Title: "Two Kinds of Truth"
Directed by: Alex Zakrzewski
Written by: Daniel Pyne
Air Date: April 19, 2019
Previous: Book of the Unclaimed Dead
Next: Pill Shills
Guest Starring: Chris Vance, Yani Gellman, Jonathan Camp
"Two Kinds of Truth" is the 1st episode of the fifth season of Bosch. Season 5 is an adaptation of the Michael Connelly novel Two Kinds of Truth.
Fifteen months have passed since the end of Season 4. A small plane lands at a remote airport in the Mojave Desert, transporting a small group of rough, scraggly looking people. One of them is Harry, limping, using a cane. The rough, scraggly people are taken to some sort of remote camp in the desert, where they are given pills. Late at night, Harry goes snooping around the camp, and he is caught. The people running the camp are obviously very bad news. One of them goes rifling through Harry's backpack, and finds a gun. Harry complains that he was only looking for a toilet, but Dalton Walsh, the British-accented boss of the group, takes the revolver, inserts a single round in a chamber, spins it, then snaps it in place and points it at Harry's face Russian roulette style.
Two weeks earlier, Madeline Bosch, interning at the DA's office, talks with a young lawyer, Tom Galligan, who flirts with her. It turns out that her father is being investigated by the Conviction Integrity Unit. Maddie sneaks into an office, finds some passwords that the young lawyer incautiously wrote down, and copies a bunch of files, about a criminal named Preston Borders.
Two pharmacists, Jose Esquivela Senior and Junior, are having an argument. Junior decides to take a walk to clear his head. While he's out, Wilbur Hart and Stones, two of the men seen in the desert camp, drive up in a Nissan Sentra and park in front of the pharmacy. After being dropped off by their driver, Brandon Cleek, they put on ski masks, enter the pharmacy, and execute Jose Sr. after he refuses to give up his son's whereabouts. They then steal a large swath of oxycodone and make the scene look like a robbery.
Unfortunately for the thieves, a passing woman on the street sees them enter and calls 911. An alert goes out, and units from all over are summoned to the scene. Bosch and Pierce get the call while in the midst of a briefing from RHD by Coniff and Espinosa about a new serial killer in the area. Crate and Barrel also get the call while out on the street. They race towards the scene, with Crate yelling "clear" as Barrel drives. While passing under the highway, Crate misses the patrol car of Officers Powers and Rodriguez also racing to the scene as his view is obscured by an SUV trying to make a turn. Before he has a chance to react, the patrol car t-bones their car, sending them spinning around. Crate and Barrel are unhurt, but Powers sprains his leg. The chaos allows the two thieves to escape. Their getaway driver bailed out when the cops arrived, so the thieves carjack another man, Charles Fagin, in an adjoining parking garage, and drive off. Later, they kill him and throw his body in a dumpster. While dumping the car, they are noticed by a passing man, Nate Webster, in a brown pickup truck.
Maddie quizzes her father about Preston Borders. As Harry describes it, in 1996, Borders, a trust-fund baby and rockstar, went out on a date with Danielle Skyler, a recording studio employee. At the time he claimed that he wasn't interested in her, but in reality it was her who rejected him. The date ended badly, and a couple hours later, he visited her apartment while high on drugs, only to run when she threatened to call the police on him. Two weeks later, Skyler was strangled with her own belt, raped, and stabbed to death in her apartment. Borders was the primary suspect, and his conviction was sealed when a seahorse pendant belonging to Skyler was found in his apartment (one he'd stolen as a trophy). Maddie wonders what the Conviction Integrity Unit could be investigating, but Harry reassures her that it's no big deal and that the Borders case was an open and shut matter.
In other storylines, Jerry Edgar is approached by two Vice detectives, Ray Marcos and Daniel Arias, who think that an old informant of his named Gary Wise may have some information about Bo Jonas, who is suspected of involvement in a fatal drive-by shooting. Chief Irvin Irving is dealing with a new District Attorney, Roselyn Hines, who is planning to file charges against two cops of his who shot an unarmed suspect.
Tropes:
- Adapted Out: In the novel Two Kinds of Truth, Harry is working for the police department in the tiny enclave of San Fernando, after he was fired by the LAPD at the end of The Burning Room. Since the show has him still with the LAPD, all the characters from the SFPD are adapted out. Also Lucia Soto, Bosch's partner from The Burning Room who winds up investigating him in Two Kinds of Truth, is adapted out, her part being instead filled by Christina Henry.
- The Film of the Book: All seasons of Bosch adapt plot threads from the novels, but this is the only one that sticks with a single book the whole way (Two Kinds of Truth).
- How We Got Here: The show opens with Harry Bosch looking rough, creeping around some sort of very shady-looking RV encampment. Then the action jumps back two weeks.
- Mythology Gag: In Two Kinds of Truth Bosch thinks about the police custom of how to zoom through stoplights—rely on your partner to keep an eye out to your right and yell "clear!" if you can make it through the intersection. In this episode Crate and Barrel do just this as they're racing to the scene of the shooting, but it goes wrong and they're hit by a black-and-white.
- Punk in the Trunk: The two killers escape from the murder scene by attacking a guy, throwing him in the trunk of his own car, and speeding away. Once they've safely escaped, they take the guy out and murder him.
- Serendipitous Survival / Spared by the Adaptation: In the novel both Esquivelas are killed in the pharmacy. In the show, Jose Jr. steps out right before the killers arrive, and much of this season involves the cops trying to find him before the killers do.
- Time Skip: 15 months between Seasons 4 and 5.
- Title Drop: When Maddie asks about what the CIU could be investigating regarding the Borders case, Bosch says "there are two kinds of truth", the truth that people manipulate for their dishonest ends, and the truth that is real.
- While You Were in Diapers: After the collision, as Officer Powers basically says Barrel is too old, Barrel says "I was driving these streets before you were a sperm cell in your daddy's nutsack!"
