My overall rating of "Bosch"'s Season 4: 4/10
As stated in the title, I'd say the Season 4 finale is "cheaply melodramatic". However, it is easy to complain and harder to give concerete advice on how to fix it. I'm not afraid of that challenge however: what would I have done to make it at least "expensively melodramatic" instead? A crowd of 100k (rather than "100") shows up (CGId as necessary) at the police building and throws Molotovs at Bosch as he rides to tackle Walker. Meanwhile, the mayor has Irving blown up (or vice versa). The Chinese police guy escapes on a bomber plane and starts bombing LA on the final flyby, but Bosch teaches Maddie to duck and cover in time, and takes after him in a fighter plane as FBI tries to shoot them both down from the ground. In the final showdown in the tunnel Walker and Bosch have a fistfight for 10 minutes, as the former is revealed to have been a Navy SEAL. J. Edgar fires blindly at them with a machinegun so as to not be completely useless. Sounds AWESOME, right?!
But to make it "non-melodramatic" I'd scrap literally every scene intensified here, as well as most others (cemetary, diner, the Edgars' dialogue etc) and replace them with something good. There are some riots and clashes, people are slightly hurt on both sides, there is explosive racial tension. Irving leaks materiel about Walker (sure, it can be traced to the police, but the taskforce has already been said to "leak like a sieve", so who could blame him?). The Chinese guy should have at least some purpose beyond being a shadowy bad guy - if he's intelligence (with no cover), have him abduct/intimidate/setup some Chinese gangleader who just so happened to have actually ordered the hit on Wish (or so we think!). Walker realises that as Lincoln is in jail, she'd not be helping him with info, that he'd be seen entering the tunnels by the staff etc and reports the message to Irving, O'Shae etc, claiming he's being setup by the very crooked cops it's his job to eradicate yadda yadda.
If you stop making empty drama you can actually create the proper kind!
As stated in the title, I'd say the Season 4 finale is "cheaply melodramatic". However, it is easy to complain and harder to give concerete advice on how to fix it. I'm not afraid of that challenge however: what would I have done to make it at least "expensively melodramatic" instead? A crowd of 100k (rather than "100") shows up (CGId as necessary) at the police building and throws Molotovs at Bosch as he rides to tackle Walker. Meanwhile, the mayor has Irving blown up (or vice versa). The Chinese police guy escapes on a bomber plane and starts bombing LA on the final flyby, but Bosch teaches Maddie to duck and cover in time, and takes after him in a fighter plane as FBI tries to shoot them both down from the ground. In the final showdown in the tunnel Walker and Bosch have a fistfight for 10 minutes, as the former is revealed to have been a Navy SEAL. J. Edgar fires blindly at them with a machinegun so as to not be completely useless. Sounds AWESOME, right?!
But to make it "non-melodramatic" I'd scrap literally every scene intensified here, as well as most others (cemetary, diner, the Edgars' dialogue etc) and replace them with something good. There are some riots and clashes, people are slightly hurt on both sides, there is explosive racial tension. Irving leaks materiel about Walker (sure, it can be traced to the police, but the taskforce has already been said to "leak like a sieve", so who could blame him?). The Chinese guy should have at least some purpose beyond being a shadowy bad guy - if he's intelligence (with no cover), have him abduct/intimidate/setup some Chinese gangleader who just so happened to have actually ordered the hit on Wish (or so we think!). Walker realises that as Lincoln is in jail, she'd not be helping him with info, that he'd be seen entering the tunnels by the staff etc and reports the message to Irving, O'Shae etc, claiming he's being setup by the very crooked cops it's his job to eradicate yadda yadda.
If you stop making empty drama you can actually create the proper kind!