TV GUIDE: The Guide to Monday TV: The Closer, The Grinch, Terra Nova and More!
Nov 28, 2011
by Matt Roush
Taking advantage of the networks' post-sweeps lull, TNT roars back in a big way this week, with tonight's winter return (for five episodes) of its two biggest hits, The Closer and Rizzoli & Isles...
The Closer (8/7c) and Rizzoli (9/8c) each have similar starting points for this week's cases — the violent murder of an inner-city leader — but how they go about handling the story is an object lesson on why one show remains such potent entertainment midway through its final season and why the other is such a cartoonish bad joke.
On an unsettlingly topical episode of The Closer, the fatal shooting of a high-school principal leads Brenda and her Major Crimes team to investigate the school's long-time coach (ER's Michael Beach), whose career is in jeopardy after it's discovered he has taken an unusually personal interest in the lives of some of his more disadvantaged players. Is he a predatory monster or a selfless humanitarian? Either way, he hasn't followed the rules. And as he tells Brenda (the canny Kyra Sedgwick) in an interrogation, "Do you know what it's like to have someone staring over your shoulder day and night, looking for that one thing that could get you fired?" As a matter of fact, Brenda does. This entire case unfolds with Capt. Sharon Raydor (Mary McDonnell) watching everyone on the team like a hawk, keeping strict records and taking a rigid by-the-book approach while the federal lawsuit against Brenda & Co. is pending. Brenda isn't happy, and Sharon is just as displeased to be playing "hall monitor," but they have one goal in common: flushing out the leak in the department.
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