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Bonus ‘Closer’ wasn’t a gift worth giving

Bonus December episodes are a new tradition that make the holidays merrier for fans of cable shows.Last week, SciFi presented the two-hour "Razor," a stand-alone "Battlestar Galactica" episode that gave viewers a closer look at Admiral Cain. This week, USA, which has previously offered special holiday-themed episodes of "Monk" and "The Dead Zone," stuffs fans' stockings with more yuletide installm
/ Source: msnbc.com contributor

Bonus December episodes are a new tradition that make the holidays merrier for fans of cable shows.

Last week, SciFi presented the two-hour "Razor," a stand-alone "Battlestar Galactica" episode that gave viewers a closer look at Admiral Cain. This week, USA, which has previously offered special holiday-themed episodes of "Monk" and "The Dead Zone," stuffs fans' stockings with more yuletide installments of "Monk' and "Psych" on Friday.

And there's "The Closer," which presented the two-hour episode "Next of Kin" Monday night. Considering "The Closer's" third season ended back in September and a fourth isn't likely until at least next summer (strike permitting), an extra dose of Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson was just what fans asked Santa for.

Still, there was plenty to be a Grinch about.

These bonus episodes are tricky enough when they try to force Christmas-related capers into the storylines. (Thank goodness there's no Christmas in the world of "Battlestar Galactica.") But add in the extra pressure of filling twice as much story time, and it's easy for things to go awry.

Being "extra-special" often means messing with the formula in some way, which is a shame, because on "The Closer," that formula works well. The show is at its best when it's just Brenda (the incomparable Kyra Sedgwick) in an interrogation room, slowly drawing a confession out a bad guy and yearning for Ding Dongs.

"Next of Kin," though, sent Brenda on a cross-country road trip with her fiancé, a violent fugitive and two of her detectives. And her parents. In a Winnebago. Without a working toilet.

But even as the episode stretched disbelief out the door and around the block, star Sedgwick still did everything right, as her character's personal and professional lives collided.

When a suspect in a deadly armored car robbery fled to her home state of Georgia, Brenda decided to visit the folks with Fritz. But after tracking down the fugitive, Brenda's Christmas got less merry when a series of unfortunate events made getting him home a challenge, especially once her parents realized she wasn't really there to see them after all.

The madcap antics had me longing for the squad room shooting of last year's more somber December episode. This year, there were just too many unnecessary plot contrivances.

A fugitive that just happens to be heading to Brenda's hometown is a convenient plot device we accept in TV Land. But the guy never once asking for his lawyer, Brenda's parents' ability to adopt the fugitive's younger brother with apparently no red tape at all, plus the dozens of events that had to be set in motion just to get seven people in a Winnebago for a cross-country road trip were all just too much.

That's especially true considering how the writing sparkled in the third season. In its early days, "The Closer" was all about Sedgwick's revelatory performance. The crimes and capers were merely adequate. But this summer, episodes such as "Ruby" (which sent Sgt. Gabriel over the line) and the two-part "Til Death Do Us Part" (which brought up Fritz's alcoholism) elevated the show to the level of its star. The audience responded, and the show averaged more than eight million viewers.

Of course, Brenda has always been the show's core, and even in this cockamamie Christmas episode, Brenda — and Sedgwick — shined.

Mostly tough and brassy at work, Brenda usually lets the chinks in her armor show at home. But long-suffering fiancé Fritz's saintly status was cemented years ago, so the writers brought in mom and later dad for Brenda to try to please but ultimately disappoint.

As mom Willie Ray, Frances Sternhagen layers on the kind of love-guilt cocktail Doris Roberts perfected on "Everybody Loves Raymond." But to Brenda, Willie Ray's most redeeming quality was always that she wasn't her daddy, Clay, played by "One Tree Hill" coach Barry Corbin.

The episode couldn't have better illustrated how different Brenda's two worlds are. There was her home in Atlanta, colored in warm gingerbread browns and bright, artificial-garland greens. Then there was her job in L.A., colored in dark, bloody reds and morally ambiguous grays.

Different palettes can call for different brushes, but Brenda has never known how to be anything but a deputy chief, which, as this episode showed, means constantly struggling with the truth.

Brenda is a liar. She lies to suspects all the time. She lies to Chief Pope about her cases. She lies to her team about her home life, and she lies to her family about her work life. Like Dr. House, Brenda never knows when to turn off the game, when to stop lying for no other reason than because it makes her life easier.

Telling the fugitive that his little brother was dead was cold, even for Brenda. Sure, his incessant tantrums weren't making him very sympathetic, but it also seemed a more legally murky route than the ones Brenda usually takes. Part of the joy in watching Brenda work is the way she meticulously gets suspects to forgo lawyers, procures evidence in creative but legally necessary ways and draws rock-solid confessions out of even the most lock-jawed villain.

But it just shows that the writers were more interested in Brenda's personal story than her professional one, because lying to the fugitive also meant lying to her road trip companions, her parents. The guilt and shame Brenda felt when daddy confronted her about her true motives for coming to Atlanta resonated with anyone who's been away from home for the holidays. But watching Brenda explain to her mom why she had to lie about the brother's death was heartbreaking.

Brenda is, after all, a closer. The ends will almost always justify the means if it puts a criminal behind bars. Likewise, Winnebago road trips and subplots about missing Perry Como CDs are justified if they mean giving Sedgwick the kind of material that should earn her a belated present next September — a shiny new Emmy to add to her Golden Globe.

Jeff Hidek also covers television for the Star-News in Wilmington, N.C. Read his blog at tv.starnewsonline.com and contact him at jeff.hidek@starnewsonline.com.