By Anna Belle
The third episode of The Closer opens with Sgt. Gabriel sitting in a bar; he’s on his second drink. In walks Cmdr. Taylor; he orders a diet cola. Cmdr. Taylor hands Sgt. Gabriel a card in a yellow envelope and David asks, “She won’t even let me apologize?” You think you are finally going to find out what happened between Gabriel and Daniels and … gunshots ring out.
Gabriel and Cmdr. Taylor run outside and find a body lying in the street. When Gabriel hears someone fleeing from the scene he orders them to stop and when they fire a couple of shots at him, he returns fire and you immediately feel dread.
You feel more dread when you hear Cmdr. Taylor tell Sgt. Gabriel to get in the ambulance with the victim (somehow you just know that’s wrong on so many levels) instead of staying on the scene of an officer-involved shooting (which is what Gabriel wants to do).
But it’s when you meet Capt. Sharon Raydor (special guest star Mary McDonnell), the head of the Force Investigation Division (Internal Affairs) when a real feeling of dread takes over. Of course Cmdr. Taylor sending her to the wrong hospital, doesn’t help. There’s nothing like a woman in a position of power (OMG, did I really say that?!?!?!).
Everyone hates Internal Affairs and giving it a different name isn’t going to make it smell any better. Plus, mentioning you sort of indirectly answer to the Federal Government and … you “need that information for your report” and … you’re “impeding my investigation” doesn’t win you any friends. But asking Sgt. Gabriel, in front of his boss, “Do you need help with the word immediately?” could earn you a slap.
Of course Brenda keeps her cool. Even offers Capt. Raydor some advice. But I absolutely loved it when she says, “You are a subordinate officer, Captain. You will address me as Chief. Do I make myself clear, Captain?”
Once it’s made clear that Brenda has the right to investigate the original murder while Capt. Raydor investigates Sgt. Gabriel, Brenda’s squad figures out some interesting facts about the murder, starting with the gunshots to the body (wad cutters) which explains the absence of shell casings at the scene.
Once they go to the crime scene (which is strung in RED crime scene tape) and begin to re-enact the crime, they discover Sgt. Gabriel had to have been standing in a different position than he originally thought and they find the bullets that were fired at him. And when blocking out the crime scene, they discover the victim in the hospital was actually blocking his accomplice from the view of witnesses and Sgt. Gabriel.
Through all this, Brenda and Fritz are still dealing with the declining health of Kitty.
At the hospital, Brenda has Flynn and Provenza run interference for her as she sneaks in to talk to the victim/suspect (Eric Whitner). Now that she knows there was an accomplice, she explains “transferred intent” to Eric. When she leaves his hospital room, the boy’s father responds with a racial comment that provides Brenda with another clue.
As she returns to the squad, Fritz calls her and tries to convince her that it’s time to do the right thing by Kitty. Brenda emotionally tells Fritz she can’t deal with it right now.
In yet another meeting with Capt. Raydor and Pope, Brenda discovers that Eric Whitner’s cousin, Billy Roth, had recently lost his father in Iraq, which is the final clue Brenda needs to solve the murder and clear Sgt. Gabriel. Brenda and her team pay the Roth family a visit only to find that they left on vacation the day after the murder.
But they do talk to the neighbor, discover Billy had taken some pot shots at the fence they share and when they dig some wad cutters out of the fence and do a preliminary on-scene comparison, have enough to get a warrant to search the house. Under Billy’s bed they find the gun used in the murder.
Brenda had promised Ricardo Ramos an “exclusive” when she had seen him hanging around the hospital the last time she was there interviewing Eric Whitner and when she returns to the hospital to close her case, she uses Ricardo to distract Eric’s parents to get her confession. She doesn’t have Billy, but Eric doesn’t know that, and she does have the gun and she uses that to get her confession.
When Brenda gets home, she surprises Fritz by telling him that the vet is on her way over and that she’s been keeping Kitty around, selfishly, for herself. She tells Kitty that, too. When I was reading the fan site on Twitter (twitter.com/TheCloserTNT) I discovered that the cat that played Kitty for the last five years passed away four days after filming the episode Red Tape.
I guess Kitty took “that’s a wrap” seriously. The fan site says she’ll be missed terribly.
The final scene has Capt. Raydor, Brenda and Sgt. Gabriel in Brenda’s office. Capt. Raydor tells Gabriel that the DA will not be seeking any charges against him. Brenda tells Capt. Raydor that she found the single-minded approach of the Force Investigation Division’s to crime solving interesting. Capt. Raydor pays Brenda a similar compliment.
Sgt. Gabriel returns to his desk, pulls out the card, and it wasn’t until I was writing this blog that I realized the card wasn’t FROM Det. Daniels, it was from Gabriel to Det. Daniels and when he met Cmdr. Taylor in the bar in the beginning of the episode, she had returned it to Gabriel, via Taylor, unopened. At that, he rips it up and throws it away. We do find out that she’s promoted, and I guess we discover that his heart’s broken.
Photo (Top): © TNT Network/Karen Neal