THE CULTURE WARS ARE A ROUT:

Love has always been the uncontrollable element for Harry. The calm pursuer of accountability is weighed down under memories. He separated from his wife but retained a tremendous fondness for her. Maddie's entrance to the LAPD leads him back to his former wife's death, and then a call goes out that a female cop has been shot in his daughter's patrol district. Harry reaches out frantically to her, immeasurably relieved that she is unharmed.

Maddie is also sent as a liaison to the badly wounded officer's family to inform them of her critical injury. She tells her dad that she won't know what to say. "She's your fellow officer," Harry says, "The words will come." Dutiful Harry again surfaces.

Like father, like daughter, Maddie says to Harry, "I can't let it go." She is tireless in the pursuit of a serial rapist, resembling her father's obsessed police work in every previous season. "Got a feeling that I can't let it go" went the refrain of the theme song in the previous series, a line that nicely captured Harry's doggedness. Now we get as an opening a song that repeatedly says, "Times are changing." But the times also remain the same. And the changes don't seem for the better. Harry as PI strolls LA in a timeless Cherokee jeep. He pays his tech sleuth advisor, Mo (Stephen Bassi), in cash. Mo replies, "Cash is so last century." Harry rejoins, "So am I, brother."

There is a theme weaving through this season of creeping lawlessness. There may even be a Bosch-like nod to identity politics, but it is so wrapped in love, loss, and hope that I hesitate to name it as such. On the lawlessness bit, Honey Chandler, LA defense lawyer extraordinaire, was almost killed last season by a hit ordered by hedge funder Carl Rogers that killed a judge. He gets off this season because of insufficient evidence. Honey recovered physically, but not soulfully. She is hounded by thoughts of revenge, operating somewhere between gun range visits and late-night bourbons. She's very clear with her therapist that she wants Rogers to live in torment.

Honey is now teamed with Harry on a range of cases and investigations. On Carl Rogers's release, Harry tells Honey, "We do it my way this time." He has Carl in his sights. But Harry has always spurned Honey, referring to her as "Money" Chandler. The refined defense lawyer has handsomely profited from various civil rights regulations that afford huge payouts for defendants treated shabbily by the justice system. It's Maddie, a former employee of hers, who convinces Harry that Honey was probably right in most of those cases, but it's also true that she milked the system for all it was worth. Like Harry, Honey knows the limits of the system but unlike Harry, she evades them for her own purposes.

But she also experiences life's strictures this season. If Harry can't outrun love, then Honey learns there really isn't platonic revenge, and justice can only afford so much relief.

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