Brenda Leigh Johnson

Brenda Leigh Johnson
First appearance	Pilot episode
Created by	James Duff
Portrayed by	Kyra Sedgwick
Information
Gender	Female
Occupation	LAPD Deputy Chief
Family	Willie Ray Johnson (mother) Clay Johnson (father)
Spouse(s)	Unnamed husband (divorced) Fritz Howard (2009–)
Relatives	Charleen "Charlie" Johnson (niece)

Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson is a fictional character featured in TNT's The Closer, portrayed by Kyra Sedgwick. Brenda heads the Major Crimes Division (formerly the Priority Homicide Division) of the Los Angeles Police Department. Brenda is an intelligent, determined, and exacting woman. Brenda may offend some people involved in her cases, or coworkers, but she has powerful skills to determine the facts of a crime, compel confessions, and close cases. Thus, she is "a closer".

Biographical

Brenda's parents are Clay and Willie Rae Johnson. Her father was a Captain in the U.S. Army,^[1] but is now retired. She graduated from Georgetown University.

She spent seven years with the Central Intelligence Agency, four years with the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPD), and 3½ years with the Atlanta Police Department before moving to the LAPD.^[1]

During season one, Johnson was established to be 40 years old.

Washington, D.C.

While living in Washington, D. C., Brenda was trained as an interrogator by the CIA. After joining the MPD, she became involved with her married boss, William Pope.^[2] After refusing to leave his wife, Pope broke up with Brenda. However, he later divorced that wife to marry his next wife, Estelle.^[3] During this time, Brenda also met Fritz Howard, an FBI agent then working in D.C. who transferred to Los Angeles 3½ years before the show begins. Thus, Fritz left D.C. for L.A. slightly before Brenda left D.C. for Atlanta. Fritz knew about Brenda and Pope's relationship in D.C.^[2]

Atlanta, Georgia

Next, Brenda was a captain with the Atlanta Police Department.^[2] Brenda's then-husband made false allegations of having an affair with a younger police officer, which resulted in an ethics investigation while she was a member of the APD. Brenda believes that her husband did this because he was jealous of the time she dedicated to her work. They divorced soon after. The marriage was a difficult one^[2]:

“

If I liked being called a bitch to my face, I'd still be married.

”

After being cleared of the ethics violation, Brenda decided to seek a new job. Brenda was offered a job with Homeland Security, but decided to decline the offer so that she could head the LAPD's new Priority Homicide Division.

Los Angeles, California

As the Assistant Police Chief, Pope was responsible for her coming to the LAPD and is again her boss. He wanted her for the job because the squad was not providing prosecutors with cases they could win.^[2]

During her first case, Brenda was told she would not be able to obtain DNA results from the LAPD for many weeks; so, she contacted associates at the FBI. Fritz noticed that the results were for Brenda and personally delivered them.^[2] Brenda and Fritz later became involved and eventually got married.^[4]

The renaming of the Priority Homicide Division as the Major Crimes Division in the middle of Season Four coincided with an expansion of the types of crime investigated by the division, from only sensitive, high-publicity murder cases, to include also rapes and robberies (and potentially other types of crime).

Work life

Habits

Brenda's trademark is her "honeyed Georgia cadence" and her catch phrase is "Thank you; thank you so much." (Her "Thank you" is pronounced approximately [θeɪŋkjuː].)

In the pursuit of justice, Brenda is willing to use the Russian mob or the Mexican prison system to stop criminals she cannot capture.^[5][6]

Brenda is a severe workaholic, to the sacrifice of her personal relationships. She tends to micromanage her investigations and take a close look at details. She loves junk food and sweets but is currently trying to lay off them. She usually hides all types of junk food in drawers, purses, and other places. She is also known to be a "bit of a slob", commenting that she does not often get around to housework every day in one episode, and in another, during a small argument between her and Fritz over where her mail was, Fritz comments that "if she looked at her mail daily instead of once a week, she would know where they keep it".

