Openings Made by The Closer

With such an increase lately in programs featuring female leads, it’s interesting to note that the model for many of these shows share some basic similarities.

One could argue the trend began with Kyra Sedgwick playing Brenda Johnson in The Closer. Deputy Chief over a division handling priority homicides in Los Angeles, Brenda begins the series as a southern transplant, resented by many in the department for coming in to such a position as an outsider. Further complicating matters is the fact that she had once been involved in an affair with her new boss, Will Pope, as well as her no nonsense methods of investigations. Known as The Closer, for her ability to get airtight confessions out of her suspects, Brenda’s talents are most on display as she by turns charms, cajoles, intimidates and manipulates her quarry. Within the interrogation room, Brenda often leads her suspects down a labyrinth of words and emotions, twisting and turning until they wind up exactly where she intended them to be, when her sugary sweet demeanor can fall away to reveal the razor sharp wit beneath it like a trap snapping shut around them.

Her trademark is a using her soft southern twang, saying “Thank you, thank you very much”, when what it translates to is more like ‘you can’t deny that I’m right, so just do what I say and we can just get this over with’.

Contrasting with her uncanny ability to manipulate people as part of her work, is the issue of her personal life, where without her skills at emotional manipulation and ability to have tight control over the process, Brenda often seems as lost and off balance as she strives to make her suspects when going in for the kill. The ease of reading people, and morphing herself into whatever persona will achieve the desired result translates into difficulty in relating to real, honest emotions and offering the same in return. Her relationship with FBI agent Fritz Howard is most often characterized by that struggle, as she tries to allow the carefully constructed persona to fall away in the face of genuine emotion.

The idea of competence in the workplace contrasting with being hopeless in her personal life is the most common thread of similarity between characters such as Holly Hunter’s Grace Hanadarko from Saving Grace, Angie Harmon as Lindsay Boxer on Women’s Murder Club, all of which portray the characters as being as incompetent in their personal lives as they are talented at be police officers. To a lesser degree, perhaps even Mariska Hargitay’s detective Olivia Benson on Law & Order: SVU and similar characters fit the bill.

The malady is not confined to law enforcement, however. In Damages, for Glenn Close and Rose Byrne, the idea of workplace competence coming at the expense of a personal life was integral to the plot of the first season, as Rose’s Ellen Parsons began her legal career trying to balance her life between her ambition and her fiancé. The impossibility is accepted as a cynical reality by one of her more experienced colleagues, Ellen is even told that when her life falls completely apart, that “means it’s time for a promotion.”

Interestingly, many of these women are also childless, either by circumstance or design and having to consider whether they will ever choose to become mothers. Close’s Patty Hewes is an exception, her troubled relationship with her son mirroring in no small way Brenda Johnson’s difficulty in relationships. For Patty, who as a lawyer makes her living by manipulation and control, the prospect of letting go of that control is a constant, often maddening struggle with a son who has come to resent and rebel against such treatment.

It’s not surprising, nor is it exclusive to women, to portray an inherent imbalance in terrific ability in the workplace with severe limitations in a character’s personal life. Indeed, the two aspects of a character are often portrayed as inversely proportional. The better you are at one element of your life, the more another will suffer.

It’s certainly not a new conceit. The struggle between the divergent aspects of work and life was one of the central themes of Cagney and Lacey, with Sharon Gless’ Christine Cagney as the workaholic alcoholic contrasting with Tyne Daly’s Mary Beth Lacey, a wife and mother caught between her partner’s drive and her family’s needs, often conceding that one must come at the expense of the other.

Replacing the alcoholism with a more mundane sugar addiction, Brenda Johnson brings in the new breed of workaholic female with perhaps a less accusatory sensibility. Not that Cagney was necessarily vilified for her devotion to work, but that the inherent struggle for balance between the personal and professional, while it might be difficult, is now shown as more of a constant struggle rather than an abject impossibility. As though such characters are now allowed to exist somewhere in between the two extremes, having a genuine interest in each even if the more natural ability might exist in the workplace. While the personal struggles are now able to be characterized with fumbling charm as easily as they might be with darker obsessions.

Perhaps this is a reflection of a society which has grown somewhat more comfortable with the idea of a woman in a position of power or authority, and yet still not entirely at ease. As she began her new position, Brenda was greeted with unease and suspicion, having to at one point tell an officer that, “If I liked being called a bitch to my face, I’d still be married”, yet, as they had the opportunity to see her work, she slowly was able to gain the loyalty and respect of a team once ready to transfer en mass away from the division rather than work with her. And in the process perhaps helped pave the way for others to be given the same sort of opportunities.

Brenda: Low-functioning autistics have no language skills; they cannot survive independently by themselves. Keith is not like that. According to his school records, he's very intelligent but he does have issues - he's unemotional, frequently says inappropriate things. He's literal-minded. He gets fixated on minor details. He gets agitated when his routine is altered, and he's extremely uncooperative when anything or anyone gets in the way of him doing what he wants.
Detective: Does he have a Georgia accent?