focus on emotions via exceptional camera work.

In the final season of Bosch: Legacy, I was kind up confused about WHY a whole family got murdered the way they did. And HOW the perp in question was able to do it, with what psyche and what background. The motivation was explained as basic greed alright, but I'm lost on the reasons behind the excess violence. The way they structured the story, that killer had to have many more kills in his past. We never got a chance to explore him in depth. More time was devoted to a trio of urban robbers, who, despite using guns, had not committed murders.

Which one was the bigger story here? I believe the latter was narrated better, but the more crucial one was the other.

Also: Is it clear what Bosch actually did to an enemy in Afghanistan, or will we rely on the perception of his buddy about what actually went on inside some cave?

To top these and other, similar issues: I found myself trying to change the display settings of my device while watching that final season. Okay, I was keeping the screen a bit dark, but no other show had SO HEAVY presence of obcurity. One thing I love about the show is its opening titles with the funky music, and it kept looking okay despite the Rembrandt-like heavy blackness of the scenes.

In the final episode, darkness began to fade away at times. However, the overall palette of the show had grown too foggy, even invisible at times, something not even the tone of the stories called for.

I believe the opening titles should have served set the visual tone of the whole series, and no story arc during the 30 episode run should have sank so deep into absence of vivid colors.

Anyways... It's Ballard time now. Let's hope they keep that one more true to the original vibe which grew on all of us during the early seasons of the original BOSCH.