“Throughout the past nine episodes, the series has dealt with corruption—both internal and external—mental illness, addiction and trauma in ways that always suggested something far more malignant lurked beneath. And looking back with the context now, it’s easy to see how each of those things was meant to lead back to the faces of those children that disrupted the violence of this season’s premiere. It’s no longer the legacy of a school shooting, but of how these threads—neglected, untreated and unresolved—affect not just the police we follow every week, but the city whose streets they wander and the future they’re meant to protect. The stakes were raised with that first episode and just when the season was letting us feel like we were settling back into the normal flow of a cop series, it reminded us again of why each of those moments in between—where the cops try to do some good—matter.”
