‘Bosch: Legacy’ Season 3 Episode 6 Recap: Cold Comfort

ONE. MONTH. LATER.

A TV series time jump is one of our favorite devices, because it can strengthen the story threads, ratchet up the pressure, and jolt some real right back into the characters. All of which happens in Bosch: Legacy Season 3 Episode 6, where four weeks have passed since the shooting death of Detective Jimmy Robertson. And from the look of it, Harry Bosch has been spending most of that time next to a bottle of Glenlivet. After the tragedy of the Gallagher family murder – “I feel like I failed you somehow,” he tells Siobhan – after Robertson’s shocking death, and while Finbar McShane has become a ghost, Bosch drinks scotch at 8am on the leather couch in front of his Yojimbo poster, where the lone samurai of Los Angeles considers whether anybody in town still respects human life. 

The same time jump has found Honey Chandler putting down roots in her new position. (As well as Mimi Rogers finding a new gear for the character.) At a press conference, the city’s new district attorney announces that an anonymous tip led to the arrest of Diego Perra (Esteban Carmona) in connection with Robertson’s death. She’s pushing Corvus Pike (Tim DeKay) and Raquel Bowers (Victoria Platt), two top prosecutors, to work up an airtight case against Perra. The LAPD wants immediate justice in the killing of one of their own. And public opinion is with the DA. But she still needs to be sure, and when they try a “Perkins” – as in Illinois vs. Perkins (1990), putting an undercover cop in a cell with Perra, to see if he’ll make any voluntary statements outside his Maranda rights – it only reveals how much their prime suspect believes his innocence. “I take money, not lives!” Perra admits he robs LA taco trucks. But he swears he didn’t kill a cop. Despite pressure to do so, Chandler won’t prosecute without first putting Bosch and Mo on the Detective Robertson murder book.

Bosch and Mo are re-interviewing witnesses to the shooting, and rebuilding Jimmy’s movements in the moments before he was shot. He said “Be cool,” with his arms raised. He reached for his wallet, not his weapon. “So why does a guy who’s never shot anyone in any of his previous robberies gun down a cop?” And to make things even more hinky, the street cameras that overlooked the crime scene were disabled in the hours before the shooting. “Rendered inoperable,” in cop speak. Chandler addresses Bosch’s gut, that intangible knife blade inside him that keeps him sharp, right on the edge. And shaking off the fog of drink and depression that has plagued him since all of this violence began, Harry’s features are suddenly set in stone. “Robertson was assassinated.”     

“If we roll up Nestor, Victoria goes to ground. Other triggerman, too.” That was Officer Vasquez, back when LAPD was simply tightening their grip on the follow-home crew, and leaning on Victoria after Nestor – of course he ignored her admonishments to be careful – was caught on camera trying to sell some of the stolen merch. Victoria, aka “Fortune,” didn’t break as Vasquez and Bosch leaned on her at her parents’ restaurant. (She’s intense!) But the investigation takes a turn for the intensely personal when they tail her to a surreptitious meeting in a city park with “the other triggerman.” Vasquez is the only one with a vantage point to see who Victoria is meeting. And she’s mortified when it’s her nephew Albert who takes down his hood to kiss his girlfriend. But then she tells Officer Bosch it was too dark to make out a face. Suddenly it’s the veteran officer, not the recent rookie, who is conflicted about her personal connection to the job.

Titus Welliver’s quiet scene with Orla Brady as Siobhan Murphy is a heartbreaker. There is so little either of them can do or say in the aftermath, and yet they both feel like their link to one another isn’t through. Bosch doesn’t tell Siobhan, but there is some headway in finding Finbar McShane, even if, as Mo says, “the guy’s a fucking phantom.” No credit cards, bank access, or social media activity, but digging into McShane’s background has revealed a set of sealed government files. “The feds are trying to hide someone or something,” Bosch says, and while it’s tantalizing to know there is more to what McShane is up to, it’s equally frustrating. How are they gonna get access to restricted federal documents? This is exactly why you keep a resourceful dude like Mo on the payroll. “Let me take a stab.” 

Throwing himself back into the work has given Bosch renewed purpose. With the work he and Mo put together on Jimmy’s murder book, and his certainty that it was not a random robbery-assault but instead a targeted hit, the question becomes: where is the line? Because he wants to aid Chandler’s official march toward a prosecution of Perra, and even raises a glass with Maddie to his capture. (“Chandler better get this one right,” Maddie adds, to summarize where the rank-and-file are at.) But in their witness interviews, and especially with the discovery of the blown-out cameras – Mo says he’d lay money on them having been tampered with – what has emerged is not more strength, only more questions. And what is a retired detective who always lived by his own code with stuff like this to do? When Maddie offered faith that the law always catches up, Harry called that cold comfort. “Justice,” he says, “will be done. One way or another.” The blade in this modern samurai’s gut burns with a bright new flame.

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.

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