Why is closer leaving

Sedgwick also revealed that she is "really glad" that Major Crimes is being made and teased that the theme for the final season of The Closer is "love and loss". She said: "It's exactly the way you want the character to go out.

The Closer 's final season is scheduled to premiere on TNT this fall. Type keyword s to search. And as the last six Closer episodes begin airing this week, no one knows better than Duff, executive producer and creator of both The Closer and Major Crimes , how easy it would be to mess it all up.

For Sedgwick, the segue was a unique opportunity to avoid some serious guilt. As the show's title star, her decision to stop playing The Closer after seven years could have meant that Duff, her co-stars and the show's crew would have had to find other work. Then TNT kept the show going, allowing her to enjoy the farewells for a finely sculpted character without the bittersweet knowledge that her artistic decisions were costing other people their jobs.

And I feel like we avoided that; we did give her an honorable and interesting sendoff, and I feel like that was my job. She had the largest speaking role on television for a long time and that's hard. It's like running a marathon. He recalled a moment, while filming during the first season, when Sedgwick pulled him aside. Both had been working long hours and "were practically zombies" trying to finish everything.

In seven years, The Closer has managed a remarkable feat. It has offered a distinctive character who reinvented the female cop's image on TV while presenting a crime series popular enough to average more than 8 million viewers a night in its last airings.

As the show returns Monday, Sedgwick's Johnson is still coping with fallout from the legal battle over her decision to leave a suspect in his home, knowing his fellow gang members planned to kill him.

In Monday's episode, old nemesis Philip Stroh, the lawyer and rapist who avoided justice in a previous episode, resurfaces to bedevil Johnson as her investigative hands are tied by a settlement. But one long-running question is finally answered: Who was that mole who kept leaking the Major Case Squad's inner workings to the lawyer suing Johnson? No, it's not who you think it is, and yes, it's based on a true story.

We also see her face the possibility that her boss and former lover, Chief Will Pope, might not be so trustworthy. And she must deal with a personal loss forcing her to confront how much of her life she has focused on work. She knew he was guilty, and he knew she knew. And he loved to rub it in her face that she couldn't get enough evidence on him to bring him in.

It was after her latest failure to get a confession out of him, though, that he really touched a nerve. Stroh made a comment about her recently deceased mother, and Brenda attacked him in the elevator. That, however, gave her the DNA evidence she needed from him to try and force a confession. Everything she was doing skirted or outright broke the law, leading to her ultimately getting removed from duty. Just in time, too, as she got a job offer at the D. It was an offer she would take, but not before Stroh confronted her in her own home, and she was able to shoot him through her purse.