Your Honor - General Discussion

[aghst]

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The ten-part series is exec produced by The Good Fight duo Robert and Michelle King and The Night Of’s Peter Moffat, who also writes. Cranston stars and exec produces.

The Breaking Bad star plays a respected judge whose son is involved in a hit-and-run in New Orleans that leads to a high-stakes game of lies, deceit and impossible choices.

Truth Be Told’s Hunter Doohan plays Cranston’s son, a high school senior who is involved in the hit-and-run accident. Michael Stuhlbarg plays crime boss Jimmy Baxter, while Sofia Black D’Elia, Carmen Ejogo, Isiah Whitlock Jr. and Hope Davis also star.

The American’s Margo Martindale recurs, playing Senator Elizabeth Guthrie, the mother of the deceased wife of Cranston’s Michael Desiato, while Amy Landecker, Lilli Kay, Tony Curran, Keith Machekanyanga, Lamar Johnson and Benjamin Flores, Jr. also feature.

The series is being adapted from the Israeli series Kvodo, created by Ron Ninio and Shlomo Mashiach, produced by Ram Landes and airing on the country’s Yes TV.

Moffat serves as showrunner, executive producer and will write multiple episodes, including the first episode. The series is produced by CBS TV Studios in association with Robert and Michelle King’s King Size Productions. Liz Glotzer (The Good Fight), Alon Aranya and Rob Golenberg (Hostages) of Scripted World and James Degus will also serve as executive producers. Edward Berger (Patrick Melrose) directs the first three episodes.

https://deadline.com/video/bryan-cranston-first-clip-your-honor-showtime/

 

No reviews yet but should come this week since it's premiering on Sunday 12/6/20.

Maura Tierney will also be in the cast.

Given the people involved, probably worth checking out.  I am not familiar with Moffat but if he wrote a lot of The Night Of, it should be well-written.

Another American adaptation of an Israeli show ends up on Showtime?  Lets see how it is compared to Homeland and The Affair. 

[aghst]

So the reviews so far have been pretty poor:

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/your_honor_2020/97140/reviews?type=top_critics

 

This is one of the few very positive reviews I've come across:

https://www.npr.org/2020/12/04/941321597/your-honor-captures-a-horrifying-spiral-of-accidents-and-consequences

 

 

 

[aghst]

So the judge (Bryan Cranston) is running all over the city training for a marathon but his teen son can barely go for a drive without gasping for air.  BTW he has sex with his gf, is perfectly fine, but driving a car he can't breathe?

 

Not sure why Adam, the teen son, takes a nice, framed photo of his late mother to the Lower Ninth Ward, to put it and some flowers in front of a dilapidated store front.  Did she somehow get killed there?

Soon some black men approach him after he placed the photo and flowers and Adam jumps in his old Volvo wagon and flees.  He starts reaching for his inhaler but knocked it under the front right seat.  He circles back to the storefront and see that someone had broken the frame of the photo and scattered the flowers.  The young men approach him again, with some reaching back to seemingly pull out guns.

So again Adam drives away and he's running out of gas and see a black SUV tailing him.  So he's really panicking and then reaching for th inhaler again.  Then he hears a crash and looks around, sees he's collided with a young kid on a motorcycle, which is now under his Volvo, while the kid is thrown like 40 feet away.

He was gasping before the crash but he leaves the car without using the inhaler now that his car is stopped?  The other kid is alive but unable to speak, his brains are on the curb where his head landed after being thrown from his motorcycle.  Adam tries to clear blood from the mouth and tries to give him mouth to mouth resuscitation.  

Can you give mouth to mouth to someone who's not unconscious?  He probably wasn't breathing too well but neither was Adam, as he couldn't inhale and exhale enough air to help the kid.  The bigger problem was that his head was cracked on the curb with a big pool of blood around it.

He takes out the kid's phone to try to call 911.  But he can't speak!  How convenient that Adam has respiratory problems.  Adam goes back to his car to see if he can get the inhaler so he can make the call.  But at some point, he decides to just drive away with the kids' phone, which he later throws into the river.

There's blood all over his car and clothes but he puts on a hoodie to get some gas, leaves without paying for it, gets home, throws all the bloody clothes and his sneakers into the washer and dryer.  He has a shitty car, no phone but the judge has a nice washer and dryer.

Guess he didn't want to spoil him?

In any event, the judge comes home, discovers the bloody clothes.  He's going to do the right thing, which is to take Adam in to surrender but at the same time, he will lawyer him up.  At the police station, he sees a couple comforting each other and he recognizes the man as a big time gangster.  So he drives away with Adam, because the gangster, who had just gotten the motorcycle for his son, isn't going to understand that it was an accident.

