The Closer Season 1 Episode 6

In his TVGuide.com blog, James Duff indicates each season has an overarching theme that serves as subtext for many of the episodes. For season one, that theme was the woman alone, trying to negotiate a man's world. As the theme emerges in the first episodes, we see Brenda as a woman struggling for credibility and respect in a law-enforcement system dominated by men, battling their beliefs and their prejudices toward women in general, and her in particular. In the episodes that follow, the applications of the theme begins to broaden to explore both how women are never fully able to separate from their sexual identities in the eyes of men, the assumptions that result, and how men exploit women sexually. Now, Brenda experiences what is perhaps a woman's greatest fear: sexual violence. It's the first time we see Brenda truly vulnerable, and even as she throws off the effects of experience and continues her investigation, her interaction with Fritz shows us the damage done to her.

Although we know Lt. Tao is formerly an SID investigator, SID has played a background role until this episode, when Pope discusses the role of SID (Scientific Investigative Division) with Brenda in the context of the victim's apartment. Although briefly mentioned in one or two previous episodes, this is the first time we have some sense of what the LAPD SID does.

SID is broken into three branches: the Criminalistics Lab, the Technical Lab, and the Los Angeles Regional Crime Lab (formally named the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center.) Unlike the fictional CSI, SID is charged with a wide range of tasks from gathering and preserving evidence, to development of composite drawings, to audio/video surveillance, to analysis of controlled substances.

The Los Angeles Regional Crime Lab is interesting in its own right, collaboratively housing the LAPD SID, the LA County Sheriff's Department Scientific Services Bureau, and the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminalistics at California State University, Los Angeles, on whose campus it is located.

This episode was submitted by Kyra Segwick to the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for Emmy consideration in the category Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. Although Sedgwick was nominated, the award went home with Mariska Hargitay ("Law & Order: SVU").