Thank yew so much!

You’ll have to pardon me while I’m in mourning. The Closer has ended its seven-season run on TNT and I don’t know what I’m going to do for intelligent plot lines, realistic characters (flaws and all) and the use of junk food as panacea for all the slings and arrows of outrageous LA.

If you’re unfamiliar with the series…have you been living in a cave? It’s about Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson (played by Kyra Sedgwick), an Atlanta native, brought in to turn around a dysfunctional high-priority crimes division of the LAPD and close investigations by eliciting confessions from the perps.

Brenda Leigh had me at the first episode—which included everyone in her unit requesting transfers, and ended with her taking comfort in a Ding-Dong in the privacy of her hotel room. Let me just say—that was as close to cheap chocolate-like-food-product porn as you’re going to get on basic cable.

But there was a whole lot more to Brenda Leigh than a sugar addiction. Smart, tough, sometimes missing the mark, yet always focused on catching the killer. In one of the early episodes she was surprised at a crime scene by an attacker. When she finally managed to get out her service weapon and had the suspect under control, her hand holding the pistol just shook uncontrollably.

She didn’t have an easy time with her team, either. As you know, cops are not shrinking violets. Imagine the reaction if the detectives focused on the worst crimes of the city suddenly discover their new commander is from outside the LAPD, has the XX chromosome configuration and tawks lak theis. It doesn’t help that she looked like she got her clothes from the Piggly-Wiggly. But over the course of the first season, she won them over because, while they might be chauvinists, they recognized the genuine article. Eventually.

Watching their faces as they started to realize her gifts was really television at its best.

The writers gave the actors great lines, too. At her very first crime scene, when one of the officers in place tells her she doesn’t need to be a bitch about it, she replies, “If I liked being called a bitch to my face, detective, I’d still be married.”

Another time, watching Detective Sánchez interviewing a suspect who responded, “Abogado”, Brenda Leigh screwed up her face and asked, “Did he say avocado?”

There’s another exchange, between Brenda Leigh and Lieutenant Flynn, about how Germany determines nationality by blood, not by birth or residency; but you have to watch that to fully appreciate it.

Brenda Leigh was dynamite when it came to solving crimes, but she often missed the boat in reading personal relationships, and that was another endearing quality. In the end, it was this single-mindedness that caused her to lose two opportunities, with catastrophic consequences, one with a family member and the other with a colleague.

The producers of The Closer are continuing the franchise with Major Crimes—most of Brenda Leigh’s team with Mary McDonnell taking command as Captain Sharon Raydor (who carries baggage, as she lead several Internal Affairs investigations). I’m sure it’ll be fine, but it just won’t be Brenda Leigh.

’Scuse me, I must go find a Moon Pie and an RC Cola. Ahm’na miss yew, Brenda Leigh!