Two Decades On

In another case of too much to watch on TV and none of it appealing, we clicked play on the first episode of The Closer a couple of weeks ago. Back in the mid-oughts, when the show was new, we TIVOed it and watched the weekly digital recordings religiously. 

We were a little late to the game, though. The first episode we ever saw was sometime in August of 2005, after the series premiered in May. It was a Monday night in Stonington, Maine, and Heidi, our dog Isabel, and I were staying in an efficiency motel room on the harbor. We had taken the mail boat over to Isle au Haut that morning and hiked the uninhabited side of the island all day. 

It was the same summer that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was published, and there was a moment on the cliffs on the windward side of the island that I just knew the entrance to the cave that Harry and Dumbledore visit in the opening chapters was right below us. Later, on a cobblestone beach, I fastened a fetch toy for Isabel from driftwood and the line of a washed-up lobster buoy, and she swam tirelessly in the cold water of that little inlet.

That night, the three of us tired and happy, we ordered fried seafood platters and feasted on the saggy couch in front of a bulky cathode ray TV. There were only a few channels available, and we settled on a show with an actor we recognized, Kyra Sedgwick, playing Chief Brenda Lee Johnson of the LAPD Major Crimes unit.

In the way of watching back then, we never saw the episodes of the series we had missed; broadcasting reruns was a thing of the even more distant past. I wasn't sure if I would know it when we got to that first episode, but the other night, when the squad started investigating the death of a young Mexican girl, I knew that was the one, even though the details were very hazy. 

Twenty years is a long time, but the show has held up somewhat well. Sure, technology has progressed, and there's not a single bearded character. The bigotry toward immigrants, women, and the LGBTQ community that some characters flagrantly express may have seemed anachronistic a year or so ago, but you know what? 

That might be coming back around.