Major Crimes - Sanctuary City Parts 4 & 5 - Review

This year is the first that I have hosted Thanksgiving. I belatedly realized with all I had to do I had basically taken the holiday off. Therefore, this is a double review of the two most recent episodes and is a little late.

I remember the pilot episode of Major Crimes in which Provenza was so angry about Raydor being put in charge of the Major Crimes unit that he was ready to quit. As she was taken away to the hospital he nearly came to blows with Special Agent Vega. And if that wasn’t enough muscle, Sanchez stepped in to back Provenza up. Welcome back Julio Sanchez!!!

Happily Assistant Chief Mason had their backs. He got those agents out of the squad room as quickly as possible.

These two episodes wrapped up the case of the “St. Joseph’s Three”. The unit got the boys into separate interrogations rooms and started asking the hard questions. Once they started getting hard answers, the clues started to fall into place, and they found their killer.

Both boys said that when they climbed into a limo to head off on their great adventure, someone sprayed them with something that knocked them out, and they woke up in Mexico with drugs in their backpacks.

I prefer Provenza the experienced detective to cantankerous Provenza. He’s more balanced than when he’s fixated on one of his adages (eg. the priest did it). Watching him evaluate the interrogations was more satisfying for me than watching him complain about the Catholic Church.

Sanchez butted heads with several people with regard to Dr. Garza’s “suicide” and the idea that he killed his own son. This even included Provenza. My favorite moment was when he strongly stated his belief that Garza was murdered, then stated “I’m sitting down, ma’am.”

Dr. Joe was back! He was brought in to talk to Ryan. We finally get to learn what actually happened to Ryan’s stepfather.

Unfortunately, his conversation with Dr. Joe doesn’t assuage his guilt over having killed his stepfather. Ryan thinks Lucas was killed by his stepfather’s cartel. But Miguel was more logical. He believes the cartel would simply have killed them, not set up an elaborate kidnapping.

Dr. Morales finds information that seems to back up Ryan and Miguel’s story about being kidnapped. It proves Sanchez was right, Garza was murdered, and ties Lucas’ death to the death of his father.

This leaves the final episode, Part Five, for the usual machinations that lead to the arrest of the killer. Dr. Garza is their killer. We don’t get a specific answer as to why he did it. Was he mad about being dumped by Mrs. Garza? Was he trying to get more money out of the practice? We won’t find out.

Garza convinced Lucas that he could get the three boys into a Laker’s practice at USC. Garza used the passport of one of his patients (who had just had surgery) to get back into the country after transporting the boys to Mexico. When he lied about finding the scarring left behind by the stomach pump he used to get the drugs into the boy’s and Dr. Garza’s systems, Major Crimes had enough to arrest him.

I liked the way the case wrapped up, although I think that the case may have been tighter if it had been three episodes instead of five.

I already noted my disappointment with the show pulling out health issues as a source of drama again. Sharon has cardiomyopathy.

I was caught off guard that the doctor kicked Andy out of the room when he discussed her diagnosis with her. I expected Sharon to ask him to stay. It just struck me as odd for someone who is days from being married.

When she finally did tell Andy what was going on, her first reaction was to call off the wedding. But Andy nipped that in the bud.

Last season I complained that we had spent most of the season without any really romantic scenes between Andy and Sharon. But I loved the scene where they talked about her diagnosis and the wedding. It was the most intimate scene we’ve gotten between them in a long time.

The wedding was nice. I loved the purple dresses. There were a couple of great moments that stuck out for me: Sharon telling Ricky how happy she was and the brief exchange between Mason and Paige about the Major Crimes Unit really being a family.

Other mentionables:

Sharon using the negotiation powers honed over the years to coerce Rusty into agreeing to have the security team. He has been studying at his mother’s knee, because he still gets the gun permit.

Raydor exhibiting the classiest way of telling someone to shut up that I’ve ever seen. “Thank you for your boundless enthusiasm.” Really funny.

The entire unit’s resounding approval of Buzz’s sneaky suggestion to tell the boys’ lawyer that charges were being dropped, and they talk to them while waiting for their parents to pick them up. Poor thing looked confused by the reaction.

“A lawyer will only make him look guilty.” That’s the philosophy that’s gotten a lot of innocent people imprisoned.

What did you think about the wrapping up the first case of the season?