stagmania

I tend to be the exact opposite of some here-when a show is obviously high quality, I hold it to a higher standard, not a lower one. This show had all the makings of top tier television, completely stacked with amazing writers, directors, producers and actors, and yet the creators failed to bother with nailing down the basics of storytelling. Consistent characterization, pacing and temporal logic, cohesive plotting, following the rules of the established universe (i.e. maintaining some level of credible realism re: court procedure)-they played fast and loose with all of it, and it was a major distraction for me. I'm happy to engage with lofty themes and an ambitious message, but if you don't have the fundamentals in place, your high-minded ideas and emotional overtures are not going to land for me. I'll be too busy scratching my head at the eight nonsensical things that just happened to get swept away.

Almost none of that was actually onscreen, and I really didn't get the impression Chandra was looking for a relationship with Naz or thought she was in love with him at all. She barely knew him, as evidenced by all the times she was shocked by something he did. We didn't see them connect on any sort of personal level; hell, we barely know enough about either one of them to be able to extrapolate what their connection could be based on. Seconded. I just finished watching this series and it handled these themes so much more thoughtfully.

I think that's why the judge asked for the count-to determine how close they were. If it was 10-2, he probably would have sent them back in the hopes that the two holdouts could be convinced. But a 6-6 deadlock? Very unlikely that six people will turn when they have plenty of others who agree with them. That was one aspect of the court part of the story that made sense to me.

I'm not even a lawyer, and I know you never put the defendant on the stand unless there's something absolutely vital you need to get in evidence that can't come from any other source. You certainly don't put them up just to act as their own character witness, especially if the best they can do is say they can't remember anything but feel in their heart that they must be innocent. That's 101 level stuff, and it makes no sense that Chandra wouldn't know that this was a terrible idea. On top of that, the whole exchange about the knife was just bizarre. Was I supposed to think that Naz didn't remember that he took the knife from the crime scene? Having the knife in his pocket is the entire reason he got caught! On another note: the critical response to the finale (and the show as a whole) has been pretty mixed, with some loving it and some more focused on its flaws, but this review from Matt Zoller Seitz at Vulture sums up my feelings perfectly.

I think the guard showed Freddy the kiss, not the drug smuggling-we saw that it was the same disc that he then passed to Stone. I agree that the way it all played out was confusing, though. Pretty much everything involving Chandra in the last two episodes was sloppy and poorly drawn.

I absolutely loved Stone's closing argument. That was a great showcase for John Turturro and the standout moment of the finale (and possibly the entire series) for me. I was somewhere between a shrug and an eyeroll for most of the rest.

It pains me to say this because I love Daveed Diggs, but I completely agree. Those flash forwards are awkward as hell and completely pointless when we're watching the story they're recapping. Plus telling us that Zeke becomes a famous rapper pretty much takes all the suspense out of his plot. I thought these six episodes were largely a bloated mess with more dead spots than compelling drama, but that battle performance was so dynamic and lively that it mostly made up for it. I'll be coming back to watch the back half and hoping it's more pulled together.

Yeah, this is a total mess and I kind of have no idea what I just watched or which of the several shows mashed together in the pilot this series actually intends to be. But Justice Smith is a wonder, and the music is enough to carry me through for awhile.

But you only know most of those things as an omniscient audience viewer. We have seen nothing to indicate that the jury knows Naz had no blood on him, or even that the defense framed the chain of events to show that he was confused and panicked. As for Naz's capacity for violence, we saw the prosecution try to establish random violence as a pattern in his life, and his attorney utterly fail to discredit those claims on cross. Given what we've seen, the jury doesn't appear to have enough to go on to establish reasonable doubt, and I'm not willing to assume that stuff was presented to them off camera when the editing suggested we were seeing all the "big" moments of the trial.

I actually think the show has stepped all over this theme with all these out of the blue reveals about Nasir's criminal past, and his lack of affect and unwillingness to help himself in this situation. Before we knew he had a violent history, I thought this was exactly the point of what they were trying to do with his story. Now I really have no idea.

