[Like most of
us, my lockdown
has offered the opportunity to check some TV shows off of my list. One of
the best I’ve seen is Amazon Prime’s
original show Bosch, based on the
longstanding series of police procedural detective novels by Michael Connelly
(who is part of the show
as well). The best part of Bosch is
its characters, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy the five most important!]
On the benefits
to giving a supporting character space to become far more multi-layered.
I can’t lie, it
took me a not-insignificant portion of Bosch’s
season one not to suspect that Jamie Hector’s Jerry
Edgar wasn’t secretly an undercover criminal mastermind; no one who has seen Hector as The Wire’s Marlo Stanfield, one of
the most chilling villains in TV history, would blame me for having my doubts. Once
I got past those associations with Hector’s prior character, Edgar settled in
to what seemed to me to be a familiar and comfortable role: as the more straight-laced sidekick
to our loose cannon protagonist, often frustrated by and critical of Bosch but
always willing and able to have his back when the chips are down. Even their
respective choices in apparel seemed to reflect those roles, with Edgar a
clotheshorse who demands a stop
at the outlets as part of a season one roadtrip and frequently chides Bosch
for his far less natty attire. Add in their season one family situations—Edgar a
dad to young kids who are of course a central focus of his, Bosch with a
teenage daughter he hasn’t seen in many years and who calls him Harry—and the
contrast between these partners felt well-established and clear (and evocative
of famous prior such pop culture partnerships like Murtaugh and
Riggs).
While Hector is
a talented enough actor that he was able to give Edgar layers even within that
familiar and supporting frame, for the next couple seasons it seemed that this
dynamic would largely continue, and indeed would be deepened through a plotline
in which Edgar found himself investigating Bosch’s own potential misconduct (in
pursuit of justice, but nonetheless well outside the lines of what Edgar was
willing to condone). But gradually, particularly over the show’s last few
seasons (four through six), Bosch has
begun to explore sides of Edgar’s identity that are both far less tied to his
partner and far different from what we had previously seen or known about the
character. It has done so most strikingly through a couple things shared
by Edgar and Jamie Hector—Haitian heritage
and complex, enduring ties to the Haitian American
community. While those elements have been linked to crime and
investigations, as you’d expect from a police procedural (and which I won’t
spoil here), they’ve also offered a way to understand Edgar’s identity that
goes beyond his job, and includes such telling details as his bilingualism and his
links to older, 1st generation Haitian American characters we’ve
met.
The benefits to
the show of that broadening and deepening of this supporting character, turning
him at times into more of a co-protagonist with Bosch, are likely obvious—while
I suppose it would be possible for them to create a sense of disjointedness if
they were handled poorly or haphazardly, it seems to me far more likely (and is
indeed the case here) that they would create a more compelling tapestry, a
season and world with multiple interesting things happening at once (which in
their own way includes the other characters on whom I’ll focus in this series
as well). But to my mind, the true benefit of this growth in Edgar’s character
is quite precisely about more than the show, or rather more than the
necessarily limited focus with which any show (like any cultural work) begins.
Of course a show called Bosch is
going to focus first and foremost on that particular character, and is going to
depict other characters and stories as they move through and around his orbit. But
too much of that focus risks repeating one of the main problems with the
anti-hero type: the idea that there’s something special enough about this one
figure that he or she (but usually he) deserves more empathy or understanding
than we give to the others in his or her world (such as, often, people whom
this anti-hero kills). To some degree that remains the frame for Bosch—but over its six seasons it has
also and crucially gone beyond that frame, with characters like Jerry Edgar reminding
us that the world is far bigger than Harry and full of stories worth our
engagement.
Next
BoschStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Takes on this show or others you’d call especially
lockdown-binge-worthy?
No comments:
Post a Comment