Well, I was wrong. I thought for sure that the wife was killing her husband’s family in a weird, misguided attempt to protect her own family and the life they lead. It’s not very often that a procedural takes me by surprise, but that’s exactly what The Closer did this week.
If it had just turned out that the husband had killed his sisters, I would have been wrong in my prediction, but it wouldn’t exactly have shocked me. However, to have it come out that not only did he kill everyone, but he isn’t even who he says he is, was not at all where I saw this going. Plus Skander was really creepy, so I expected him to be a little more than just an innocent victim.
Armand’s plan was, as Brenda pointed out, to kill the entire family who could reveal his secret. This certainly meant that he was planning on killing Skander as well. It’s one think to kill both of the women, but to also kill the “nephew” who is under his care? How did he expect to explain that one away? Naturally the police are going to look at him and his wife as suspects. Was he planning on selling out his wife somehow, or did he plan on making the case that there’s some madman out there just killing his entire family? It just kind of makes you wonder where his head was.
In any case, Brenda and the gang of course figured everything out before his plan completely came to fruition, so it’s a moot point. Maybe it was because I already thought his wife was in on it, but I was very suspicious when she talked about him being covered in blood. Usually when the spouse gives up information like that so easily, it’s to mess with the police and take suspicion off of themselves, but that’s just another place where this episode surprised me. She was just genuinely being helpful in the investigation.
I also wasn’t sure how Brenda was going to end up pinning everything on Armand, since his real name isn’t on any war criminal lists. I love the twist of how everything fell apart in the end for him: his marriage wasn’t legal, therefore marital privilege doesn’t exist, so they were able to get the blood evidence out of the car. It was a satisfying ending to a really interesting two-part mystery.
Even though I knew the episode was going to have to end with everyone having dinner together at the station, I was still pulling for a Christmas miracle, with everyone getting to their holiday destinations. Even though Captain Raydor is kind of the villain, it’s still kind of sad that she missed Christmas with her kids. However, I’m all for the big dinner if for no other reason than Brenda dissing Raydor’s marshmallows at the end. “Oh, they’re kind of burnt.” I love the two of them.
This really felt like a season finale episode, so I’m looking forward to how the actual season finale next week is going to top it.
Clacked by Kona Gallagher 
on Dec 28, 2010 @ 14:00 EST5EDT
I loved that Fritz “robbed” Brenda’s parents to get them to hate LA and decide to not move there and that she was in on it!