What I’m Watching: Trial and Error

Trial and Error: Season 2, Episode 7 “A Family Affair” (B)

This show just went and solved a mystery we didn’t even know existed. Dwayne’s intelligence isn’t high, even for a resident of this town, and he’s never really talked about his mother that I can remember. Believing that she died two weeks before he was born shows that he doesn’t have a clue, but the worst thing he could ever have learned is that he’s a Peck. The age difference didn’t track for me, but apparently Kristin Chenoweth is indeed fifty years old in real life and actor Steven Boyer, who I had no idea was a past Tony nominee, is thirty-three. How that factors into the murder of Lavinia’s brother is unknown, since apparently she somehow still has her passport that shows that she was in Spain when she is alleged to have killed him. Josh’s luck is running out, and going through the photo of his colleagues who are all doing much, much better than him was his best way to cope with the bags of feces constantly being delivered to his office. Dwayne and Anne getting high to simulate Dr. Rock N’ Law’s frame of mind during the case was predictably unhelpful, and Carol Anne going into labor right after getting the endorsement from Lavinia was probably the worst timing she could have scheduled since it makes her look, more than anything, like a woman. The tidbits from the 1988 case are entertaining, particularly that Judge Kamiltow was going to end on his last case to become a baritone singer at Lincoln Center as long as nothing happened to his voice.

What I’m Watching: The Closer

The Closer: Season 7, Episode 7 “A Family Affair” (B+)

If not for the credit at the start of the episode, I might not have recognized Roxann Dawson from her half-Klingon days as B’Elanna Torres on “Star Trek: Voyager” as Captain Ortega. Dawson has been behind the scenes on this and many other shows in the past decade, directing four episodes, including the religion-centric episode from two weeks ago. On camera, Dawson does just fine, adding a tragic personal touch to a murder investigation and humanizing Sedona in a way that made the case all the more memorable, mainly because we barely got a chance to see her actual murderer before he was killed. Flat-out lying to a suspect to get him to confess doesn’t seem like a terribly smart idea for Brenda and Sanchez in the midst of this whole investigation, but I guess he did still order someone’s murder, so it’s not as if he’ll garner much sympathy and launch another lawsuit against the department. Having Fritz there to make the threat of the FBI coming in if the suspect didn’t cooperate with Major Crimes was cool, and I’m glad to see them cooperating rather smoothly. Captain Raydor stepping into the investigation to get Sanchez to cooperate seemed to signal a desperation of sorts on her part, but that final scene revealed that she’s actually on Brenda’s side and they both have a far larger problem on their hands. I can’t imagine that someone on Brenda’s squad has actually turned against her, and if I had to guess, I’d peg Commander Taylor or an accidentally-overheard Flynn or Provenza.