Bosch Legacy (Season 2) Episodes 5 & 6: The secret of “Bosch” and “Bosch: Legacy” existing for so long in the Prime Video Library as well as the collective consciousness of a loyal fanbase, is because of how smoothly it interweaves the different source materials into a single coherent season. That could only occur if the showrunners and writers have a love for the source material and also have enough confidence in their adaptation skills in the television landscape. This is not me saying that Bosch: Legacy is the strongest outing of the showrunners throughout this nine-season run (7 Seasons of Bosch, 2 Seasons of Bosch: Legacy), but it is always good to watch something having a very self-assured skeleton of its own.
Bosch: Legacy (Season 2) Episodes 5 & 6: Recap
Episode 5 – Hollywood Forever
Here’s an argument to be made regarding how much of a three-dimensional character Maddie seems to have because of following a character throughout these collective seasons. Thus, even as she is trying to ignore her gnawing feeling of denial or even unable to understand why sleep eludes her due to the trauma of what has happened, we are okay with following her through, as she wakes up at 4:00 AM, goes out for a run, and directly goes into CRU, ignoring these jittery feelings as first-day blues. We want her to figure it out while also wanting her to be as effective as her father and the myriad issues he is undergoing in solving this case.
One of these issues is the two cops who are extortionists and are very interested in this cop working for the lady lawyer. With Detective Ellis (the big cop) waking up Detective Long, his partner, in the dead of the night while he is enjoying some much-needed R&R, they drive out to Bosch’s house, where Long puts in a tracker below Bosch’s jeep for follow-up purposes. One could wonder how Coltrane is not sensing it, but then again, the Jeep is too far away.
On the first day of Maddie’s job at CRU, she and Vasquez dress up as tourists and work through Hollywood Boulevard. They do spot suspicious activity in the form of a guy wearing a black hoodie keeping a watch on large tourist groups that could potentially be a mark for stealing. But before they could cross the road and ask questions, they were interrupted by a fight between the cosplayers of Queen of Hearts and Jack of Spades, forcing them to break that up.
Meanwhile, Bosch dives into investigating the Lexi Parks case in earnest. In a discussion with Mo, by showing the crime scene photos, he points out that the tan line along her wrist showed the presence of a watch that had been missing, which is confirmed by photos of an empty watch case. This is one thread Bosch would like to follow through, and thus, posing as a potential buyer for the house, he manages to distract the realtor long enough to get in the closet and take a photograph of the receipt inside the expensive watch case.
Upon exiting the house, he has an unpleasant encounter with the bereaved husband, Vince Harrick, who knows that Harry is working for the defense and calls him out as a disgrace to the badge. He even threatens to arrest Harry, but Bosch determinedly holds his ground. It doesn’t go well, with Harrick not interested in answering Harry’s questions regarding the watch.
The second aspect of the investigation is also one of the first cases where Chandler would bribe to get access. In this case, it is to get access to the motel room of James Allen, where both Bosch and Chandler discover an empty wall with a picture missing. There is a possibility of Allen being strangled by the frame wire, matching the MO. But again, that doesn’t automatically exonerate Chandler’s client. Video proof could be closer to a definite answer.
To obtain that, the two of them visit the cemetery adjacent to the Paramount Studios lot. There, Harry recognizes the security guard, Oscar, as an ex-LAPD, and while they both connect over their shared experience as cops, Chandler would have to use some cheddar again to make sure Oscar talks. Because the cemetery CCTV does not reach the motel opposite, the cemetery has an arrangement with Paramount Studios to access footage from cameras atop the Paramount water tower. With Chandler and Bosch finally gaining access, they begin to walk back to their car.
While there, Chandler wonders whether the two cops who had arrested her had been stalking her since Musso and Frank Grill. Unbeknownst to both Bosch and Chandler, the two of them are stalking them, angry, especially at Bosch for going “to the dark side.” Upon reviewing the video footage at Mo’s, Chandler and Bosch identify the white van of Foster (Harry did this by identifying the lights of the van rather than having a supernatural ability to discern the license plate), which had been at the premises of the motel for two hours, thus ensuring Foster’s alibi. It’s still not enough, Chandler argues, as the footage is still not clear enough, but it’s enough for Harry to focus on the whodunnit aspect once this question of Foster’s innocence is answered in his headcanon.
For Harry, though, one of those moments where he still feels stung is upon meeting Maddie for drinks and learning about her promotion. He is proud of her and doesn’t hesitate to say that, but he does worry whether she is ready, and Maddie reaffirms that this is exactly the reason why she hasn’t informed him.
On his off-time, we as viewers finally get to see Mo unwind in what turns out to be a hacktivist convention, where he meets with a mystery woman who is smooth enough to go toe-to-toe with him at smart-alecky barbs and in poker. Mo having a love interest could be a nice C-plot in this season, provided the writers know how to resolve it.
