YMMV / Major Crimes

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Rusty's Father. Was he a guy that only cared about his image or was he a guy that just found out he had a teenaged son and tried to be right by him but did not do a good job.
• Broken Base: The arrival of Jackson, Sharon's absent husband, has caused a lot of disagreements within the fandom.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Designated Villain:
  • Bo McLaren in N.S.F.W, to some. The police dislike him because he pulls barely legal women into pornography and generally acts scuzzy about it, but they're so intent on finding a crime to prosecute him for that it comes across as a bit of a witch hunt. At least until they find out he was knowingly having sex with drugged women.
  • Pretty much anyone who thinks major crimes needs to be reigned in is often treated as being unreasonable or just looking to step on someone for a career booster. This despite the fact that the unit has often used unethical to downright illegal methods to catch criminals.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Flynn's health kick becomes more amusing when you recall Provenza's similar habit in Season 5 of The Closer, and how their positions are turned.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Take another look at the entry for Ship-to-Ship Combat, and notice that every pairing on the list involves Sharon Raydor in some capacity. There are pairings that don't involve her, but they are few and far between.
• Moral Event Horizon: Rusty's mother. It seems like every episode that focuses on her shows her she passes another one. First time she tries to trick Rusty into getting her pills that would hide the fact she was still using by filling a fake prescription (which, by the way, is illegal, so not only did she try to get him to enable her but also to commit a crime). Next she admits to Rusty that she allowed her boyfriends to beat Rusty up because she believed that would "beat the gay out of him" and yells that he should do whatever she says because him being gay made raising him hard. And most recently she is in prison and asks Rusty to prostitute himself again to get her bail money. All the while she continues to blame Rusty for all of her own problems. In a particular satisfying scene, Sharon discovers this and swiftly offers a Cruel Mercy bargain for her (take one year in prison and remain sober entirely or get no bail at all) and leaves her to throw a tantrum and make ineffectual threats for not enabling her.
• Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize: In "There's No Place Like Home", the five suspects are Tim Conway, Ron Glass, Doris Roberts, Paul Dooley, and Marion Ross.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: Shandy, for Sharon Raydor and Andy Flynn. There's also O'Flyer, which is a mashup of his surname and her maiden name (O'Dwyer).
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Seems to be happening to Rusty. By the second season premiere, fans and characters alike all adore him, thanks to some serious character development. The fourth season features Rusty choosing to pursue a career in law and getting a recurring boyfriend in Gus.
  • Sykes was helped by keeping hold of the bad guy's gun even as he's smashing her head against the pavement—giving her a concussion and dislocated jaw. By season 4, she's a damn competent detective, bona fide Action Girl, and has lost her Professional Butt-Kisser tendencies entirely.
  • ADA Rios seems to be starting to become more likable, but for most she isn't rescued yet. Though considering that this is a recurring trope of both this show and The Closer, it seems inevitable.
• Retroactive Recognition: "#FindKaylaWeber" features Winston Duke in one of his earliest roles, playing the bodyguard of a baseball player.
• The Scrappy:
  • Rusty and Sykes are starting out as this. The first is whiny and ungrateful, the second can't seem to not screw up the task she was assigned or reveal vital information to third parties. See above for both.
  • Major Crimes seems to be making a trend out of introducing new characters that aren't well-liked by anyone. The new ADA in season 2, Emma Rios, has not made a good impression on either the audience or the in-series cast. In her first interview with Rusty about his testimony she calls him a "whorephan" to the shock of everyone present, arguing that the defense would call him it too, so he'd better get used to it.^note She seems to forget such a term is incredibly prejudicial and any lawyer who called him such would be punished by the judge. Rusty even felt sorry for Sanchez since he had an obvious crush on her and not only did she not realize this, she didn't even remember his name. Only time will tell if she gets rescued like Rusty and Sykes did.
  • The City Attorney, who was introduced in "Two Options", is pretty much a colossal bitch to everyone, and is only concerned about liability issues.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: Sharon/Andy shippers vs Sharon/Andrea shippers vs Sharon/Provenza shippers vs Sharon/Fritz^note Yes, really shippers vs Sharon/Brenda shippers still holding on from The Closer. It can get messy.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Rusty's dad, as mentioned in Alternative Character Interpretation. He seemed to be a guy trying to do his best, which wasn't very good, to a son he did not even know existed. This did not help with the fact that said son was giving him absolutely no breaks, seemed to expect only the worse from a guy who up to that point didn't even know he existed as if the guy abandoned him, seemed to act as if the man was even worse than his mother before having met the man, and practically self sabotage any time he and his father actually spent time together such as telling the man's fiance and her two little girls that he was a male prostitute. It also doesn't help that Rusty still tries to help his mother after all she did to him and continues to do to him, but treats his father as an abusive monster when he lost his cool and hit Rusty after he was put through all mentioned above, accumulating into the entire Major Crimes willing to ruin the man's life if he didn't give up his parental rights and promised never to see Rusty again, which after all he has been through one would wonder why he would want to.