Title: Some Measure of Justice
Directed by: Ernest Dickerson
Written by: Michael Connelly
Air Date: April 17, 2020
Previous: Dark Sacred Night
Next: Brazen
Guest Starring: Lynn Collins, Julie Ann Emery, Mimi Rogers, Linda Park
"Some Measure of Justice" is the 10th and last episode of the sixth season of Bosch.
The episode opens with Bosch still interviewing Roger Dillon in the squad room, and Dillon insisting that he only killed Daisy Clayton, and the other girls were kidnapped for a human trafficking operation. Harry doesn't buy it, but the cops raid the address Dillon gave and arrest some traffickers, as well as save three girls. After the interview is over an enraged Harry tells Dillon that he'd better hope he serves all 11 years, because Harry will be coming for him after he gets out.
Harry goes over to Elizabeth Clayton's apartment to deliver this news and return the photo of Daisy. He finds that she has committed suicide by overdosing on a concoction of alcohol and pills.
Edgar goes to see Naomi Wise, who is devastated now that her husband has been killed by the same gangsters who killed their son. She gives him a note that Dwight left behind a note for Edgar in case something happened. It doesn't contain an important message or secret info, though, just the words "When the system fails, righteous men rise up."
Irvin Irving calls a press conference and announces that he is dropping out of the mayoral race, and endorsing not Jack Killoran, but the other candidate, Susana Lopez. After an angry Killoran calls, Irving blows him off, saying that releasing the tape will not only make Killoran look vengeful, but it would also expose him to extortion charges.
Edgar still seethes with rage over the prospect of Jacques Avril getting away with the murders of both Gary and Dwight Wise. He is sitting in his car, keeping watch outside Jacques Avril's house, when he sees Remi Toussaint striding purposefully in. Edgar follows.
What happens next is told in flashback as Edgar is being interviewed, with Harry as his representative. As Edgar made his way into Avril's house, he heard two shots. He found Remi, dead on the floor. Next he found Jacques Avril, gun in hand. Avril said he would trust Edgar and surrender, but instead he moved to point the gun at Edgar, and Edgar shot him twice in the chest and killed him.
Harry gives Edgar a ride home. Despite After stopping the car Harry lets slip that he knows what Edgar really did, pointing out that Edgar left his cell phone at home to avoid leaving "a digital trail." Edgar insists that he just forgot his phone, but his comments about "the abyss" when talking to his ex-wife hint that Harry was right.
Meanwhile, it's time for the suppression hearing in Alicia Kent's murder trial. Heather Strout and her confederate Ian are planning to bring in a bomb, which she will detonate via a cell phone. Everybody's at the courthouse, including Maddie , but not Sylvia Reece or any of the FBI, as someone from the sheriff's office called in a terror threat. Heather passes through security with her backpack and meets Ian Hughes, who as it turns out is a sheriff's deputy. Ian, who is himself security at the courthouse and thus didn't have to go through the scanner, gives her the second, identical backpack, the one with the bomb. Heather brings the backpack into the courtroom and then leaves.
Barrel, in attendance at the hearing, leaves to relieve himself. He's exiting the restroom when he sees Heather Strout talking to Ian, in his uniform—and he remembers speaking to Ian about the 308s way back in in the first episode. Barrel rushes back into the courtroom, where Honey Chandler is grilling Bosch, and sounds the alarm. Harry gets out of the witness box, opens Heather's backpack, and finds a bomb. As the courtroom is hurriedly evacuated, Harry grabs the bomb and chucks it into the holding cell, where it explodes.
A frantic Maddie Bosch reenters the courtroom to find her father unsteadily walking away from the holding cell area. Harry is getting a scalp wound bandaged when he's told that Ian has been arrested downstairs. Harry remembers that the FBI got a terror tip from the sheriff's office, realizes that Ian called in the threat, and realizes that Heather Strout must be taking a second bomb to the FBI building. Heather Strout is on her way when she is intercepted and arrested by Reece and the feds.
Back home, Harry and Maddie are having a quiet evening when Harry gets word that the judge dismissed Chandler's motion and the wiretap evidence on Alicia Kent will be admissible in court. Maddie tells her father that after what she saw that day, she's changed her mind and wants to be a prosecutor.
At his own home, Edgar wakes from a dream. It seems that Jacques Avril did not point his gun at Edgar. Rather, Edgar murdered Avril in cold blood.
The season ends with Harry as the only mourner attending the burial of Elizabeth Clayton, accompanied by a priest and a two man honor guard. After the minister is done, Harry lays flowers at the neighboring grave of Daisy Clayton, and walks away.
Tropes:
- Call-Back:
- A bit of humor when Harry's grilling steaks. Maddie tells him there's a fine line between charred and burnt and Harry says "I would never cross that line." This is a call back to the last season and something Harry said to Irving about planting evidence in the Preston Borders case.
- At the end of the episode Maddie asks if they can go to Borrego Springs, the desert location where they scattered her mother's ashes in the Season 4 finale.
- Chiaroscuro: A lot of spooky lighting for the scene where Edgar is creeping through Jacques Avril's house in the dark, with only his flashlight for illumination.
- Creator Cameo: Michael Connelly passes through the squadroom 12 minutes in, and exchanges greetings with Vega.
- Dutch Angle: Most of the scenes with the bomb explosion and aftermath—Harry throws the bomb in, bomb explodes, Maddie rushes back—are shot tilted from vertical, to underline the fear and disorientation.
- Dramatic Drop: Irving's campaign manager, Jen Kowski, drops her coffee cup when she hears the news on TV that Irving is dropping out.
- Driven to Suicide: Unable to face the guilt, and knowing that Roger Dillon will get out of jail, Elizabeth Clayton kills herself.
- Dead Man Writing: Dwight Wise leaves a note behind for Edgar, although unlike most examples of this trope it's a moral about standing up for what's right, rather than a vital clue.
- He Who Fights Monsters: After shooting Avril, Edgar makes a veiled comment to his ex-wife about being "pulled into the abyss". The ending reveals that Edgar lied to the police, and in fact deliberately killed Avril.
- Lonely Funeral: The only people at Elizabeth Clayton's funeral are the minister, Harry, and the two-man honor guard that Clayton gets for being a veteran.
- Outrun the Fireball: Harry turns around and runs after throwing the bomb. He doesn't quite make it out of the narrow hallway before the bomb explodes.
- "Pan Up to the Sky" Ending: The episode and season end with the camera panning up from the cemetery to show the skyline of downtown Los Angeles.
- Take a Third Option: Killoran demands that either Irving drop out and endorse him, or he'll release the tape. Instead Irving drops out and endorses Lopez.
- Title Drop: DDA Kennedy, trying to put the best face on the Dillon deal, tells Bosch that "We have some measure of justice here, detective."
- Western Terrorists: If the FBI and LAPD hadn't messed with them the 308 nutjobs might never have become this, but they are this in the end, as Heather Strout blows up a courtroom.