Judge Michael gathers up the bloody clothes, cleans up the blood in the Volvo and then takes a sack of the bloody clothes to a bridge, which remarkably has no other car on it, even though it was late at night.  He tosses the bag into the river and when a cop comes by, he pretends to be urinating, to explain that he has prostate cancer with a PSA over 200.

While Michael was cleaning up the Volvo, the family dog takes one of the bloody rags away and hides it under some furniture.  There was another dog at the accident site who lapped up the pool of blood.  Is this a real thing, dogs are drawn to human blood?

 

 

[LoveLeigh]

On 11/30/2020 at 2:31 PM, aghst said:

Another American adaptation of an Israeli show ends up on Showtime?  Lets see how it is compared to Homeland and The Affair. 

"Our Boys," on HBO, was produced by Israel and the US for HBO.

Anyway, I like it. Maybe I like it because there is nothing else I am watching and I am looking for something to replace "The Undoing" which had me for many weeks. I am curious to see how this will unfold, but I think it will be very sadly predictable. I will wait for a speculation thread to post my ideas. 

Edited December 7, 2020 by LoveLeigh

[aghst]

I saw a preview where the mobsters wife talks about making an example.

Jimmy the mobster is telling some underling about finding the person who was driving the car that killed his son.

They could do worse than to make Jimmy some kind of an Irish Gus Fring in NOLA, threatening Michael and Adam.

But can a local court judge go toe to toe vs. a gangster?

For that matter, Jimmy looked like a doting father with an upscale home and family so going after a judge and son is probably risky, could bring a lot of heat.

You wouldn’t think overt criminality would fly in this day and age but then again maybe it’s different in New Orleans.

 

[Robert Lynch]

What is with these weird accents going all over the place, knowing the show takes place in the South! First Kidman's accent in The Undoing, now Bryan Cranston in Your Honor! I just don't get it.

[khyber]

So far, I am underwhelmed. 

[DoubleUTeeEff]

21 hours ago, aghst said:

He was gasping before the crash but he leaves the car without using the inhaler now that his car is stopped?  The other kid is alive but unable to speak, his brains are on the curb where his head landed after being thrown from his motorcycle.  Adam tries to clear blood from the mouth and tries to give him mouth to mouth resuscitation.  

Can you give mouth to mouth to someone who's not unconscious?  He probably wasn't breathing too well but neither was Adam, as he couldn't inhale and exhale enough air to help the kid.

This makes no sense. He started having a panic attack BEFORE the accident and he couldn't even walk back to his car to get his inhaler but had to drag himself/crawl back to his car yet in between he had enough air to give mouth to mouth?

21 hours ago, aghst said:

BTW he has sex with his gf, is perfectly fine, but driving a car he can't breathe?

This does make sense to me. It wasn't driving that made him unable to breathe but getting scared at the people following him.

The cops in this town are incredibly incompetent. Do they not investigate hit and runs? Maybe take a look around the scene and find the inhaler? BTW, did the inhaler have the guy's name on it? Do the mobsters already know who to look for?

Second example of police incompetence is the cop who pulled over to find Bryan Cranston peeing on the bridge. I totally thought it was going to be an example of law enforcement looking out for each other. Oh, hey Judge! Yeah, didn't know that was you. You're free to go. Instead, the cop just buys the prostate cancer story. No checking to see if the dude is drunk or has any outstanding warrants. I can see letting him go but without checking his ID, calling in his name or making sure he doesn't seem drunk? Riiiiiight.

I'm looking forward to Margo Martindale but it doesn't look so far like this will be something great.

[LoveLeigh]

38 minutes ago, DoubleUTeeEff said:

Second example of police incompetence is the cop who pulled over to find Bryan Cranston peeing on the bridge. I totally thought it was going to be an example of law enforcement looking out for each other. Oh, hey Judge! Yeah, didn't know that was you. You're free to go. Instead, the cop just buys the prostate cancer story. No checking to see if the dude is drunk or has any outstanding warrants. I can see letting him go but without checking his ID, calling in his name or making sure he doesn't seem drunk? Riiiiiight.

I actually laughed during that scene because it was so Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm. It reminded me of the time he used somebody else's excuse to get out of doing something... (I am sorry, I cannot recall the specifics from whatever episode it was). 

[iMonrey]

I thought the writing for this was surprisingly poor. The whole courtroom scene seemed so schlocky. Bryan Cranston is better than this. His reaction to his son's confession seemed stagey as well. I do recognize "The Night Of" similarities in the actual hit and run scene, which was pretty intense and pretty long, but everything else was sub-par. I'll probably keep watching, but yikes. This is no Breaking Bad.

