The Closer

9 p.m. Monday, TNT

“It looks like love.”

Those were the first words Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson spoke in “The Closer” seven seasons ago on TNT, and they’re also the last words she speaks, more or less, in Monday night’s finale of that long-running cop drama.

In 2005 they were mordant, the prickly new boss’ response to the battered, naked body of the show’s first murder victim. This time around they’re choked and more than a little mawkish, the sentimental old boss’s goodbye.

It’s an easy metaphor for the show’s evolution. Like a lot of successful series, “The Closer” got softer over time as its characters settled into grooves (and the actors playing them developed fan bases). Kyra Sedgwick’s portrayal of Brenda Leigh became broader, and her Southern accent more pronounced.

In its swan song, the show is drawing the largest audiences of any scripted series on cable this summer. The show’s creator, James Duff, and much of its cast will move on to the spinoff “Major Crimes,” which begins Monday night after the original’s finale.

When “The Closer” made its debut, original dramas had established a solid beachhead on basic cable: USA’s “Monk”; SyFy’s “Stargate: SG-1” and “Battlestar Galactica”; and FX’s “Nip/Tuck,” “The Shield” and “Rescue Me” had all landed within the previous three years. But it was “The Closer,” with its 7 million viewers, that took the category a step further, establishing the idea that a cable drama could compete in the Nielsen ratings with the Big Four networks.

It did this by being more like a broadcast network show — firmly episodic and faithful to the rhythms and formulas of the case-of-the-week cop-shop mystery. It also benefited from a superb supporting cast.

But discussion of “The Closer” has always centered on Sedgwick’s showy performance as an acerbic, closed-off workaholic, for which she received an Emmy in 2010 (after four nominations). But as the series progressed, its central character was sometimes the least convincing thing about it.

Painted as both a neurotic, narcissistic supercop and a likable, nurturing den mother — not to mention a crack-the-glass-ceiling feminist — Brenda Leigh never quite seemed real, despite Sedgwick’s best efforts.

The writers never did make sense of her frenzied trampling of suspects’ civil rights and it was often difficult, if not impossible, to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Brenda Leigh was supposed to be redeemed, on a weekly basis, by the respect she inspired in her colleagues (as well as the hatred she aroused in the bad guys). And the supporting characters were so enjoyable that a regular viewer could think, OK, if they’re willing to go along with this, I will too.