I’ll admit, that Bosch Legacy: Final Season finale felt out of place. That’s because it has nothing to do with the previous episodes and basically serves as a launching pad for Ballard, the new series starring Maggie Q as Detective Renée Ballard.

In the Bosch finale, Renee is working on some cold cases that led to teaming up with Bosch to catch a serial killer, who had resurfaced. Together the two closed the case. It was a good standalone episode, I just wish it wasn’t the Bosch finale.

The writer and creator Michael Connelly and Amazon describes the series as “Renée Ballard leading the LAPD’s new and underfunded cold case division, tackling the city’s most challenging long-forgotten crimes with empathy and relentless determination. As she peels back layers of crimes spanning decades, including a serial killer’s string of murders and a murdered John Doe, she soon uncovers a dangerous conspiracy within the LAPD. With the help of her volunteer team and retired detective Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver), Detective Ballard navigates personal trauma, professional challenges, and life-threatening dangers to expose the truth.”

Well, Ballard Season 1 has dropped all at once on Amazon Prime, and I stayed up until 3am on July 9 to watch it.

Maybe it’s still fresh in my mind, but Ballard’s story is quite similar to Dept Q. Both series the main protagonist got “demoted” to a cold-case department. In Ballard’s case, her whole department consists of interns, former cops, private business owner, or amateur detectives. Basically, no one in her department is getting paid to solve crime… which is absolutely unbelievable to me. Why would anyone spend 40 hours a week working an unpaid job? I just couldn’t get past this.

Another thing that didn’t work for me is a two women officers (one of which is Ballard) was assaulted by a co-police officer. If so many women were assaulted by this guy, why wasn’t something done about it. I understand the story is painting that the cops are a ‘boys club’… but I just didn’t need that.

While Ballard’s mother (grandmother?) is a fun, goofy character, I her character was unneeded for the show.

The inclusion of Bosch’s characters (including Harry Bosch, J Edgar, and others) was very cool to see… but if you’ve never seen Bosch, you probably wouldn’t care that much or understand why they were written into the series (like you can remove those characters and the series will be just fine). Personally, whenever Bosch is on screen, I’m like “can we get more of this guy???”… but sadly, Bosch is just a cameo.

Now that all the complaints are out of the way, the first season of Ballard was well done! Whenever the group are solving the major crime of the serial killer, I love it! There’s also a crime B story, about the corrupted cops, that was also pretty good! Even the smaller cold cases that were solved, it’s all very good… I only have problems with all the family drama stuff like Ballard dealing with her father’s death or mother, I just skipped all that to get to the crime.

If you can get past the first few episodes (all the setup stuff), you’ll find the crime drama riveting.

Ballard is streaming now on Amazon Prime.

Dexter: Resurrection
paramountplus.com

Dexter: Resurrection is currently streaming on Paramount+ with Showtime, starting July 11, 2025. Dexter is like a toxic relationship; they always start off good, but often ends badly… but we keep coming back for more! I’m just hoping, maybe this time around, they will get it right with a good, satisfying ending.

To give a little backstory, the original finale for Dexter Season 8, it was just awful – he killed his (adopted) sister, and then he became a lumberjack. It was truly one of the worst ending for this character.

After hearing all the backlash, eight years later, they wanted to make it right for fans by putting together Dexter: New Blood… a continuation of the story. Of course, of course, of course, they screwed it up. New Blood introduces us to Dexter’s son, Harrison, and from all accounts, it seemed like Dexter was going to train his son the rules and it might be like a father/son serial killer thing. Except it didn’t go that way, instead they created an unlikeable character and ultimate his son kills Dexter at the end of the series. You know I previously could not believe how bad it was, I had to ask how do mess up Dexter twice?!!???.

Wouldn’t you know it? Somehow Dexter did not die. It is starting on the right foot with Resurrection: Dexter is alive and awoke from a long coma. He’s visited by ghosts of the past, including “Surprise, m*****cker” Dokes and fan-favorite the Trinity Killer. It was a blast to see these familiar faces, but the best part is the return of Dexter’s adopted father (the person who taught Dexter his code). It feels like the good, old Dexter days, somewhat a return to form.

The first few episodes see Dexter establishing himself as a ride-share driver. It’s slightly unrealistic how Dexter met someone who became instant family and invited him to live with them in their spare rental room. By the third episodes, it’s back to Dexter doing the hunting and catching his prey. The story is going fast and furious, and I love it so far. The next step is Dexter is going to pose as the serial killer The Dark Passenger, to attend some sort of Serial Killer dinner. I’m certain it won’t be long for Dexter to return to stalking and murdering the other attendees! This is classic Dexter.

I just really hope they don’t screw up the ending… but if they do, I guess third time’s the charm.

On a bright note, I did fully enjoyed Dexter: Original Sin, which is a series about Dexter, before he became the serial killer that he becomes by the beginning of Dexter Season 1. It’s not as gripping, as we know Dexter and other key characters has to survive to Season 1… but it’s still an enjoyable series. If Resurrection sucks, at least we still have Original Sin.

Also, the best part about Original Sin is that it takes place in the early 90’s, so there’s plenty of great 90s music.