Recorded with Mary McDonnell, with special guest Olivia Jane Mell and host Mina Sharpe of MajorCrimesTV.net

INSIDE THIS EPISODE:
Wedding time! We discuss the long-awaited wedding of Sharon and Andy, and Olivia talks about her guest role as the wedding singer, and her experiences working on the show. Mary discusses the recent developments with Sharon Raydor and her health, faith, and what lies ahead as the season progresses.

FEEDBACK/QUESTIONS: Ask your questions by tweeting with the hashtag #WWSRD, Commenting under each podcast on Facebook, or on MajorCrimesTV.net.

This podcast is sponsored in part by MajorCrimesTV.net

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Twitter.com/MaryMcdonnell10
Instagram.com/theladyBAM

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Welcome to Episode 12 of the “‘What Would Sharon Raydor Do?’ podcast, the podcast devoted to getting an in-depth view at Major Crimes Commander Sharon Raydor by the woman who knows her best, Mary McDonnell.

Recorded with Mary McDonnell. Guest host this week Mina Sharpe, editor of MajorCrimesTV.net.

INSIDE THIS EPISODE:
Mary comments on the recent announcement that the upcoming season (season 6) will be Major Crimes last. Mary and Mina discuss some of Sharon’s experiences on last season, and what is ahead for Season 6.

FEEDBACK/QUESTIONS: Ask your questions by tweeting with the hashtag #WWSRD, Commenting under each podcast on Facebook, or on MajorCrimesTV.net.

This podcast is sponsored in part by MajorCrimesTV.net

FIND MARY ONLINE
Facebook.com/TheMaryMcDonnell
Twitter.com/MaryMcdonnell10
Instagram.com/theladyBAM

FIND MajorCrimesTV.net ONLINE
Facebook.com/MajorCrimesTV
Twitter.com/MajorcrimesTV
Instagram.com/MajorCrimesTV

HELP SPREAD THE LOVE
Have a Major Crimes or Mary McDonnell fan in your life? It would be awesome if you shared this podcast with them! Share on Facebook or Tweet some love!

If you love the podcast, subscribe on soundcloud or iTunes and never miss an update!

Recorded with Mary McDonnell. Guest hosted this week by the editor of MajorCrimesTV.net, Mina Sharpe.

INSIDE THIS EPISODE
In this episode Mary and Mina discuss the season 5 finale of Major Crimes, Mary (and Sharon’s) take on the events of the finale, and some insight into the season as a whole, and what’s ahead for season 6.

FEEDBACK/QUESTIONS: Ask your questions by tweeting with the hashtag #WWSRD! Commenting under each podcast on Facebook, or on MajorCrimesTV.net.

This podcast is sponsored in part by MajorCrimesTV.net

FIND Mary McDonnell ONLINE
Facebook.com/TheMaryMcDonnell
Twitter.com/MaryMcDonnell10
Instagram.com/theladyBAM

FIND MajorCrimesTV.net ONLINE
Facebook.com/MajorCrimesTV
Twitter.com/MajorcrimesTV
Instagram.com/MajorCrimesTV

HELP SPREAD THE LOVE
Have a Major Crimes or Mary McDonnell fan in your life? Please share this podcast with them!

If you love the podcast, subscribe and never miss an update!

WAYS TO SUBSCRIBE TO WWSRD
Follow MajorCrimesTV.net on YouTube
Subscribe on Soundcloud
Subscribe on iTunes

Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next season!

CAUTION – the below includes spoilers for Wednesday’s season finale of Major Crimes. Do not read if you have not yet seen the episode and don’t want to be spoiled!

In Part Two of our exclusive interview with James Duff, we discussed some of the most shocking (blowing up the squad room!) and long-awaited (Commander Raydor has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?) moments of the season finale, and what’s ahead for the team when it returns next fall for Season 6.

MajorCrimesTV: So, first of all, wow! That was a very nerve-wracking finale, and then right at the end, it packed a big emotional punch!

James Duff: I agree. And also, I want to point out how well-directed it was all the way through. Patrick Duffy did a great job of last week’s episode and Michael Robin did a fantastic job of the finale, and it all worked very well. Very happy about it.

MCTV: You mentioned earlier that there two drafts of this finale – one if it was the season finale, one if it was the series finale. Certainly I didn’t want it to be a series finale, but had it been, I feel like this was satisfying and beautiful, and would have been one we could have lived with as the end.  But had this been the series finale, what can you tell us about what might have been different?