[One Imaginary Girl]

I know they say that the legal system in Louisiana differs from other states', so I wonder if it's normal there for a judge to act essentially as a defense attorney, coming down off the bench to question a witness and even calling a witness himself, to say nothing of doing some research outside the courtroom.  If this was all a way to show that this character is normally a good person, there needed to be a more realistic way.  His sympathy toward the lawyer who needed the bathroom breaks already showed it.

Speaking of unrealistic, there was almost no other traffic in important scenes.  

Third: I'm curious about the moment when the son left the picture and flowers as a makeshift shrine.  I don't feel good about having those young men presented as menacing without any reason.

[Lily H]

I think this show needed to do a lot better job of making the kid sympathetic if they want us to buy into this for 9 more episodes. But he's such a dumbass, I don't like him and I don't think he deserves to get away with killing the mobster's son. It wasn't a true 'accident', it was 100% his fault, from the pointlessness of leaving the picture in a place where it clearly wasn't going to last 30 seconds, to his dangerous driving, speeding and weaving all over the road. If the inhaler is so important, he should have secured it better. The attempted mouth-to-mouth was not only gross, it was obviously useless, but it served to cover him in blood, which was necessary for plot purposes. Finally, he was too stupid to even do a load of laundry without causing a flood.

[aghst]

7 minutes ago, Lily H said:

I think this show needed to do a lot better job of making the kid sympathetic if they want us to buy into this for 9 more episodes. But he's such a dumbass, I don't like him and I don't think he deserves to get away with killing the mobster's son. It wasn't a true 'accident', it was 100% his fault, from the pointlessness of leaving the picture in a place where it clearly wasn't going to last 30 seconds, to his dangerous driving, speeding and weaving all over the road. If the inhaler is so important, he should have secured it better. The attempted mouth-to-mouth was not only gross, it was obviously useless, but it served to cover him in blood, which was necessary for plot purposes. Finally, he was too stupid to even do a load of laundry without causing a flood.

But is Adam any less sympathetic than Jesse Pinkman at the start of BB?

I hope they explain more about the shrine.  I thought that Michael stopped in front of the grave of his ex-wife when he ran through the cemetary?

So why did Adam go into the hood for his little memorial gesture instead of to the cemetary?

 

If Michael turned in his son, would they really be in danger from Jimmy Baxter?  Their faces would be all over the news.  Anything suspicious happening to them with point the fingers at Baxter, who seems to maintain some veneer of respectability with his home and upper middle class lifestyle which is very visible.

He's kind of like the Tony Soprano of NO with a giant house and good kids, presumably not going into the family business themselves.

So Michael knows Jimmy is a vicious gangster but NO law enforcement hasn't been able to bust him?

[preeya]

On 12/6/2020 at 11:29 AM, aghst said:

At the police station, he sees a couple comforting each other and he recognizes the man as a big time gangster.  So he drives away with Adam, because the gangster, who had just gotten the motorcycle for his son, isn't going to understand that it was an accident.

This is a direct parallel to John Gotti's son being killed in an automobile incident (IRL). Shortly thereafter the driver disappeared without out a trace.

[preeya]

6 hours ago, DoubleUTeeEff said:

BTW, did the inhaler have the guy's name on it? Do the mobsters already know who to look for?

Or perhaps, a serial number than can be traced through the prescription. Quite a few red herrings being left behind.

[preeya]

4 hours ago, aghst said:

If Michael turned in his son, would they really be in danger from Jimmy Baxter?  Their faces would be all over the news.  Anything suspicious happening to them with point the fingers at Baxter, who seems to maintain some veneer of respectability with his home and upper middle class lifestyle which is very visible.

He's kind of like the Tony Soprano of NO with a giant house and good kids, presumably not going into the family business themselves.

So Michael knows Jimmy is a vicious gangster but NO law enforcement hasn't been able to bust him?

Think, John (teflon) Gotti instead of fictional Tony Soprano. 

[iMonrey]

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So Michael knows Jimmy is a vicious gangster but NO law enforcement hasn't been able to bust him?

Not only that but the TV reporter blatantly referred to his family as having known ties to organized crime!! Like - how could she get away with that without being a.) fired and b.) whacked?

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I think this show needed to do a lot better job of making the kid sympathetic if they want us to buy into this for 9 more episodes.

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But is Adam any less sympathetic than Jesse Pinkman at the start of BB?

 

First of all, I don't know that Adam is necessarily supposed to be sympathetic. I think the story is more about Michael and his desire to protect his son. Second, comparing Adam to Jesse is like apples to oranges. Jesse was a high school dropout who cooked meth. What's that got to do with a kid who's involved in a car accident, panics and runs?