She also seems to be shy of change, perhaps due to her previous bad relationships. She is initially wary of Fritz moving in with her and even more wary when they talk of buying a house together, but Fritz uses desperate measures to convince her otherwise. She also is true to traditional values, and is overwhelmed when Fritz talks of having children after her pregnancy scare in season 2, because "they aren't married yet, and there's a certain order to things." She also speaks of wanting to protect against future unplanned pregnancies for the same reasons. However, she accepts Fritz's proposal with no hesitation.

Problems (Professional, Personal, and Health)

When she first started leading the Priority Homicide Division, the squad gave her a cold reception. Her entire squad applied for transfer in support of the former head of the division, then-Captain now-Commander Taylor. She dismissed the lack of acceptance, and literally threw their applications into the trash can right in front of them. Her peers in the department were also resentful of the rank she was given when she joined the LAPD.^[2] Brenda also managed to alienate the FBI and the L.A. District Attorney's office. Eventually, she earns Taylor's respect by solving the murder of his family friend's son.^[5]

Brenda is attacked in an early episode in Season One, while investigating a victim's house. The suspect was acting on an online posting by the victim, supposedly saying that she wanted to be raped, and the suspect mistook Brenda for the victim. Fortunately, Brenda was able to get to her gun in time and was not raped, though she suffered some physical injury and was badly shaken by the experience. Following a call from Brenda, during which she struggles to disguise the extent to which she is upset, Fritz shows up at Parker Center to take Brenda home and take care of her for the night, an early sign of his strong feelings for Chief Johnson.

Pope divorce proceedings

Pope and his estranged wife, Estelle, eventually divorce. When Chief Pope is going through divorce proceedings, he asks Brenda to go through a deposition at his custody hearing. She agrees to do so.^[7] Pope gains custody of his children and Estelle, furious at Brenda for her deposition, forces her way up to the Squad Room and yells at Brenda, in front of everyone, that "she better not find out that she is sleeping with Pope again". Everyone present in the squad room, including Commander Taylor, learn that Brenda had previously had an affair with Pope because of this. They all begin to ask themselves the inevitable question, "was she transferred here and given such a high rank due to her relationship with Pope?"^[8] Brenda is embarrassed by what happened and refuses to talk about the subject. Commander Taylor later makes a statement in front of the entire squad about what had just taken place. He discredited what Estelle had said and stated that Brenda had been falsely accused. Brenda later gathered all the pictures and memories of her past relationship with Pope and threw them out in the office trash.^[8]

Parker Center shooting and administrative leave

Near the end of season two, Brenda was put on administrative leave (with pay) because of a shooting that occurred in Parker Center. While investigating the death of a former mob hitman's wife and an FBI agent, Brenda realized that it was the hitman himself (a mob informant for the FBI) who killed his wife, when he learned she had had an abortion. The hitman and his wife had been in FBI protective custody at the time. However, unknown to him, another FBI agent had helped the hitman's wife go to a doctor to have an abortion. When the hitman discovered this, he fatally shot the FBI agent in question in the murder room by grabbing detective Lt. Provenza's gun right out of his desk, and then took him hostage. During the resulting standoff, Det. Sanchez shot the mob informant four times, fatally wounding him.

While Brenda is on administrative leave, her squad is taken over (and basically dismantled) by Commander Taylor, with whom she has had a difficult and quarrelsome relationship. She was contacted by an old CIA friend to investigate (secretly) the death of an Arab teenager, due to possible links to terrorism and a possible traitor within the CIA. She solved the case (her way), and recovered her squad.