JD: There would have been many changes. There was an important reprise, a very important reprise, and there was a heightening of what could happen in the future. Also, the explosion (at the LAPD) happened much later in the story than it would have, had it been a series finale.

MCTV: I saw that explosion and thought, wow, I don’t know if they would have blown it up if they knew they were going to have to put it all back together again for the next season!  

JD: Well, actually, blowing it up gave us a chance to refresh the room a little bit. That set has been there for seven years, we’ve been using it exactly the way it is. And police work has evolved. The white boards are still important, but police work is evolving and we need to evolve with it. Also, when you live on a set for seven years, you get to know not only strengths but also its weaknesses. It gives us an opportunity to fix the weaknesses of the set while holding on to its strengths. It’ll look very familiar and it will look a little different, too. But not very different.

MCTV: We had one moment in here that was years in the making, and that was Raydor’s promotion. It was a long time coming, and a beautiful moment to watch. Why now, and when Asst. Chief Mason says there are changes coming, what kind of changes are we talking about?

JD: I think you can expect two things. One is that the promotion freeze is over at LAPD and Major Crimes used to be led by a Deputy Chief and Raydor certainly deserves to be a Commander, and I think everybody would agree that that promotion was well-earned. And also, gosh, just to see Mary play it!

It was wonderful, because Mary had asked, will she ever get to be a commander, and she lives inside this character so much that Sharon’s promotion–felt real in a way that really came across on-screen. And also because the emotion of having a woman struggle for that job and get it, it was very important to see, I think. And then as a reward for the long game that Sharon usually plays. And then I would say the way Major Crimes is going to change is that Major Crimes is going to be deployed as Mason sees fit. And the cases are going to get bigger. We’re going to be in more of the multi-part universe from now on. Our first five-parter next season is called: Major Crimes: Sanctuary City and it’s not at all what you think. I will say it involves a legal immigration, it involves the Catholic church, illegal drug use, and a trio of missing fifteen-year-old boys.

MCTV: Winnie Davis certainly made no friends this season. Is this the last we’ve seen of her? Is she out now or is she going to be a thorn in everyone’s side in whatever capacity she can manage. 

JD: It’s the last time we will have seen her as an enemy. If you see Winnie Davis again, she will not be an enemy.

MCTV: Flynn he had a great moment at the end of this episode. But earlier on, Provenza says “for you to go back out in the field, the right person has to be become assistant chief.” Has the right person become the Assistant Chief to get Flynn back out there?

JD: Not yet.  He’s going to have to struggle for that. But, also, there are going to be some big emotional problems next year, and that may be not something he’s as concerned about. Everybody is going to be facing some adversity. Not to mention the spectral presence of Stroh sort of glowering over the whole thirteen episodes.

But overall, I just want to say that we are very excited about this episode and the way our season ended and we’re incredibly excited that we get to do it again for another thirteen episodes. And hopefully we can spend a little more time together.

In part one of our interview with series creator and writer of tonight’s episode, James Duff, he discusses in what ways the late renewal affected tonight’s season finale, and how it feels to be celebrating a combined 200 episodes in the world and characters of The Closer and Major Crimes. Stay turned for part two of our interview tonight, after the episode airs.

MajorCrimesTV: Last week’s episode was a real nail biter, and going into tonight, I have a lot of questions about what’s going to happen. And in terms of bad guys, it seems like Christian Ortiz rates right up there with some of the biggest foes the team has ever faced, right up there with Phillip Stroh and the Chris Wood character from the Poster Boy arc a few years ago. Was that an intentional choice to just put everything into this character and story?

James Duff: Most of our finales on Major Crimes center around a really bad guy you get to know. And Chris Wood is a fantastic example of someone we employed in that capacity. And by the way, look what happened to his career afterwards! He exploded. He’s such a fantastic actor. And the same thing is going to happen with this guy. He’s in “The Fate of the Furious”, coming out this weekend. So, we just got him at the right time. He was awesome and fantastic in this role.

But what’s really good for Major Crimes is when they face a foe who is formidable. Nothing is better than a formidable foe. And what we’ll find out tonight is that this guy is both deeper and more destructive than you thought possible. It’s the bomb at the graveyard that’s telling you he was willing to do anything. What he does tonight will convince you for sure. Those pictures that he took will come back to haunt him. We see those pictures and they have a role to play in how he’s apprehended.

