Ballard 1.03

BYOB

Ballard continues to work the Pearlman case but is forced to spend most of her time on another cold case. The victim was a fraternity pledge who died falling off a second floor balcony in 2006. There was an inconsistency in the injuries which seem to indicate to Ballard that Nick, the cold case victim, might have been involved in an altercation before falling off the balcony. The trail leads them first to some of the other pledges from that year and then to a couple women that Nick slept with.

Samira gets angry with Ballard over how she's handling the disappearance of a piece of evidence. Parker turns to her grandfather, who was also a police officer for advice. Ballard eventually admits she was wrong and that there are signs of a cover up.

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 1.01

Library of Lost Sous

Detective Renée Ballard, head of the cold case office for the LAPD, works two cases. She wants to work one of the cases but she is pressured to work the other one. She has a team of people working with her, all volunteers. Two of her volunteers used to be police officers, Thomas Laffont is a former partner who is now retired and Samira Parker was a LAPD Robbery Homicide detective who quit the job out of frustration.

The other volunteers are civilians: Colleen Hatteras, Martina Castro, and Ted Rawls. Castro is an intern who is a university student who is there in part for college credit. Rawls, a friend of a City Councilman Jake Pearlman, is a local business owner. Councilman Pearlman wants Ballard to make some progress on the decades-and-a-half old murder of his sister Sarah.

Bosch: Legacy 3.10

Dig Down

Detective Harry Bosch works with LAPD Detective Renee Bosch to solve a case. It looks like the case is linked to an unsolved serial killer case that has been haunting Bosch for more than a dozen years. Bosch and Ballard clash. He uses unorthodox methods. She tries to play it straight but she also puts a tracking device on his car without getting permission to do so. She learns to accept his tactics and together, along with some help from some of his friends, they find and capture the killer.

Thoughts

I started to watch the first episode of Ballard. I paused it when I was about halfway through the episode. I did a little research and discovered that Renee Ballard appeared in the last episode of Bosch: Legacy. I decided to give it a watch before finishing the first episode of Ballard. I thought it might explain some things as to where things begin in the first episode of Ballard but so far I don't think watching this episode yielded any nuggets of useful information.

I haven't watched Bosch or any other episodes of Bosch: Legacy. I read the first five Bosch novels, before Bosch was a TV show. I enjoyed them but eventually I felt like I had read enough and stopped. 

I tried watching Bosch once before. There was something about the portrayal of the main character that rubbed me wrong. It was different enough from what I recalled from the books that it didn't feel right to me. I can see how some people might like or love it but it isn't my cup of tea. I feel no compulsion to go back and start watching Bosch from the beginning. I do still plan to finish watching the first episode of Ballard and maybe more than just the first episode.

This was an okay episode. It was a little too text book for me. Everything moved a little too quickly and smoothly. Ballard is more or less the co-star of this episode. It is as much her episode as it is Bosch's.