But the night is going very differently for Detective Ellis and Long, who, we learn from their set-up, have been going through this extortion gig for a while. Ellis gives them new phones, while Long checks through CCTV footage to see which of the new marks have expensive things they could steal while giving Ellis a bracelet to pawn off. This introduces us to the “Wanna Buy a Watch” shop, which coincidentally (or perhaps deliberately) connects to Lexi Parks because the receipt in her watch case belonged to this shop.
We see that the shop is owned by two brothers, with the older one storing wads of cash in a trapdoor hidden on the floor, tensed because of working with “these guys.” As it turns out, one of “these guys” is Ellis, who tries to sell off the bracelet, which they would be unable to execute as the timer on the safe has run out. He would have to come back the next day. This is a good piece of world-building over a specific part of the criminal world in LA.
Meanwhile, the next morning, while Harry enters the courthouse, he is met by the dogged reporter Scott Anderson, who, while unable to get any juicy bylines for his paper, lets it sleep that his RHD contact has informed him that the feds have taken over the Simon Wakefield case. That is very much a “wake-up call” for Bosch and Chandler, who realize that the feds are getting close, and Harry wants Chandler to go over every detail of that murder so that they can be prepared for the inevitable onslaught.
That same morning, Maddie finally makes a break at the CRU case by chasing down that black hoodie guy, while Vasquez identifies the flyer guy handing out flyers to tourists as that guy’s partner. However, as Vasquez finally manages to catch up to Maddie, who had been in a furious foot chase, she sees Maddie hit the perp over the head after having handcuffed him and sweating profusely, her adrenaline rush pushing her through. Vasquez invites Maddie that night to her folks’ house, where they have a family dinner every week, and when they are finally unwinding, Vasquez reminds her that she noticed Maddie’s use of excessive force, to which Maddie acquiesces that the rage she felt had been almost uncontrollable, and that is not good for Vasquez or the police force.
The episode finally ends with mobster Aslan, whose pipeline had been the one to be blown up by Bosch and his team the previous season. Doggedly following the leads, the feds have come up with perp photos out of a lineup, hoping against hope that Aslan could identify Crate, Barrel, Mo, or Bosch. As luck would have it, Aslan identifies Bosch as the man responsible for blowing up the pipeline.
Episode 6 – Dos Matadores
The extortion occurs merrily, as Ellis and Long stop a plastic surgeon from exiting a house call from a rich heiress and manage to shake him down from protection money, even increasing the amount the man would have to pay.
Ramirez, meanwhile, gets an unidentified text message to meet at a diner. Thinking it’s his FBI handler again, he gets a shock when he sees Chandler and Bosch waiting for him, revealing that they know about his correspondence with the FBI. He explains that the feds had caught him lying about knowing the details of the shipping container, which gave them an opening to blackmail him into working for them. He explains that Wakefield’s phone contained the schematics, but he isn’t aware of the phone’s location. Chandler informs him to keep her abreast of all the communications Ramirez has with the feds because the channel needs to remain open. As Chandler sends off Ramirez, she gets a message from the DA’s office asking for Bosch’s removal from the Lexi Parks case, while Bosch’s phone starts burning up because of the colorful messages he is getting from his peers.
At the hearing the next morning, Chandler argues that Bosch’s removal from the case is unnecessary because he hasn’t committed any crime, hasn’t disguised or given a false identity, and every step he has taken for investigation has been legitimate. While the judge agrees on this front, he calls the prosecution, the defense, and the DA to his chambers, where he, in no uncertain terms, tells them to wrap up this Foster case. They should start working on a plea deal. At his insistence, the DA offers second-degree murder, 15 years to life, and a chance at parole.
Chandler is adamant that her client should get a chance to voice his thoughts in court, but she ultimately agrees to present the offer to her client. Later in the episode, we see David Foster ultimately refusing the offer, choosing to side with Chandler’s insistence that they are closing on the case, managing to bring a sense of urgency to the proceedings.
The C-plot of the previous episode gets much-needed expansion in this episode. Mo finally gets a date with his mysterious romantic interest, who we learn is a hacktivist by the name of Jade Quinn, and she even has a podcast. Jade reveals that she had been cagey about her relationship the last time Mo asked her because her ex-boyfriend had been harassing her, had managed to hack her family’s medical records, and had been blackmailing her with them. In a move that could only spell a bad idea, primarily because of how much screen time this C-plot takes in, Mo, on their second date, learns that the server is only accessible from the site.