Making a Murderer featured a case in a small rural town with impoverished suspects that flew mostly under the radar while it was happening. It's not really fair to compare that to a NYC case with a rich female victim that is supposedly garnering national attention. The show itself stated in an early episode that the police would need to take care to handle this case properly because it was sure to make a splash. No one is trying to say that great miscarriages of justice don't happen or that cops and lawyers can't be criminally inept. It's just that it doesn't fit with this particular story or the way the characters were presented to us from the start. Yes, this. I think the show actually unintentionally underlined the contradiction in what they're telling and showing us with that silly OJ Simpson trial quote. It just reminded me that this case is supposed to be a big deal, yet none of the markers of that kind of media hoopla are present in the story.

That whole moment was so unforgivably clumsy. If Chandra hadn't been visibly stunned and stuttering for several prolonged moments, she could have breezed right past him saying "two" and the jury likely wouldn't have noticed. The prosecutor might have picked it up and drawn it out, but Chandra didn't need to do her job for her (and why would the prosecutor not already be aware that there was a second incident and have presented it as part of her case? Apparently she didn't bother with any witness prep either). Naz has a good case for ineffective counsel with how poorly Chandra is performing her job.

And not even a good courtroom drama! As others have pointed out, there were HUGE pieces of evidence not covered in the trial, and the defense was weak as hell. Where was Duane Reade? Blood evidence? Character witnesses for Naz? I think the worst part of how this has all shaken out is that it's completely ruined the characters for me. What the hell is going on with Naz? Why does he keep lying and hiding things from his lawyers? Does he want to go to prison for the rest of his life? It's not as if a conviction would allow him to stay at Rikers with Freddie and his cushy set up. None of it makes sense and we've been given no idea what his motivations are. And Chandra just looks incompetent and foolish. Making out with her client, totally losing her cool in the courtroom, failing to come up with any kind of adequate cross for prosecution witnesses and experts. I feel bad for the actress playing her; this could have been a big opportunity for exposure, but she's saddled with this mess of a character. Even John Stone fell flat in this episode. He just sits passively at the defense table, not helping Chandra, not offering any ideas or insights. His stalking of Andrea's stepfather seems fairly aimless, as well. Why isn't he trying to find Duane Reade? His whole plot has devolved into foot and cat jokes. I'm with @JJWatt: my expectations for this show were way too high. They have definitely failed to live up to that great pilot episode.

The cat is doing just fine. The show, however? Not so much. I'd be abandoning ship at this point if there wasn't only one episode to go.

Personally, I have no interest in bringing back Buffy in any form. The show was great, it ended very well, and I prefer to leave it to the imagination what happened to the characters from there. This is also why I pay no attention to the comics. If anything, I could see a show focused on an entirely different slayer in the same universe in which Buffy activated all the potentials, without the involvement of any of the original Buffy cast, aside from a rare cameo. I think the concept definitely has potential, and could see it fitting in well on The CW or Netflix.

That scene was just poorly staged. The contrivance is too much to begin with-it doesn't make much sense that Chandra, a lawyer at a fancy Manhattan firm, would live in Jackson Heights, nor that Naz's father would be delivering food for a restaurant in a neighborhood far from home. Put that on top of the astronomically low odds of him being her delivery guy even if the neighborhoods matched up, given just how many restaurants and residents there are in this city-I rolled my eyes. Then the way it played out was so confusing that a lot of people didn't even realize who he was or what Chandra was doing. This show doesn't do well with the details.

I'm glad I'm not the only one feeling this way; I was surprised by the mostly positive reviews of this episode. It all just feels so haphazard to me. This week we jumped right into the trial with very little fanfare, and are apparently going to just be skipping through big chunks of it. But somehow the investigation is still on a level that I would expect to happen before trial starts, and it looks like the cops/DA did not bother to do their due diligence in investigating other leads. I don't think that's unrealistic, but it sure makes me think less of characters like Box, and I think I'm supposed to respect him and believe he's good at his job. I'm also frustrated by the rotation of red herring suspects and the lack of follow up on the Duane Reade stuff from last week. If that's really the end of the skin rash plot, I don't know what plot function it actually served or why we had to spend so much time on it (and if it isn't, ugh enough already). Chandra is underwritten and unbelievably naive for a professional woman who lives in NYC, and Naz is just a complete cipher to me at this point-I don't know what I'm supposed to think about who he is, which makes me increasingly less invested in the outcome of his trial and the battle for his soul. And here we are six episodes in and I still feel I know next to nothing about Andrea or what might have really happened the night she died. None of this is really working for me.

