Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson of “The Closer” (8 p.m. Monday, TNT) doesn’t like to feel powerless.
According to Kyra Sedgwick, who plays her on the hit TNT show, the tenacious investigator is a “classic” control freak.
Unfortunately for Brenda, this season, “we are going to examine the issue of power, especially how much power we have in our own lives. We live with the illusion that we are in control of our lives,” writes “Closer” creator James Duff in the press notes for the show.
Brenda really likes that illusion. But it’s hard for her to sustain it, especially in the opening episode of Season 4.
A raging fire complicates a crime scene, a suspect throws Brenda off her game and to add to her dismay, her boss forces her to allow a reporter to follow the investigation. (This is the weakest part of the episode. The shady-reporter plot is a very tiresome TV cliche, and in this case, the journalist acts in ways that are unrealistic).
In her personal life, things are tenuous as well. Brenda doesn’t have a place to live — she and her fiance, FBI agent Fritz Howard (Jon Tenney), are living in a cramped apartment, having sold their old house before they bought a new one. Even the pair’s new cat is homeless; Brenda brings it to work so their anti-cat landlord won’t see it.
It’s not surprising that Brenda has avoided planning her wedding. That’s the kind of thing she leaves to the long-suffering Fritz.
“There’s lots of drama,” Sedgwick said in a recent phone interview. Fritz “wants her to make real choices about her life, and that’s something that’s really hard for her. She loves him desperately, so it’ll be interesting to see them try to navigate each other’s boundaries.
“He’s the one that’s on the emotional journey. She’s not really there” in the same way, Sedgwick said.
The wedding will be one big hurdle for Fritz and Brenda this season, and Sedgwick said the issue of children will come up again.
“She’s still able to have kids. … She needs to decide if she is willing to do that and to give up that control,” Sedgwick said.
The challenge for “The Closer” will be avoiding cliche and cutesy melodrama as it explores Fritz and Brenda’s relationship and revisits her relationship with her tart parents (they’ll be around for at least three episodes this season). Though those elements of the show have been mostly enjoyable, the slightly theatrical antics in Brenda’s personal life sometimes threaten to overwhelm the more rigorous, thoughtful elements of the show.
From that perspective, it’s good news that much of Season 4 will focus on Brenda’s investigative team and on police department politics.
Regarding Assistant Police Chief Will Pope (the wonderful J.K. Simmons), Sedgwick said it’s “going to hit the fan, in terms of bigger police issues and L.A.P.D. budget cuts and the shifting of power. It’s going to be really great.”
The July 21 episode revives a case that Lt. Andy Flynn (Tony Denison) worked on years ago, and a rape case in the Aug. 4 episode involves the son of a sheriff’s department official.
The actress said she still enjoys the challenge of playing Brenda, though, she noted, “It doesn’t get easier to leave my family [in New York City], that is an issue.
“In terms of my fascination with the character, that has not waned,” she added. One of the things she enjoys most, she said, is when an investigation mirrors a difficulty in Brenda’s private life.
“That part of it makes it so much fun for me to play,” Sedgwick said. “If it started becoming just about the plot, I would hang myself. That’s when I would say, let’s just stop. I don’t think that would ever happen with me and James [Duff] at the helm.”
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moryan@tribune.com
