Title:"Trunk Music"
Directed by: Alex Zakrzewski
Written by: Eric Overmeyer
Air Date: March 11, 2016
Previous: Trunk Music
Next: Victim of the Night
Guest Starring: James Ransone, Robbie Jones, Steven Culp, Leisha Hailey
"Trunk Music" is the first episode of the second season of Bosch. Season 2 is mostly adapted from Michael Connelly novel Trunk Music, with bits thrown in from Connelly novels The Last Coyote and The Drop.
A man is driving on a winding mountain road (later revealed to be Mulholland Drive) late at night. He is flagged down by a woman whose car has ostensibly broken down. He gets out of the car—and as he reaches for his cell phone to call AAA, a masked gunman walks up from behind and shoots him in the back of the head.
Harry Bosch, after serving a six-month suspension for throwing Capt. Harvey Pounds through a window, is back on the job. Harry and Edgar get called out to a crime scene. A dead body has been found in the trunk of a car, left parked on Mulholland—the body of the man killed in the opening scene. The dead man is identified as one Anthony Allen, a producer of pornographic film. Edgar suspects the Mafia, due to the pornography collection as well as the mob-like nature of the murder, but Bosch tells him to not jump to conclusions.
Harry and Edgar interview Tony's widow, Veronica Allen (Jeri Ryan). Veronica doesn't bother to fake grief over the death of her husband, who cheated on her constantly. When Carl Nash, a former LAPD detective who now supervises security for the gated community, offers to keep an informal eye on Veronica, Bosch agrees.
The case starts to get more complicated when the LAPD discovers a whopping $245,000 hidden in a secret compartment in Allen's car. Also, it turns out there were security cameras in Allen's office. They caught someone removing listening devices from the office at 4:30 am on Sunday, some five hours after Allen is believed to have been killed.
Meanwhile, LA politics continues. Deputy Chief Irvin Irving still has a deal with Rick O'Shea for Irving to get the black community to support O'Shea's bid for mayor, if O'Shea will then make Irving chief of police. Irving suspects that O'Shea will double-cross him.
Connie Irving thanks her husband for getting their son George off of duty as a beat cop and onto a command track. But he hasn't. What Connie doesn't know is that George is doing plainclothes work, and some pretty darn nefarious police work, as one scene shows George and his new partner Eddie Arceneaux using a Honey Pot to blackmail a hotel guest. However, a shot of George going to the bathroom and surreptitiously clicking his watch suggests all is not as it appears.
Tropes:
- Blackmail: George is helping Eddie Arceneaux run a blackmail scheme in which Honey Pot hookers are used to ensnare hotel guests.
- Briefcase Full of Money: A secret compartment full of money, as Detective Ferras fiddles with the buttons and levers on Allen's car long enough to pop open a secret compartment that contains $245K.
- Dirty Cop: Eddie Arceneaux has a blackmail scheme.
- Hidden Depths: Irvin Irving the veteran cop and L.A. power broker likes to unwind at home by playing music of his own composition on his piano.
- Honey Trap: George Irving and Eddie Arceneaux spring a trap on a businessman in which they arrange for a hooker to get him caught literally with his pants down. Then the two cops take pictures and tell their victim that they'll reveal all to his wife if he doesn't pay them.
- Obfuscating Disability: The cops go to interview Chilton Hardy Sr., wheelchair-bound, sucking on an oxygen tank, about his fugitive son Chilton Jr. Bosch figures out from an empty oxygen tank that the old man in the wheelchair is Chilton Junior, pretending to be his old man.
- Porn Stache: Maddie tells her father that he has to shave his mustache. When he says he likes it, she says "Hello? '70s porn star?"
- Promotion to Opening Titles: Madison Lintz (Maddie Bosch) joins the opening titles for Season 2.
- Punk in the Trunk: Anthony Allen is discovered decomposing in the trunk of his own car.
- Time Skip: "SIX MONTHS LATER" at the start of the episode, that being the length of Harry's suspension.
- Title Drop: How Jerry Edgar describes the Allen murder. It's a typical style of mob hit.
- Undercover Cop Reveal: George isn't technically undercover, though we see him dismiss himself after helping Arceneaux shake down the john so he can adjust the hidden wire in his watch.
- Villain Opening Scene: The first scene of the new season is the bad guys murdering Tony Allen.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: How the woman and her unseen partner got the drop on Tony Allen; she pretended like her engine had gone out and she needed help.