It seems like it's his legal name. As someone who works with public records and sees a lot of bizarre or "joke" names, it's surprisingly plausible. I found the end of that sequence confusing as hell. I see someone mentioned up thread that the pulsing light mirrored the opening shot, but I didn't remember that while viewing and was just left wondering what had happened.

He was posturing. Pride, ego, saving face, etc. Typical tough guy stuff. That whole sequence was just bizarre. Why the hell would Stone spook the guy and send him into hiding? And if he actually got into a physical altercation with him, wouldn't that damage the case? The whole episode I was impressed with his investigative skills, and then they threw that out to have a dumb chase scene. What struck me in the scene with Box reconstructing the timeline was that Naz told the truth-at every point, his story matched the records. I expect that to give Box pause and drive him to consider more seriously the possibility that Naz is telling the truth about the rest.

I agree that the show can't really go on with Jane and Michael happily married this early in the story, but I'm torn on whether I want them to go through with killing him. I think it's more likely they'll do some kind of edge of death/amnesia plot. It's a telenovela after all, and I don't think we'll ever be done with the triangle.

Well the episodes were filmed 2-3 years ago, so he wasn't 33 at the time. Still aged down significantly, though. I just finally caught up on the last two episodes. I like the show, but I can't seem to inspire a sense of urgency in myself to watch. I'm more interested in the crime investigation side than I am the prison story, despite the presence of Michael K Williams, but it looks like the show is headed away from that. It certainly has not been able to maintain the viscerally compelling nature of the pilot. I'm still watching, but my enthusiasm has flagged a bit.

Very late to this party, but I just binged the second season on Netflix and really enjoyed it, as well as catching up on the conversation around here. It was a lot of fun, and I think I've finally learned to let go of some of the things about JtV that annoy me (I usually hate love triangles and surprise pregnancy plots, for starters), and just let myself be charmed by it without having high expectations for any particular character journeys or romantic relationships. I think it's kind of necessary when you're watching a show that is so explicitly designed to undo anything that happens within a few episodes-don't get invested! With that in mind, I honestly don't expect that Michael will definitively die (the actor is just way too much of an asset to the show), or that the writers will have any trouble switching back to Jane/Rafael at some point next season (and then probably on to Jane/Michael again, if the show continues on long enough). They employ time jumps, abrupt characterization changes, crazy twists and selective plot memory with abandon, and because the story is so fast-paced and the cast is utterly charming, it generally works. I mean, look at how into Jane and Michael's wedding everyone was by the finale-that came out of nowhere in the back end of the season, and they basically had all of Michael's flaws go poof! to make it happen, but the audience went with it. It's a particular magic that I haven't seen in any other shows, and I'm just surrendering to it at this point. On to season 3!

This show was originally in development years ago, with Gandolfini set to play the John Torturro role. His death put it on hold for awhile, but eventually they recast it and moved forward. The timing ended up working out, as it slots in nicely with the current true crime pop culture boom. I thought the same-he's supposed to be a college student, still living at home and relatively inexperienced with girls. I'd say 20 or 21.

Off topic, but quick clarification: Michael B. Jordan plays Wallace on The Wire, not one of the school children featured in season 4. I'm kind of regretting my decision to go ahead and watch the premiere of The Night Of early; the wait for the next one is too long!

I'm glad HBO clarified this, and I agree it makes perfect sense and confirms that Jon did not, in fact, take anything from Sansa. Would have been nice if the show had bothered to present it all clearly. I wonder if they played it all so ambiguous so they could leave themselves some wiggle room on what to do with Sansa next season.