Major Crimes: The Complete Series

DVD Wholesale Quick Overview:

The first season of Major Crimes, TNT’s follow-on to The Closer, averaged nearly seven million viewers and rated, in September 2012, as basic cable’s number one new show. Not surprisingly, the network ordered a second season, and increased the number of episodes commissioned from 15 to 19. The new series premieres on 10 June with an episode so glacial that one has to ask: why are viewers so avidly watching yet another series where the supporting cast spends most of its time watching the lead character work?

The dramatic push of the first season concerned Captain Raydor’s (Mary McDonnell) attempt to win the investigative team she inherited over to her philosophy of police work. Instead of securing confessions to support successful prosecutions in court, as her predecessor Brenda Leigh Johnson (Kyra Sedgwick) had done, she wanted to solidify deals, and incarcerate the guilty without recourse to a trial. The approach was very Fordian, very capitalist, very 21st century, a plan to co-opt citizens to surrender voluntarily their rights, get them off the streets, and save the city of LA a lot of money. The debates on the morality of this method enlivened Major Crimes’ initial run, but Raydor proved so compelling in her indoctrination that by the end of it, even grouchy, old-school Lieutenant Provenza (G. W. Bailey) had drunk the Kool-Aid.

-Lesley Smith

The last season of The Closer has been exploring the internal and external politics of contemporary policing, as well as the rights of defendants under law. Deputy Chief Johnson (Kyra Sedgwick) faced investigation of her culpability in the death of a gang member, as well as for her obsessive pursuit of murder suspect, Phillip Stroh (Billy Burke). Challenges from external lawsuits, the LAPD’s own internal affairs department, and a belt-cinching, image-conscious LAPD senior administration hobbled Major Crimes’ detectives in their struggle to catch and convict the city’s most lethal criminals.

The Closer’s turn to the technicalities of the deal enacts something of the reality of the capture and prosecution of criminals in the US, where a majority of cases end in a plea bargain. It also showcases the conservative turn in law enforcement discernible since the late 1980s, and echoed across primetime screens ever since. Night after night, beleaguered police and prosecutors barely hold back a tsunami of wrongdoing, thwarted at every turn by defense attorneys, judges, and the provisions of law itself. While the compromise of the deal has played a consistent role in law enforcement shows, none has framed it as the sine qua non of criminal procedure quite so blatantly as the finalé of The Closer and the opening episodes of its continuation,Major Crimes, both premiering on 13 August.

-Lesley Smith

DVD Wholesale Main Features :   

Actors: Various
Directors: Various
Format: Box set, Color, Dolby, NTSC, Widescreen
Subtitles: English, French
Dubbed: English
Region: Region 1
Number of discs: 24
Rated: NR – Not Rated
Studio: WarnerBrothers
DVD Release Date: March 13, 2018
ASIN: B077V4NM64