TV Review: New Look, Same Old ‘The Closer’ on TNT

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CHICAGO – As my grandfather used to say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Such is the formula of a hit show like “The Closer,” which returns tonight, July 12th, 2010 for its sixth season premiere. The characters may be coping with a new setting but it’s the same old show.

HollywoodChicago.com Television Rating: 3.5/5.0
Television Rating: 3.5/5.0

Considering their press release touts the fact that “The Closer” is ad-supported cable’s #1 series of all time, can you blame the creators of “The Closer” for cutting the season premiere from the same cloth as what’s worked before? The plot of the season premiere is about changes in the life of Deputy Chief Brenda Lee Johnson but fans don’t need to worry about their favorite show feeling any different than it has before.

The Closer
The Closer
Photo credit: Karen Neal/TNT

The show’s primary strength is still one of the best performances on television by Kyra Sedgwick, who just landed her fifth straight Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series (although she’s never won). In the premiere, Brenda finds her legendary interrogation rhythm thrown off by the new, high-tech headquarters of the LAPD. While she tries to figure out the technology behind the new ‘Murder Board’ and deals with the horribly designed ‘Hard Interview Room,’ Johnson must also manage the case of a man shot at 4am on his own deck while he stargazed. Who could possibly know he would be up there at that moment and who wanted him dead?

The Closer
The Closer
Photo credit: Marc Horn/TNT

Sedgwick continues to give one of the best performances on television and is likely doing the best acting work of the summer season but the script for the premiere of “The Closer” is a bit lackluster. The mysteries on this show can be so remarkably hit-or-miss with some riveting crimes for Brenda and her gang to solve and some that feel too much like an afterthought. The season premiere mystery is definitely the subplot to the fact that Johnson and her team are struggling to cope with their new surroundings.

Even with the new setting, the season premiere of “The Closer” follows the formula that has made the show a hit. Brenda Johnson will surely find the killer, we’ll get a little bit of her home life (with the underrated Jon Tenney), and there’s likely to be some comic relief from the supporting cast. Even the non-mystery elements of “The Closer” have gotten predictable.

The fact is that “The Closer” is still not appointment television. The main element that holds it back is the lack of intriguing mysteries. I rarely find the actual crimes and their resolutions as intriguing as, say, “The Mentalist” or “Castle,” and I think the show’s success is helped greatly by being on in a season when more well-written mystery programming is on hiatus. The characters on “The Closer” are fantastic, the mysteries are so-so.

The premiere of season six of “The Closer” features a slightly sub-par mystery and a slightly above-par non-mystery plot, balancing out to a reasonably entertaining hour of television. There’s still room and potential for “The Closer” to go from good to great, but that would require a few tweaks to the formula and the show just doesn’t seem broken enough to try fixing it.

‘The Closer,’ which airs on TNT, stars Kyra Sedgwick, Jon Tenney, J.K. Simmons, G.W. Bailey, Robert Gossett, Anthony John Denison, Michael Paul Chan, and Raymond Cruz. The sixth season premiere airs on Monday, July 12th, 2010 at 8PM CST.

HollywoodChicago.com content director Brian Tallerico

By BRIAN TALLERICO
Content Director
HollywoodChicago.com
brian@hollywoodchicago.com

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