Recap of ‘Ballard’ Episode 7: “Decision Time”

In many cop shows, the main characters seem immune to harm. Regardless of the intense situations they face, they emerge unscathed, maintaining their pristine appearance with a suit, a hip-holstered gun, and a stern look for offenders. Whatever occurs in one episode, their appearance remains unchanged in the next.

Ballard breaks away from this mold. When a male homicide detective investigates after Driscoll’s intrusion into her home, he assumes she performed an emergency tracheotomy on her attacker, only to kill him by removing it. Meanwhile, Detective Ballard’s injuries—a bruised throat, a deep forehead cut, and fractured ribs—are thoroughly examined at the hospital.

These injuries accompany Ballard throughout Episode 7. Her voice is a raspy whisper, and her torso is painfully wounded. Yet, if you’re expecting these injuries to halt her efforts, or that having all of her team’s cases taken over by Berchem/RHD will make her give up, then this isn’t the show for you. At her makeshift home crime scene, Ballard discreetly tucked Driscoll’s phone into Thomas Laffont’s pocket, who then handed the phone and its contacts to a trustworthy ally on the outside. Enter Harry Bosch for the assist.

There’s a great scene here, poolside at the motel where Ballard’s laid up. It’s a mirror on their time together in the Legacy series finale, where Bosch and Ballard established their working rapport and mutual respect. Renée gives Harry the goods on the dead ex-cop, the street guns-to-drug-cartel carousel, and the deep waters of corruption and conspiracy. Deep waters? That’s the story of Bosch’s life. “I’m beginning to like you more and more,” he tells her, and gets to work tracking Driscoll’s contacts with another fantastic blast from the Bosch Universe past, Mo Bassi (Stephen A. Chang).

Driscoll’s death leaves his link to The Follower sunk, at least for now, and as Ballard stresses the danger of the situation to her volunteers, we know more about how real it is. But Martina, Colleen, Rawls, and Parker are committed to the team and their leader, so they’re ready when she pivots the crew to a fresh cold case. Another sad story, buried in the boxes of a departmental basement: Lillian Lee (MJ Kang), the missing body of her dead teenage son Raehyun, and the stewing anger of her younger boy Jun (Ethan Holder).

Why this case? There are hundreds of boxes to choose from. “Something in the mother’s voice,” Ballard tells Laffont. “They never found my father’s body, either.” A story emerges as the team dives in, full of gang recruitment activity in Koreatown, fights behind the high school, and a teacher, Mr. Kim (Abraham Lim), trying to keep his students on the straight and narrow. Ballard winces with pain – it only hurts when she breathes. But Rae’s body isn’t gonna find itself, and before long their investigation leads to a shallow grave in the scrublands off Colby Canyon trail.

Cleverly, Bosch and Mo snuck Driscoll’s phone back into his place. Investigators won’t know Ballard palmed it at the crime scene. The presence of these characters is clever on Ballard’s part, too. The insertion of Bosch, Mo – and even Crate and Barrel – has been seamless, but also respectful of the new series’ main thrust. That said, we like the quiet update to Harry’s everyday life in that he’s now driving around in a new Ford Bronco. And speaking of rapport, we love to get another little snippet of his with Mo. What has Ballard uncovered? “Bad shit, brother.” 

Worse shit, in fact. We’ve mentioned the enjoyable, interesting way cold case data, dirty cop conspiracies, and the personal details of Ballard’s and Parker’s traumas have begun to merge as the show’s first season has progressed. We were already kinda thinking that Olivas, an established bad actor, could possibly be part of this overlap. And here in Ep 7 of Ballard, after we saw him go mask off in Episode 6 (“Beneath The Surface”) to Parker’s direct accusation of rape, Olivas’ role in the miasma of shit starts to stink even more. When Bosch and Mo were tracking the burner numbers in Driscoll’s device, they uncovered many leading to blue suits driving around LA in their black-and-whites. Bad enough. But the biggest get is one Bosch shows Ballard in the flesh. Olivas, the RHD rapist, was also one of Driscoll’s personal cops-to-cartels contacts.

It’s a lot to take in. But Ballard’s reaction, on top of everything else going on, feels like she shared our same suspicions. The way things are, Olivas being even more of a terrible person will probably make him even harder to take down. Will she even have the time, energy, and allies to do it? Despite her injuries, it’s Ballard who tackles Mr. Kim – the teacher ended up being Raehyun’s killer. RHD has commandeered the team’s other active cases; that feels like a decision made not out of concern for her health, but by more of the toxic boys in blue bullshit and departmental bureaucracy. And later, when she’s finally back home, she explains the tattoo on her side to Aaron as he helps her into bed. A few years back, after Renée’s dad died, she fell in with some bad people. The tat of a soaring bird became her talisman. “I figured even if I was lost, he could watch over me.” She’ll say no more, because she passes out before Aaron can finish his response. But the physical wounds she now bears have joined the emotional trauma she’s been carrying for some time. And the challenges just keep coming.

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.