History Series / MajorCrimes

* SelfImmolation: In "Penalty Phase", the killer of week douses himself in petrol and plans to go out in a blaze of glory when Major Crimes catch up to him. Sanchez manages to tackle him into a swimming pool just after he ignites himself.

** A form of this becomes Tau's {{Catchphrase}}, though it doesn't always [[ChewingTheScenery chew as much scenery]] as when he first uttered it back in ''The Closer'' [[note]] To be fair, he was holding onto a live bomb at the time. [[/note]]

* DeathByIrony: In "Conspiracy Theory, Pt. 4", [[spoiler:Sharon starts yelling at a suspect for being selfish. While she's back in the office, despite explicit medical orders to avoid stress on her failing heart, causing concern in literally ''every recurring character in the show'', for a case her team can handle on its own. She's being pretty selfish herself. And the stress kills her.]]

* OhCrap: Induced in a particularly irritating Las Vegas detective with two lines of dialogue.

* LoopholeAbuse: A variation mentioned and averted. The law states anyone who hears a confession of a criminal directly from the criminal can be called into testify about the confession and the actions of the police. In "Risk Assessment" [[spoiler:Buzz saved Rusty from this by pulling him out of the room as the woman started confessing, telling him if he listened, he would be a witness in another murder trial]].

** A corrupt ICE agent who managed to steal [[spoiler:a retirement home away from its residents by contesting a will]]. Major Crimes can prove ''conspiracy'' to commit murder, but they can't actually prove the ''murder'' because [[spoiler:of how everybody did it, and the DA's office settles for a plea of Manslaughter, with a sentence of house arrest (mind, the residence is an apartment complex with pool and other simple luxuries)]]. Raydor and Provenza aren't too bothered, when all is said and done. [[spoiler:It also helped they were quite old and any amount of jail time could have become a life sentence]].

** The most egregious example is in "Down the Drain", where the team has only circumstantial evidence insufficient for conviction, and so Raydor and Provenza lie through their teeth to the perp, with ADA Hobbs lampshading and calling out everyone inside the AV room.

* TheShrink: Dr. Joe Bowman comes in during the second half of season 2. He's an amicable, soft-spoken man who carefully analyzes and regardes his patients, priming them for the next ArmorPiercingQuestion. He will use any means to connect to his patients, from singing, to cards, to chess. [[spoiler:To be allowed to participate in a sting to catch his stalker, Rusty must see him and be evaluated. Rusty finds the sessions, and playing against a stronger chess player, very enjoyable and helpful]].

** Later, his mother, who abandoned him at the zoo, turns up in a rehab facility. Rusty treats her with kid gloves and constantly defends her, despite her obliviousness, her emotional manipulation and the fact that [[spoiler:she let some of her ex-boyfriends beat him because she couldn't accept that he's gay.]] It takes him a couple seasons to realize that she's never going to change.

* TheUnfairSex: Rusty's reaction to his parents. His father that never knew he existed Rusty doesn't even give him the time of day. His mother that regularly abused him he treats with kid gloves and constantly defends her. Heck the Major Crimes unit reaction to them as well. His father hits him once in a fit of anger and the whole crimes unit backs Rusty up. Rusty's mother continues to abuse him, at most she is given a stern talking to and Rusty still tries to help her.

** Rusty's mother let her boyfriend beat him up when she wasn't so high she beat him up thinking he was an ex-boyfriend. The season three episode "Letting It Go" makes it worse: [[spoiler:She let her boyfriend beat him up because she knew he was gay and was trying to "help" him.]] And the way Rusty finds this out? She's screaming at him because he didn't let her [[spoiler: manipulate him into illegally obtaining a prescription drug to hide the fact she was still using heroin. She also tells him that he owes it to her to fill the prescription, because she raised him even though he wasn't "normal" (ie straight.)]] She manages to be even ''worse'' in her "Zoo Story" appearance, where she's [[spoiler:arrested for shoplifting and asks Rusty to prostitute himself again to earn her bail money. Sharon intervenes.]]

* CastingGag: A minor one, but the witness in "Long Shot" is named Angel, and is portrayed by Antony Del Rio. The episode aired on October 15, 2012, and earlier that year, on March 23rd, Kid Icarus Uprising released in North America, starring Del Rio as the voice of the character Pit, who is an angel.

An AfterShow of Creator/{{TNT}}'s ''Series/TheCloser'', ''Major Crimes'' premiered August 2012, starring Creator/MaryMcDonnell as Captain Sharon Raydor, alongside much of the parent Major Case Squad. Raydor takes the helm of the MCS after the departure of Creator/KyraSedgwick's Brenda Leigh Johnson, the heroine of the parent show.

** Mary Conrad in "Bad Blood", who was a detective who retired because she was caught taking kickbacks during her time as a fraud detective. She also stole her neighbor's packages, tried to punch anyone not in a uniform (even those in a uniform, like Sharon Raydor), and killed a neighbor's dog. That's not even getting into the reason ''why'' she was killed! [[spoiler:She lied to her own family about losing her pension so that they would have to pay for her bills, risking depriving her grandnephew's chance to go a good school. When her nephew-in-law found out about it and Mary was still all too happy to continue stealing from them, [[RageBreakingPoint he lost it and]] [[KarmicDeath beat her to death with her own badge]]. Then, he tried to cover up killing her by making it look like a break-in]] After DDA Hobbs hears this, she states that not only is it manslaughter instead of murder, but there was also a good chance that the killer could walk on ''that'' charge if they went to trial, not just because of the lack of evidence, but also due to how unsympathetic the victim was.
* AssInAmbassador: "Do Not Disturb" gave us Ravi Madhavan, a defense consultant from India with diplomatic immunity. He uses this to abuse the squad at every turn, attempting to remove his daughter, a person of interest in a murder investigation, from the country against her will. Finally he gets physical in the squad room leading to Fritz ''punching him in the face twice'' and threatening to have him deported for committing a terrorist act in a police station.

** The division will frequently lie to suspects in order to trap them, but when Raydor tells one that she's "Not the kind of person that likes to get bogged down in all the rules" it's so extreme it gets a ReactionShot from each of the detectives in the room.

** In "Citizen's Arrest", the body of a a young man is found in a barrel labeled "Hazardous Waste" at a recycling center. The killers know that the owner ships the barrels labeled hazardous up north to a landfill without opening them, where they are to be buried for a thousand years. Had their plan been successful, the body would never have been found, but unfortunately for them, while the barrel is still at the recycling center it's accidentally tipped over and the lid comes off, thus exposing the body.

* FosterKid: Rusty Beck to Sharon.

** In the beginning, Rusty acted liked this. He even interrupted an investigation because no one acknowledged that he was there. And hasn't gone five minutes on screen without complaining that they are not doing what they promised him. He finally cuts it out a few episodes in, when he accepts that [[spoiler:his mom isn't coming for him and Sharon is the best thing to happen to him in a long time]].

* NoSympathy: Rusty gives his biological father absolutely no sympathy even before he has met the man. Accusing him of abandoning him despite it has been stated (every time he brings this up) that his father never even knew he existed, keeps accusing him that he will abandon him before he has even met him face to face, and calls him out on being late to a meeting despite the fact that he just found out about his son and it wouldn't be easy to just uproot his entire life just to spend time with him. One can almost not hold it against him when he smacks Rusty after he went out of his way to introduce him to his fiancée and her two young daughters and Rusty gives them a BrutalHonesty statement of his history before meeting his dad. [[note]] Rusty told girls not older that 8 that he was a homeless male prostitute.[[/note]] If anything one could say it was the [[TheLastStraw breaking point]].