Bosch season 5 premiere review: Drugs, murder and undercover Bosch

It’s been a long wait for Bosch season 5, but if it’s anything like last season we know we are in for a treat! Season 5 has a lot to live up to with the bar being set so incredibly high by season 4, but we have faith that the show is going to deliver. Titus Welliver and Madison Lintz are wonderful performers that have such a beautiful chemistry as father and daughter that it’s hard to remember that they actually aren’t related and after what their characters went through last season (losing Eleanor Wish) they are bonded in a way that many parents and children never are. Bosch has solved (and seen justice) over the murder of his mother and therefore is moving into season 5 with less weight on his shoulders. We have never seen what Bosch is like without the murder of his mother hanging over him and we are curious to see how he moves forward.

15 months later

That’s where this new season is starting off, so there’s been some time for Bosch to let everything sink in – and it seems that it has because he’s working in a way in which we’ve never seen from him before. We all know that he’s smart, thinks outside the box and will get the job done by any means necessary and that includes going undercover.

The main case this time around is all about the drug trade – Oxycontin to be exact, something that many people in America unfortunately know all too well. This is a drug that can be incredibly helpful when it’s taken properly, but with it’s highly addictive properties it becomes almost impossible for some to see the line between needing it for help and becoming addicted thinking you still need it when you don’t.

As with anything else there is high demand for this drug and this episode shows us how some of this is done. There are people who are robbing pharmacies for the drug and with one robbery gone wrong, Bosch is called in on the robbery (still in progress) along with a lot of other cops. While the robbers have fled the scene (they got away when a cop car and detectives ran into each other distracting everyone), they decided to take off their ski masks (to not raise suspicious on the street) but then for some reason left them on the ground instead of taking them with them. Great way to leave DNA behind dummies! That being said they seemed to be savvy enough to pick up all shell casings from the scene of the crime, so we have to ask – why so careful not to leave a shell casing, but not smart enough to bring the mask with you? They better hope they get lucky.

So was this robbery an inside job? The son (Jose) of the pharmacist had conveniently gone out for coffees when the robbery happened, and the robbers asked about Jose’s whereabouts, but with the father of the pharmacy stashing a gun in his desk it may have been a deal he was running himself that didn’t shake out the way he thought. For now this mystery is still slowly unfolding included how Bosch ends up undercover in the first place.

Bosch interviews: If you missed our latest Bosch interviews you can check out our one with Amy Aquino here and our one with Jamie Hector here.

Maddie works a case

Maddie is working at CIU as a summer job and already she’s run into a bit of a snag. Someone has started sniffing around her, asking questions about her dad and the Danielle Skyler murder case because they are re-investigating it an police misconduct. We know that Bosch has been in plenty of trouble over the years for some of his tactics, but is something bigger coming down the pipeline this season?

Bosch says he isn’t worried since he wasn’t even the lead detective on the case, but we are worried enough for him and so is Maddie. She clearly has some of the magic that makes Bosch a good detective and she starts to dig a bit deeper into this herself. After a few clever moves, she finds access to one of her dad’s tapes from when he was interrogating a suspect named Preston (who was later put away for the crime) in the Skyler murder – someone that claims he was never at her apartment and that the police planted his finger prints on her door.

Later Maddie has dinner with her dad and tells him what she learned after watching the tape and he admits that they never had his prints on the door, but that they had a lot of witnesses that put him there and her necklace was found in Preston’s apartment so they know they got the right guy. Maddie doesn’t understand then why this case is being looked into so many years later and he explains that the new DA is just trying to show what’s she’s made of. Really though, with just a few small facial expressions we can see that Bosch is worried.

Related: Check out our review of Bosch season 5 episode 2!

CarterMatt Verdict

Bosch has always done a great job of keeping their cases feeling relevant to what’s going on in the world, but this season in particular they are checking every box and giving us stories that we see in the headlines every day. The prescription pill drug trade is clearly a big one this season, but we are also seeing stories on police shootings and whether or not they are justified as well as the idea of police stacking evidence in a certain way to close a case when someone may or not actually be guilty. There are a lot of balls in the air this season with a clear message – they are holding nothing back!

What did you think of the Bosch season 5 premiere and do you like the set up of the season so far? Leave us a comment in the box below with your thoughts. (Photo: Amazon)

This review was written by Jessica Carter. Be sure to follow her on Twitter.