‘Major Crimes’ season 4, episode 20 review: Is the new format working, or stalling?

There’s something very fun about all of the mixed messages that come out within the world of TV. Want some examples? Well, just think about it in this sense. Before “Major Crimes” adopted this new serialized model for the final five episodes of season 4, we know that we were one of many people calling for the show to move to a more serialized format. Now that we have made it to this point, we quickly find ourselves seeing plenty of people who preferred things back the old way.

Creatively, we do think that this is working for now, given that the writers have done a good job of setting up the scale of the case, and giving us so many interesting characters who could have a role to play here. You’ve got Daniel the seemingly-reformed priest, Hickman the bitter ex-cop, and the not-so-peaceful Buddha. There’s a quest to track down Emile, to figure out if Hickman really planted the gun as it seems, and to figure out if any witnesses of a recent church gathering can give any more information as to why it was there. Also, there are still crimes that are not explicitly linked.

Could you argue that maybe certain key characters could be involved better? Certainly. The Rusty arc right now is falling a little flat, and after so much great stuff for Andy Flynn in the late fall, we’d love to see him a little more involved here. Then again, it’s a trade-off; Sykes is now getting many meaty scenes challenging Hickman, while the personal connection to the case for Tao is providing a lot of great connections.

In the end, we think that “Major Crimes” is doing some interesting stuff two episodes into this arc. Maybe they could have created a better cliffhanger leading out of part 2 or given us some further information, but given that these were episodes we were originally not even going to get, it’s hard to be upset about them. Grade: B.

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