[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 a comparison
that can help us analyze a compelling character beyond the “begrudgingly
supportive captain” stereotype.
If you’ve
watched, well, any cop shows or movies ever, you likely get instinctively what
I mean by the “begrudgingly supportive captain” character type. There are of course
variations within that type, particularly when it comes to how supportive they
ultimately are: sometimes the captain is more a partner of sorts to the main
characters, publicly expressing unhappiness with their actions but privately having
their back against more antagonistic powers that be; sometimes he or she is
more aggressively or genuinely unhappy with the main characters, who thus have
to hide more from their superior as they pursue justice and the bad guys. Amy Aquino’s Hollywood
Homicide Lieutenant Grace Billetts generally falls more into the former
category, which is why she’s so beloved by her detectives (like Harry Bosch and
Jerry Edgar); but she certainly plays the frustrated superior officer
role with some regularity, particularly when Bosch refuses to follow the rules
that seem consistently to get in his way. So Billetts fits both sides of the
begrudgingly supportive dynamic nicely, and with a warmth and
humor that are all Aquino’s doing.
But as I’ve
argued about Bosch and Edgar over the first two posts in this series, Billetts
also has other sides and layers to her character that go beyond this familiar
and stereotypical role, and in her case we can better analyze those layers by
comparing her to another compelling TV character. Billetts is gay, which allows
for a comparison with Laura
Innes’s Dr. Kerry Weaver from ER,
another strong female leader (Weaver was over the course of her arc Chief
Resident, Chief of Emergency Medicine, and Hospital Chief of Staff) whose
personal life offers potential conflicts with her professional roles. The time
gap between the 90s (ER aired from
1994 to 2009, with Weaver joining in Season 2) and the 2010s (Bosch has aired from 2014 to the present)
is telling here—the moment when Weaver was outed at work
by her romantic partner was portrayed as a big deal (and since it was from the
same era as the
Ellen controversy, clearly was
one), while it seems clear that Billetts’s coworkers know and don’t care about
her sexuality. But nonetheless, a prior workplace relationship is depicted as
what is holding Billetts back from further professional advancement—she has
tried unsuccessfully to make captain for years—which reminds us that society
has perhaps not evolved as much in these two decades as we would hope.
Without spoiling
all the details, it’s interesting to note that the most recent (6th)
season of Bosch added another layer
to those personal and professional issues for Billetts, as she was accused of
harassment (of a relatively mild variety, but nevertheless) by one of the
department’s detectives. Moreover, the situation was made more complicated
because of her fraught relationship to her own superior officer (who occupies
the captain position she hasn’t been able to attain). That dynamic likewise
parallels one of Dr. Kerry Weaver’s enduring challenges, her navigation of her
relationship with her boss (and one of TV’s most toxic male characters), Paul McCrane’s Dr. Robert “Rocket”
Romano. But while roughly half of Romano’s interactions with Weaver (and everyone
else, perhaps especially Eriq La Salle’s Dr. Peter Benton) could be described
as harassment of one kind or another, in that era they were (to my recollection)
never overtly portrayed as such. The far greater awareness of those workplace
challenges in Bosch makes it one of
many shows dealing
well with the era of #MeToo, and adds another compelling layer to the
character and story of Grace Billetts.
Next
BoschStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Takes on this show or others you’d call especially
lockdown-binge-worthy?
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