‘Bosch: Legacy’ Season 3 Episode 8 Recap: Other Mode

As Bosch: Legacy pushes toward its series conclusion, we keep thinking about Harry Bosch saying “Justice will be done…one way or the other.” Justice, yes. Big concept. Noble, even, as a frame for the firmament in which we live, and certainly a personal driver for the ol’ Bosch-er over the years. But justice is only one way. And Bosch, especially in retirement and as a private sector operator who gives no fucks, is the other.

Further questioning of Diego Perra by the district attorney’s office has made clear Perra’s connection to the Mexican drug cartel known as El Fuerte. They kept the low-level scrub under their big criminal thumb. They told him which taco trucks to rob. And when Honey Chandler sends Harry Bosch a mugshot of Humberto Zorillo, a Fuerte enforcer known on the streets of Los Angeles as “The Pope,” Bosch’s features become set in what can only be called Other Mode. “This is the motherfucker who killed Jimmy.”

While Bosch and Chandler were triangulating on The Pope, we were shown examples of how El Fuerte works. At a factory facility out in the high desert of Lancaster, Hispanic day laborers are made to assemble drug materials for disguised transport. And if anybody steps out of line, El Fuerte makes them eat a crowbar. But when Bosch and Detective Lopez drive out there, they discover how El Fuerte seems to have not just the factory, but the entirety of Lancaster under its cordon. Motel workers who won’t talk to them about people who suddenly disappeared. (“¿No sabes dónde estamos? Everyone here is corrupt.”) And a local sheriff, Garrity (Chris Bauer), who is superficially receptive to Bosch and Lopez’s questions – even brings them to the factory, suddenly free of any cartel activity, just to show them how on the up-and-up it is – but is then seen meeting personally with Zorillo, The Pope.

And here’s something potentially even more significant. Garrity called Captain Seals of LAPD RHD about Bosch and Lopez’s visit. Seals told Chief Hughes (Sophina Brown). And the chief called Lopez into her office like he was a kid causing trouble on the playground. “What the fuck have you really been up to with Harry Bosch?”

Whatever Jimmy was onto that got him popped is feeling like it could be even larger than just the cartel. Because why is the brass so concerned about this as a problem for them, and not something they should have been investigating all along? Maybe Lancaster isn’t the only place in Los Angeles County where everyone is corrupt. 

The cops in Officer Bosch’s immediate tier, at least, don’t seem to be. When Vasquez comes clean to her lieutenant about wayward nephew Albert’s involvement with the follow-home crew, the team rolls into action, setting up a sting at La Zona Rosa, the shuttered downtown restaurant where Victoria is trying to sell some stolen merch to a fence. But internal strife was always gonna be a problem for this crew, and with the cops closing in, Victoria/Fortune, Albert, and Nestor all turn on each other. Hothead Nestor runs out the front door with cash and jewels, waving a pistol, and is promptly shot full of holes. Albert and Victoria “time to rabbit” it out the back door of La Zona Rosa, but this is equally ineffective – Maddie tackles Victoria, and Reyna puts the cuffs on her own nephew. She warned him; he didn’t listen. With the follow-home crew splintered and its surviving members detained, we’re glad Reyna Vasquez didn’t try to cover up her familial links to Albert. While Maddie told her partner, “Whatever you decide, I got your back.” And she would have. But the last thing the force or any cops on it with the last name Bosch need is more funny business within the ranks. 

Samurai Bosch in Other Mode always seemed like the only way he’d ever catch up with Finbar McShane, and with Mo securing the info from the sealed FBI files, Harry now has a connector piece to McShane’s disappearing act. It seems his mysterious accomplice, whose identity the feds were shielding, is a former government spook. A guy whose specialty was extracting people from dangerous situations. (The mind conjures Legacy Season 3 Episode 5, and Finbar’s access to a box truck with a secret compartment, complete with pillow and blanket.) So Bosch calls on his own contact within the spook community, one Ken Gurbizs, his old Special Forces buddy we met earlier this season. 

“You and I pulled a few ops together back in the day,” Silver Wolf says to Gurbizs as they enjoy a drink on Bosch’s patio overlooking LA. “If I’m right about this, you up for another?” Gurbizs is definitely down. And whatever Harry is planning, whatever justice he has a mind to make for the murders McShane committed, is not the kind bound by things like courts, rules, and regulations.

In a Lancaster motel room, stuffed inside a mattress, Bosch and Mo found a narcotic hot potato. A quantity of black ice, apparently pilfered from El Fuerte. And since Bosch’s gut already alerted him to Sheriff Garrity being dirty, he calls him. “Meet me at the motel and collect this into evidence.” Harry Bosch is the least surprised guy on the planet when it’s not the sheriff who shows up to pick up the black ice but The Pope, the cartel enforcer, Humberto Zorillo. His gun drawn, Bosch waits in the darkness. But while Zorillo creeps up outside, with his weapon silenced, and listens by the door, he soon retreats on soft footfalls. Other Mode will have to wait to engage. For now.

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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