Spoilers for Bosch, Bosch: Legacy and even Ballard – so if you don’t want to know any spoilers about those shows, move along… Move along…
I watched each of the seven seasons of Bosch as they dropped on Amazon Prime. I liked it quite a bit. Came into it ‘clean’, in that I have never read any of the books it’s based on. I have considered reading those books now, but haven’t yet gone down that very deep rabbit hole.
When they did the spin-off, Bosch: Legacy, I gave it a shot. But they launched that show on FreeVee, a new streamer that included ads. I managed to get through the first season, but it was difficult.
The ads drove me insane.
I hate ads. Whenever I jump onto a streaming platform, I pay the extra bit for no ads – something that wasn’t even a thing just a couple years ago. ALL of them were add-free.
The leap to ads on streaming platforms is 100% pure greed. It shows a deep disregard for WHY people moved to streaming in the first place. Well, one of the most important reasons.
The newbie streaming platforms all wanted a piece of the Netflix pie, but they didn’t want to give up any pieces of their broadcast pies. Netflix works because you can watch an entire season of a show at a go and do so without ads*. When you add an episode a week and fill it with ads, that doesn’t work. It pisses people off.
It pissed me off.
So, I left Bosch: Legacy on a cliffhanger, with Maddy kidnapped and Harry losing his shit.
I remember being sad when the news dropped that Bosch: Legacy was cancelled. Especially after reading that the cast and crew didn’t know until after they’d completed filming – which seems to be a thing now. A sad thing. A messed up thing. See: Star Trek Discovery.
Next, I saw a trailer I wasn’t expecting at all for a new Bosch spin-off called ‘Ballard’. This one starred Maggie Q, who has been an absolute powerhouse of an actress, IMHO, in everything she’s done. Which meant I wanted to watch that show. But I had to get caught up, first.
The new and infuriating thing streamers do now is to show you ads on your ad-free tier. It is even more greedy than the bullshit greedy ads-tier they are already charging people for. There have already been lawsuits about that and apparently, the courts sided with the streamers.
Wheee.
So while I wanted to catch up on Bosch: Legacy so I could be a completist and go into Ballard knowing the continuity of everything, I was not looking forward to having to wade through FreeVee again.
Much to my delight, Legacy moved back to Prime and the only ads were the stupid ones they show before the episode starts – which, sometimes, you can skip.
Legacy was fantastic. Loved Harry the PI and Maddy the officer. Loved Mo and his troubles with the FBI. Loved Honey and her bid to be the new DA of Los Angeles. They built up a strong cast of characters and compelling stories. I even loved seeing Crate and Barrel running around in Hawaiian shirts.
On top of that, they managed to truly surprise and shock me with a season 3 death I was NOT expecting at all.
It did not deserve cancellation. Reading up on that, it looks like it was all about costs for cast and crew. And you can see the writers, cast and crew had absolutely no idea they were being cancelled in the open plot threads left unresolved.
Which is sad.
I didn’t even know I’d finished the last episode until the auto-play started Ballard episode 1. I was all, “Wait – what?” and had to check. I had that moment of, “But… what about…?” meaning the plot holes. That is gonna bother my brain for a bit before something else knocks it out of there. It’s clear they were setting up some stuff for season 4.
After a short period of mourning, I returned to Ballard episode 1. Introduced in the final episodes of Legacy, Ballard felt like Harry Bosch with long hair. They had that trope where they’re always outsiders, but also have tons of friends, and are right about their suspicions and investigative work, and no one listens to them and then they’re proven right by solving the case despite all the other cops fighting them every step of the way and people still don’t listen to them, but, hey – it’s ok, we’re all mostly friends, good job but don’t pull this shit again or -shakes fist-.
It’s a thing.
From Legacy to Ballard, she changed a bit (not 100% – she was still the outsider, but even more so). There’s an inciting event off screen that changes her and further strains her relationships within the LAPD. Maggie Q plays her very closed off, which is understandable once you learn about that inciting event – an attempted assault by a fellow officer who is cleared of wrongdoing. That makes it difficult for her to trust people.
The show follows Ballard and her team as they try to solve various cold cases. It’s good. Really good. I’m hoping it gets more seasons.
Bosch shows up several times and it’s good and doesn’t overshadow Ballard or her team or cases – which is difficult to pull off most of the time. I’m thinking about when there were crossovers in the various Arrowverse shows. Those always felt like the non-main characters got shoved to the side. When Harry shows up in Ballard, it didn’t feel like that. It felt natural. I liked that.
Someone told me Harry is gonna show up in Netflix’s The Lincoln Lawyer soonish, which is cool. (If you didn’t know, the two characters are half-brothers, sharing the same father.)
All in all, we got 10 seasons of Bosch. All good television, IMHO. Well worth your time. And in looking up the books, seems like Titus Welliver has even narrated a few of the audiobooks.
May have to check those out…
*yes, Netflix now has an ad-supported tier, which is total bullshit.