‘Major Crimes’ season 5, episode 12 review: Dealing with death takes many forms

Sometimes, “Major Crimes” makes you wait until the tail end of its story before revealing to you the perpetrator. With its “White Lies” story arc, the show is taking a little bit of a different approach in that you know who some of the adversaries are, and you know the carnage they are capable of.

At the moment, the clear threat is Neo-Nazi leader Jordan Graff, a terrifying man who is able to form a cult-like mentality with his followers, and a man who is going to be very hard for the Major Crimes Division to take down. This is amplified further by the fact that their heads are clearly rattled in the aftermath of the courtroom shooting. Mary McDonnell continues to shine during this arc, as tonight Sharon wrestled with the guilt of having to use deadly force. While her victim may have been hardly an innocent man, this shows her humanity and how it never quite goes away. Also, through the pressing of Darnell’s mother we started to get a sense of some of the influences and factors that may have eventually played into him becoming the person he was.

What made “White Lies: Part 2” strong, and almost as strong as last week, was that almost every main character continues to have a role. For Julio Sanchez, wrestling with this case while taking care of his foster son Mark became a struggle, especially when you consider some of Mark’s own history and background. Meanwhile, for Buzz he finally started to close in on his long-simmering investigation thanks to a yearbook of all things. Everyone in turn was still coming to grips with what happened to Taylor, but trying to honor him in every way that they could.

Do we think that the episode had its weaker points? Absolutely, with one of the more notable ones being that the Rusty / Gus tension seemed a tad forced, and we’d rather have just had the Rusty and Dr. Joe stuff for now. Elsewhere, this was an episode with a lot of power, and while there was not necessarily much in the way of resolution, we’ll ultimately take and take happily whatever the show decides to give us leading up to it. Grade: B+.

If you do want to get some other news right away when it comes to “Major Crimes”? Then be sure to head over to the link here right now, or sign up over here to secure some other TV news on everything we cover, sent right over to you via our official CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: TNT.)