Brenda was also wary of her very Southern and traditional parents finding out about her living with Fritz, hence their separate phone lines. In season 2, when Brenda's mother comes to visit, Fritz was forced to wait until her mother left to move in with Brenda and both have to constantly cover up their relationship. Finally, as Brenda's mom was about to leave, she revealed that she knew of the relationship and approves, but wouldn't reveal it to her father. In season 3, Fritz accidentally picked up the wrong phone and ended up talking to Brenda's father. Brenda was furious and fearful of her dad's reaction, especially because he would not talk to her and said that he sent a letter. Brenda mentioned the last time she got a letter from her father was when she got a B in college. She was emotional when she found out that her dad's letter was of forgiveness and happiness for her, and not anger.

Season 3

In the third season, it was revealed that Brenda is ill, which increasingly alarms her squad and Fritz. Her symptoms include hot flashes, mood swings, nausea, cramps, and dizziness. Her cases and her own reluctance keep her from seeing a doctor immediately, despite Fritz's attempts to make her go. Finally seeing a doctor, she is given a preliminary diagnosis of her condition as menopause. In the emotional upheaval that follows, Fritz proposes marriage. The following episode reveals that she actually suffers from Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, so she undergoes more tests to ensure that it is not cancer. Finally, she is told that her condition is reversible by means of ovarian drilling, and that she will be able to have children, much to the excitement of her parents, her mother in particular.

Also, Brenda is attacked with a cattle prod in the third season and escapes after she is forced to shoot the suspect. In the next episode, the department psychologist deems her unfit for active duty after Brenda shows no concern about her attack, her parents' impending visit, her and Fritz's recent engagement, their search for a house, and her medical problems. In that same episode, she is caught in the crossfire of an assassination of an investigative journalist. The journalist is killed, his cameraman badly injured, but Brenda and Sgt. Gabriel escape relatively unscathed.

Stroh Case: Brenda's unclosed investigation

By the end of season four (episode: Power of Attorney), a murder linked to six counts of rape is being investigated by Major Crimes Division. On their hands, they have Chris Dunlap, a thirty-something year old who was found hiding in a tree the night of the murder. When Brenda nearly gets a confession, she is interrupted by the arrival of Dunlap's attorney, Phillip Stroh (Billy Burke). After having been caught in several of Stroh's tricks, such as being forced to open up her case to him by Deputy District Attorney Martin Garnett, Brenda gets Dunlap to confess to being the accomplice in the rapes. When she learns that Dunlap never participated in the crime, she asks him who was the man who was committing the crimes, but she didn't expect him to accuse his lawyer, Phillip Stroh. Brenda, being outsmarted by the clever attorney, didn't get a confession from the lawyer and the warrant put on Stroh's home served no good leads, leaving the case still open.

When Brenda becomes overly obsessed with her only unclosed investigation, she starts to have terrifying nightmares of Stroh breaking into her apartment and attacking her, (episode: Elysian Fields). Brenda's free time is committed to solving the case on her own, which crosses over on to the time that Fritz would like to spend with her.

Personality and idiosyncrasies

• Brenda's favorite drink is a "big glass of Merlot".^[3]
• Brenda got her house, and her cat, from a murder victim whose case she solved.^[5] The cat is female and named "Kitty", though, comically, she always refers to Kitty with male pronouns (he, him, etc.) because she initially thought that the cat was male until it gave birth to kittens. Kitty had to be put to sleep in the third episode of Season 5 because of old age and health problems, and Brenda was very upset over the loss of the cat. Fritz got Brenda a kitten named "Joel" at the end of Season 5.
• Brenda speaks "German, Russian, and [is] fully conversant in Czech"; however, she does not speak Spanish. Thus she feels somewhat at a disadvantage in Los Angeles.^[9]

References

1. ^ ^{a b} 1:4, "Show Yourself"
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} 1:1, "Pilot"
3. ^ ^{a b} 1:2, "About Face"
4. ^ 4:15, "Double Blind"
5. ^ ^{a b c} 1:3, "The Big Picture"
6. ^ 1:9, "Good Housekeeping"
7. ^ 2:10""The Other Woman"
8. ^ ^{a b} 2:12 "No good deed"
9. ^ 1:13, "Standards & Practices"

External links

• TNT's Official The Closer Web site