He doesn’t seem worried about it because his plan as he executes it is to gain access to the building disguised as a building inspector, make friends with the chief security guard while managing to copy the details of his key card, make an excuse of going to the bathroom near the server room, and in that interim gain access to the server room and connect to the company system. As he tells Jade that night, all he now has to do is gain fake employee credentials, and he will gain access to her files. Is it only me, or does this scream bad news? While I am not averse to seeing Mo do anything beyond the role of “the guy in the chair,” this feels like a moment of Mo being led into a sort of honeytrap.
The assistant district attorney had, meanwhile, paid a visit to Maddie at the police headquarters. Maddie, who is already troubled by Vasquez’s observations about her rage and now by the insults thrown at her dad, is the farthest from delving into the victim impact statement. As it stands, the district attorney reassures her that she doesn’t need to write one if she chooses to, but she has found that it brings victims closure, to which Maddie vehemently states that she isn’t the victim as much as the rest of the women were. This, we as viewers will realize, is the bridge Maddie would have to cross to gain closure.
Meanwhile, Bosch is making headway on the case. Irrespective of the bad word-of-mouth about him, which, let’s be fair, Bosch is pretty used to by now, Bosch meets with Pierce and Vega, who informs him that Allen had been a regular visitor at the penitentiary due to his drug dealing until the last three years when it mysteriously stopped. It would be almost as if a guardian angel (read cop) were keeping him out of the radar of law enforcement. Bosch asks the detectives’ help in searching for the identities of the cops who had last arrested Allen while remarking that there is no sign of struggling in the crime scene photos.
Visiting the crime scene himself, Bosch knocks on the doors to the apartment building overlooking the alley. One of the tenants is emphatic that there was “Dos Matadores.” While the older woman isn’t clear how she concluded, her son reveals to Bosch that he had heard an American muscle car come up to the alleyway and had heard two doors open and shut simultaneously before the loud engine started up again. Bosch takes this “two murderers” theory to Chandler as a plausible way to attack the prosecution, but they still needed to figure out how Foster’s DNA came to the Parks’ crime scene.
Furthermore, Bosch investigated the bar that Allen used as his pick-up joint and learned that the bartender still has stuff belonging to Allen, which he is hesitant to return to his family. Bosch requests that he hold on to those for a little while longer. The final interview Bosch conducts is with Allen’s last date, who informs him that he had heard the sound of a loud engine, probably an American muscle car. But after a couple of minutes, when he came outside the motel room, he didn’t see the car, as it, along with Allen, had disappeared.
Meanwhile, Maddie had gone to Chandler’s place to ask for advice regarding her victim impact statement. Chandler is empathetic with Maddie regarding the other victims and how much she feels she owes them, but again, Chandler reminds her that she doesn’t owe anyone anything. And reminiscing about her traumatic incident with Rogers, she advises Maddie not to give power to the person who had managed to harm her because that would entail handing over control to that person.
The next morning at Dockweiler’s sentencing hearing, Maddie takes Chandler’s advice to heart, and in her victim impact statement, which feels very much off the cuff, she recounts with vivid detail how she had been kidnapped and had been consequently drugged, acknowledging that she had been luckier than most at being rescued. But then she looks back at Dockweiler and states with fierce determination that his actions do not give him power over her; his victims aren’t defined by his actions.
On the contrary, his actions will define him for the rest of his life, which he will spend in prison because everyone knows that he is a rapist and coward and not just a kidnapper. Maddie then calls Dockweiler out and tells him to look at her. When he does, with a lazy side glance, she slowly states that he deserves every single bad thing coming his way in prison. Outside of the court, Bosch hugs Maddie, telling her he is proud of her. In return, she asks whether his dread of losing her has gone away. Bosch admits that it would never go away, but this helped.
Bosch (Season 2) Episode 6 – Ending Explained
Mo details that Lexi Parks’ extensive call logs revealed her calling at the “Wanna Buy a Watch” store, the same shop whose receipt he had found on the watch case. Bosch decides to check that out. At the shop, he has a conversation with Peter Nguyen, who confirms that Parks had called about a watch repair but is reticent to reveal anything else. Bosch, undeterred, leaves. When Paul, Peter’s brother, comes to the store and learns about a private investigator messing with these affairs, he becomes worried.
Unfortunately, neither Peter nor Paul would have a chance to worry about much of anything. Following the tracker, Ellis and Long had seen Bosch enter the watch repair shop, and now they are uncomfortable with Bosch getting too close to the case. Thus, after seeing Tom enter the shop, the two of them dress up with ski masks covering their faces and break through the back entrance of the shop. Upon being threatened by the death of his brother, Peter reveals that Bosch had just called about a watch repair job that Lexi Parks had assigned. Ellis admits to believing him before killing both Tom and Peter by shooting. They then break the glass cases, staging the scene like a bank robbery, before escaping.