MCTV: Rusty also faces a foe of his own tonight, when he meets Gus’s boss.

JD: Yes. We meet Aiden, played by Keegan Allen, who is formidable foe for Rusty, in that his interaction with Rusty is something we’ve never seen before.  Someone really putting the kid over a barrel and forcing him into doing something extremely adult and extremely loving, which turns out to be an amazing response for Rusty.

MCTV: One of the few lighter moments in last week’s episode was courtesy of Nolan, who called out Davis on her aspirations for the chief job. Are we going to see Nolan, now that he’s settled in more with the team, flying off the cuff a bit more and calling things the way they are?

JD: Nolan has been holding back and he’s been trying to find his way. But he’s also been in really desperate situations before and he doesn’t like the way Winnie Davis is treating people, and he’s like, “to hell with it,  I’m gonna say what I’m thinking here.” And I thought Daniel (di Tomasso) did a great job with that. He was so excited when he got that little exchange. None of our regular crew could have done it, because we don’t have a character like that in our regular crew. Provenza will sometimes get in people’s faces and even Sharon will sometimes say to a commanding officer “Do you want to cover this case, or would you like me to step aside?”, and diplomatically find a way to address it, but she would never do anything like Nolan did. Which was actually attack the character of a commanding officer. I loved it, personally.

MCTV: It was great, and you could tell the others loved it, and were also terrified for his future at that point forward. It also brought about a great moment for Sharon, too, where she says very clearly, “this is where I want to be, this is what I want to do, and quit screwing it up for me!”

JD: Yes! Exactly! I thought that was one of Mary’s best performances in the entire series. Her reaction to that was great, because we’re reminded that she believes in the rules, and she believes in the chain of command, and she believes in leveraging that knowledge into power. And I thought Mary played that scene beautifully. She did it several different ways, and we went with the one that we felt she was really behind in her heart.

MCTV: Between last week and tonight’s finale, these are two very big episodes in scale, especially with all the explosions, the locations, etc. What goes into getting these huge episodes, with all the effects, together?

JD: What we do is just hours and hours of preparation, so that we have everything we need in place, and we’ve tried to consider every stupid thing we might do wrong, and really work very hard to get it right the first or second time. The way you get to have really big episodes like this is by being extremely careful with your budget as you go along. So that you’re building a pool of cash that you can employ at the right moment to deliver an optimal experience at the end of the season.

MCTV: When you were writing it, you’ve said you thought it could potentially be the end of the series. Did that figure in?

JD: Exactly. You know, we also had every reason to believe that this was the end of the series. And I think if you watch it with the idea that we almost ended the series here, then you can see how we opted to put everything we had into it.

MCTV: Along with being the season finale, tonight’s episode marks two hundred episodes for some of these characters. What has the experience been to inhabit this world and these characters for this long, when these days so many shows never get past twelve episodes a show, if they even get past the pilot. You’ve had two hundred. What has that been like?

JD: If you put it in perspective, I’ve spent all of elementary school, middle school, high school and my first year of college in this world. (laughs) It is been like living inside a learning experience. And if you want to live inside a learning experience then this is the way to do it. I never could have imagined two hundred episodes. It just boggles the mind, especially going from the end of The Closer, to already be looking ahead to the hundredth episode of Major Crimes next year.  I mean, I thought it was possible, but not likely. But three people absolutely believed it would happen. And they were Tony Denison, Phillip Keene, and Raymond Cruz. The rest of us, and even at the network, there was curiosity and good intentions, but doubt.

And so I credit the audience, honestly, with getting us through that transition and sticking with us, and holding onto our characters. I guess, in addition to being a learning environment, the two hundred episodes that we’ve done, they’ve allowed me to grow close to the audience in a way I don’t think you get an opportunity to do very often. The social platforms that are available now have enhanced that opportunity. I feel incredibly close to the viewers and am incredibly grateful and thankful to them for electing to be a part of this community.

MCTV: Anything else you want to tease about tonight’s episode?

JD: Provenza’s bobble-head has never faced a bigger crisis (laughs).

The Major Crimes season finale airs tonight at 9pm/8c on TNT. Read part two of our interview with James Duff tonight, as he discusses what might have been different if the episode had been a series finale, and what we can expect when Major Crimes returns next fall.