Ballard 1.02

Haystacks

Ballard looks into the death of the cleaning woman from the motel, unofficially. Naylin, the detective working the case, gets prickly about her poking her nose around. She gets a picture of a possible suspect and tracks him down to a crack house. She captures him with some help from Parker and Rawls but he's got mental problems and not very helpful.

A tip from Councilman Pearlman combined with some DNA evidence leads Ballard to believe that Brian Richmond didn't kill Sarah Pearlman or Laura Wilson, a case that Bosch worked years before.

Ballard has a date with Aaron, her lifeguard friend. He sleeps over but the next morning she leaves before he gets up. She was called into a meeting with LAPD Captain Berchem and Detective Naylin. Berchem gives her a hard time for stepping on Naylin's toes but then hands the case over to her because she made some progress on it while Naylin did little to nothing with it.

Ballard hesitates to reach out to Bosch. She knows he might have good information but she still doesn't feel great about her last encounter with him (Bosch Legacy 3.10). Bosch finally reaches out to her. They meet and discuss the Wilson case.

Someone is tailing Ballard in a pickup truck. She has yet to get wise to the tail. The episode ends with the reveal that the man in the pickup truck is a cop.

Thoughts

I'm still liking this. It's good. I'm still not crazy about the portrayal of Bosch but this isn't his show. I like Detective Ballard but the show looks like it following a somewhat common path. I'm okay with that as long as the performances are good and so far they are very good in my estimation.