Bosch season 4 episode 5 review: Bosch, Maddie try to cope after shocking death
The Coping
The title for this episode is “The Coping” and there couldn’t have been a better title for it then this. The after-effects of losing Eleanor from their lives is crushing Bosch and Maddie and while they are both dealing with it in different ways, the pain is the same. Maddie is internalizing her pain and going about her daily routine where as Bosch is trying to get Maddie to open up and talk about what happened. It’s a bit of a role reversal for these characters, but no one knows how a death will affect them until it happens (we were a funeral director many years ago and have seen this happen time and time again with families).
When Bosch says he’s picking Maddie up after school, she ignores him, doesn’t call him and just leaves with a guy she is seeing sending her dad a short text to say she’s fine – very out of character for her, but this is a situation where people can act irrationally, not just teenagers. She’s spending time with a guy she’s seeing, not going off the rails or anything nuts, just talking about her feelings, enjoying a cola and grabbing some food. Even though this boy has a really good reputation for being a nice guy among the other students, Bosch doesn’t care and goes to his house to pick up Maddie. She gets why her dad is upset, but at the same time she explains that she just needed a break from it all and that included having to explain herself to him or anyone so that she could feel whatever she was going to feel in a way in which she needed to.
Bosch decides to take Maddie to see Eleanor’s body (sometimes that can help to give closure to people), and afterward she was ready to start a dialogue with her dad about everything. She wanted to know about the status of her mom and Reggie’s marriage, if her job is what got her killed and also everything that Bosch and Eleanor talked about before she was killed. Good building blocks towards both of them healing.
Frank
Frank is still in the wind, and the phone call he made to Bosch only confirms it. Their only lead right now is tailing Drake, and after watching him with a laptop (and knowing he’s a technophobe) they feel that they found a drop spot where Drake was giving money and supplies to Frank to help him because he never though Frank did it. Unfortunately because Snyder didn’t know about Drake being a technophobe she got outfoxed by him. Frank on the run, his threat against Elias and now Drake giving Frank cash to stay hidden is making him look incredibly guilty – enough that Jimmy is convinced that Frank is their guy. We are still not 100% convinced – it seems a little too easy for a show like Bosch.
Related – Check out our review of Bosch episode 6.
CarterMatt Verdict
While we love Bosch when the series is deep into a case working the clues and getting closer to solving it, this episode was a departure from the norm. It was a deeper character study of Maddie and Bosch purely focused on their feelings and coping mechanisms in this extreme of a situation. While episode 4 was a brilliant showcase of Titus Welliver, this episode was all Madison Lintz. We’ve seen time and time again on different TV series the trope of a teenager dealing with the death of a parent by going wild, drugs, drinking, boys, but Bosch didn’t go in that direction with Maddie and we were incredibly thankful for it. Instead they gave her a much more intimate perspective that gave Lintz so many different moments to shine. This was our favorite performance of hers to date – just brilliant.
What did you think of the Bosch season 4 episode 5 and do you like the set up of the story for this season? Leave us a comment in the box below with your thoughts.
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