Title:"Lost Light"
Directed by: Kevin Dowling
Written by: Eric Overmeyer and Tom Smuts
Air Date: February 13, 2015
Previous: 'Tis the Season
Next: Blue Religion
Guest Starring: Mimi Rogers, Alan Rosenberg
"Lost Light" is the 2nd episode of the first season of Bosch.
The investigation into the skeleton of the boy in the woods continues. Edgar does some checking and discovers that one of the residents of the neighborhood, one Nicholas Trent, is a child molester. It was one conviction for indecent exposure to a child 25 years ago, but Bosch and Edgar, lacking any other lead, start to focus on Trent.
Harry meets Julia Brasher (Annie Wersching) for drinks again. This time drinks are followed by sex at his house. Unfortunately they aren't quite discreet enough when he drops her off, and soon Hollywood station is burning with gossip about Harry and Julia's romance.
The trial concerning Harry's shooting of a suspect continues. The attorney for the city gets Harry to testify that the shooting was justified, while Honey Chandler (Mimi Rogers) accuses Harry of looking for an excuse to shoot Flores. Afterwards, Harry's supervisor Lt. Grace Billets goes to Deputy Chief Irvin Irving (Lance Reddick) and relays Harry's accusation that Captain Pounds leaked Harry's file to Chandler.
Meanwhile, a window-washer named Raynard Waits is tooling around Hollywood late at night, looking for male prostitutes. He is pulled over by Rondell Pierce and his partner, Irving's son George, when they run his license plates and they come up stolen. The beat cops discover a dead body in the van. Waits, staring at a possible death sentence, offers to confess to several more murders that he has committed—including that of the young boy whose bones Harry found in the woods.
The episode ends with Nicholas Trent's lawyer calling the LAPD and asking where he is. Bosch and Edgar go to Trent's house, and find that he hanged himself.
Tropes:
- Brand X: Barrel is sipping from a can labeled simply "Diet Cola" as he grills Raynard Waits back at headquarters.
- Depraved Homosexual: Raynard Waits, gay serial killer. When confronted by the pretty serious evidence, including the dead body in the back of his van, Waits says "I'm not gay."note
- Disposable Sex Worker: Raynard Waits is a serial killer of male prostitutes.
- Foreshadowing: An anguished Waits, not quite grasping the reality of his situation, says that he has to get out of jail, that "there are people I take care of." That's his elderly foster mother, whom we will meet a few episodes down the line.
- "Friends" Rent Control: As Julia boggles at Harry's fancy house with the expansive view of L.A., Harry says that he was able to afford it after one of his cases was used as inspiration for a (bad) movie.
- I'll Pretend I Didn't Hear That: Lt. Billets says this word-for-word when Bosch, ruminating, says maybe Chandler had a point and he was taking subconscious revenge for his mother when he killed Flores.
- Mythology Gag:
- Harry says that one of his cases was adapted "very loosely" into a movie called The Black Echo. He has a framed poster on the wall. The first Harry Bosch novel was titled The Black Echo and the paperback edition had a cover that looks almost exactly like the poster.
- This episode is titled Lost Light. That was the title of a Harry Bosch novel, but not one of the ones adapted for this series.
- Newscaster Cameo: L.A. news reporter Liberte Chan appears as herself.
- Sideboob: Some Annie Wersching Fanservice as a naked Julia strolls to the window and admires the view after sex with Harry.
- Streetwalker: A male prostitute lounging on the street nearly gets in Raynard Waits' van, but then some sort of spidey-sense tingles, and he refuses. Waits is arrested moments later.
- Taxidermy Is Creepy: Nicholas Trent has a lot of stuffed animals in his basement, including a bobcat or similar animal that, just for an extra dose of creepy, is missing one glass eye. Trent insists that all the weird knickknacks in his basement are part of his job as a movie set decorator.
- Title Drop: Harry remembers the "lost light", light from an uncertain source, that he would find when he went into the caves in Afghanistan.
- Trigger-Happy: Harry starts to wonder about Julia when he learns that she fired off a shot at a suspect for no particular reason. He still intervenes to stop her supervisor from filing paperwork.
- Worst News Judgment Ever: Does the Harry Bosch civil trial really merit the top headline in the Los Angeles Times?
