In season seven episode two of Amazon’s Bosch, entitled “The Dog You Feed,” LAPD Detective Harry Bosch is doubling down on solving a murderous arson case while attempting to tame his out-of-control partner.
At the center of everything, Bosch (Titus Welliver, Lost) is trying to uncover who committed the act of arson in East Hollywood that killed several apartment tenets, including a ten-year-old girl. He’s not convinced that the building management company is entirely innocent for “accidentally” keeping the stairwell doors shut, an incident that caused several tenets to die of smoke inhalation. Bosch’s skepticism strongly suggests that this fatal crime can’t be pawned off as a random act of gang violence. He speculates that the building managers are keeping the police at bay so they can kick lower-paying renters out, and move gentrifiers in. BIG yikes.
Meanwhile, Bosch’s partner Jerry Edgar (Jamie Hector, The Wire) is absolutely losing it. He struggles to get a grip on his mental health and distracts himself with late night benders. His sanity reaches a pivotal breaking point when he uses unnecessary excessive force while arresting one of the Las Palmas gang members for alleged involvement in the arson case. As one can imagine, Bosch isn’t having it.
“Think about bodycam footage, civilians with cell phones. You better hope what you did doesn’t come back to bite us all in the a*s,” says Bosch during a confrontation with Jerry.
That was the first time this season where the viewers saw a reflection of the kind of excessive force and police brutality that made headlines in 2020 and 2021. While the show is set in pre-pandemic early 2020, it would feel like there’s an elephant in the room if it made no attempt to address the acts of police violence that have been dominating the news cycle for the past year and a half.
As upset as Bosch may be, he still covers for Jerry when Lt. Billets (Amy Aquino) comes knocking.
“J got a little frisky with one of them. Looks worse than it was.” Did it, though? C’mon, Bosch! Will there be repercussions for Jerry Edgar’s unnecessary actions? If his partner doesn’t right his wrongs, then maybe the civilians that caught the action on video will.
We’ve seen plenty of quips between Harry Bosch and Jerry Edgar before, but this feels like it’s building up to some sort of breaking point in the relationship. The amazing thing about Titus Welliver’s portrayal of Harry Bosch and Jamie Hector’s portrayal of Jerry Edgar, is that they’re able to create chemistry that doesn’t just exist within their good moments, but the actor’s create realistic tension that makes you feel like you’re in the middle of the argument with them. When they fight, you can see in their eyes alone the messages that they really want to send each other, and it makes you want to root for their friendship to survive these trials, even if that’s starting to seem impossible.
Meanwhile, the rest of the cast of characters have a lot to fight for themselves: Honey Chandler continues to defend her latest client, Vincent Franzen, a rich as*hole arrested for stealing millions from the innocent victims that fell for his Ponzi scheme, Chief Irving fears he may be voted out of a second term, and Lt. Billets discovers an anti-LGBT message graffitied on her car.
The episode concludes with Jerry Edgar getting a free pass for speeding after he flashes his Detective badge to the cop who pulled him over. But how many free passes will Jerry get? It feels like karma will have it’s moment soon.
Rating: 8.5 out of 10
All eight episodes of season seven of Bosch are now streaming on Amazon.