Title: "Birdland"
Directed by: Ernest Dickerson
Written by: Daniel Pyne
Air Date: April 21, 2017
Previous: Blood Under the Bridge
Next: Right Play
Guest Starring: Paola Turbay, Paul Calderón, Arnold Vosloo, Matthew Lillard, Steven Culp
"Birdland" is the 6th episode of the third season of Bosch.
The episode opens with a flashback of a newly-orphaned 12-year-old Harry eating cranberry cobbler at a restaurant on Thanksgiving.
Back in the present, it's Thanksgiving Day. Grace Billets is hosting Thanksgiving dinner for the Hollywood Division detectives. Barrel botches the turkey. The fun of the dinner is also spoiled when the guests find out about Andrew Holland's internet smear campaign against Harry Bosch, under the hashtag "#DownAndDirtyDetective".
Dobbs is gathering up the cash his gang received from the freshly murdered Merch. He takes a closer look at the stacks of money and realizes he was ripped off; each stack is blank paper except for the bills on the top and bottom.
On Black Friday, Luke Goshen calls out Bosch and Edgar to the Merch murder scene. It seems that Merch was an Army supply clerk. They find Merch's apartment full of cash and contraband goods like luxury TVs. As the authorities inspect Merch's place, Dobbs' man Woody watches from the street outside.
Meanwhile, Pierce has done some digging of his own trying to connect Holland to the Gunn murder, figuring that someone in Holland's pocket was the person who posted Gunn's bail. Through this, he is able to identify the attractive woman who posted the bail as Marissa Mata, Holland's assistant. Pierce and Robertson investigate the Ominous Owl and find that it can't be traced (they're sold to retailers), but it's no more than three months old.
In a meeting, Rick O'Shea gives Bosch the riot act and tells Anita Benitez to pull Bosch from the stand. Benitez then gets angry when Bosch has to tell her he can't find Annabelle Crowe. Bosch finally tracks Crowe down—or more accurately, he tracks down her apartment, only to find that she's sublet it because she's in Europe shooting a TV show, thanks to Andrew Holland.
Edgar gets the results back from the camera he retrieved from Gunn's apartment. The fingerprints match prints from the murder scene of a man named Mark Taylor, killed in September 2005. Edgar pulls the Taylor murder file, and finds that Bosch was the lead detective.
Robertson goes to Marissa Mata's apartment, and surprised to find out that she and Rudy Tafero are lovers. Marisa and Rudy refuse to cooperate, while Pierce finds out that the fingerprint on Gunn's door belongs to Rudy's younger brother Jesse.
Bosch's depression at his name getting dragged through the mud is deepened when he sees Anita on a date with another man. The episode ends with the flashback to 12-year-old Bosch again, stealing the cranberry cobbler.
Tropes:
- Bad Santa: A drunk Santa is puking on a bench at Hollywood station.
- Book Ends: The flashbacks of young Harry having a sad Thanksgiving are at the beginning and end of the episode.
- Brick Joke: Edgar is standing in line for a Black Friday sale when Bosch makes him leave to come to the Merch murder scene. Later in the episode, Edgar is trying and failing to get that same item online, and Billets asks why he didn't go to a Black Friday sale.
- Briefcase Full of Money: Subverted when Dobbs, packing a Pelican case with money, discovers that the money's actually mostly blank paper.
- Call-Back: The Bad Santa gag is a repeat of a joke from the pilot episode.
- Can Always Spot a Cop: Robertson is able to instantly identify Rudy Tafero despite not having met him before as he recognizes the "ex-cop sag" in his body.
- Flipping the Bird: Paparazzi accost Harry outside his house as he's taking Maddie to school, yelling about Holland's smear campaign on social media. Maddie flips them off.Maddie: Tweet this, asshole!
- Internal Affairs: They're after Bosch again. Sgt. Amy Snyder from IA shows up at the station investigating a "128 complaint" against Bosch.
- Monochrome Past: Sort of. The flashbacks of 12-year-old Harry aren't monochrome, but they're shot on notably grainier film, to evoke a feel of the past.
- Sex Dressed: Robertson infers that he caught Marissa and Rudy on the tail end of a tryst, as Rudy is shirtless while Marissa is wearing an ill-fitting t-shirt.Robertson: Sure. Pardon the interruptus.
- Stealth Insult: Irving made clear to Ramos in the last episode how he doesn't approve of Bradley Walker's candidate for the next Chief of Police, Nestor Delgado. Here, he tells Delgado "I don't agree with everyone saying you're too young."
- Thanksgiving Episode: Barrel overcooks the turkey. Jerry Edgar is disappointed when his son would rather play video games than the traditional family touch football game.