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But he's such a dumbass, I don't like him and I don't think he deserves to get away with killing the mobster's son. It wasn't a true 'accident', it was 100% his fault, from the pointlessness of leaving the picture in a place where it clearly wasn't going to last 30 seconds, to his dangerous driving, speeding and weaving all over the road. 

I felt like it was sort of a trope that he would panic and run like that. Just call 911. It's obviously an accident. Yeah the kid is from a mob family but Adam didn't know that in the moment. His father's a judge, I gather he's had no previous trouble with the law, he'd probably get a suspended sentence, if that. I know we're supposed to buy that he was in shock or something but this would have made more sense if  he knew who the victim was. 

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Finally, he was too stupid to even do a load of laundry without causing a flood.

Yeah, what the hell was that about? It felt like something tacked on just to prolong this kid's panic and agony, like Nasir's long car ride and booking at the police station in The Night Of. 

Honestly, that seems to be the writer's specialty - doing very long, intense, suspenseful scene sequences. He's good at that. The rest of it sort of stinks. I remember after an impressive premier, The Night Of sort of devolved into a formulaic crime/prison drama. 

[dwmarch]

The person I feel the worst for is the gangster mom. She fell to the ground in grief and between her giant heels and that leather pencil skirt she's going to have a hell of a time getting back up.

I still think it's too early to judge if this show will be good or bad. As I recall, Breaking Bad wasn't brilliant right from the beginning either.

I could do with less gore though. The big cough up of blood and whatever else, the squashed kid's lung noises, the kid with asthma having a big booger hanging down... we could skip all of that and I wouldn't miss it at all.

If this was Saturday morning cartoon would the moral of the story be "don't play in the ghetto, kids!"

I'm looking forward to Legal Eagle taking a dump on this show. The courtroom stuff seems whimsical.

[Dowel Jones]

Was anyone else watching this on a very restricted screen?  I tried different setting on the tv and finally came to the conclusion that it was supposed to be in a reduced size.  It did not endear me to the show.

[LoveLeigh]

2 minutes ago, Dowel Jones said:

Was anyone else watching this on a very restricted screen?  I tried different setting on the tv and finally came to the conclusion that it was supposed to be in a reduced size.  It did not endear me to the show.

I was just going to post the exact same thing! The strange thing is that when I watched it On Demand before it aired (and I watched it twice On Demand before Sunday's premiere episode), it was formatted to fit my entire screen and then for some odd reason, on Sunday at 10 PM it was shown in this "letterbox" format. And now it is up On Demand in a letterbox format. It feels scrunched. And I am positive it was not in this format originally.  

This is really weird. 

[MBayGal]

12 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Bryan Cranston is better than this. His reaction to his son's confession seemed stagey as well

Exactly what I thought!  Not up to the level I expect from him.  So far, this is a disappointment.  And ridiculously unrealistic.  The kid drives all over the Lower 9th during the day and never sees another car, people on the sidewalk, or someone in a yard? Was the Lower 9th on a preemptive pre-Covid lockdown then?  And dad drives over a main bridge and there is not another car in either direction?  

 

Edited December 8, 2020 by MBayGal

[sheetmoss]

7 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Not only that but the TV reporter blatantly referred to his family as having known ties to organized crime!! Like - how could she get away with that without being a.) fired and b.) whacked?

 

Not so much today, but growing up in Chicago, it wasn't so unusual to hear reporters on radio or TV  talking about X having ties to organized crime  or a specific family.

Some  reporters like John Drummond(local CBS TV affiliate), his beat was covering Chicago organized crime - the hits to their trials

 

Edited December 8, 2020 by sheetmoss

[LoveLeigh]

13 hours ago, LoveLeigh said:

I actually laughed during that scene because it was so Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm. It reminded me of the time he used somebody else's excuse to get out of doing something... (I am sorry, I cannot recall the specifics from whatever episode it was). 

Now I remember what it was. Larry used the excuse that he "was on the spectrum" when he did something wrong. It had been said previously be another character in that episode and this is where Larry lied and used it to his advantage just as the judge did on the bridge in this episode.  

Larry on the spectrum

[Bluesky]

18 hours ago, aghst said:

But is Adam any less sympathetic than Jesse Pinkman at the start of BB?

I hope they explain more about the shrine.  I thought that Michael stopped in front of the grave of his ex-wife when he ran through the cemetary?

So why did Adam go into the hood for his little memorial gesture instead of to the cemetary?

If Michael turned in his son, would they really be in danger from Jimmy Baxter?  Their faces would be all over the news.  Anything suspicious happening to them with point the fingers at Baxter, who seems to maintain some veneer of respectability with his home and upper middle class lifestyle which is very visible.

 

I’m guessing that the mother was murdered in front of that store by gang members.  They made sure the judge mentioned a specific gang. 
I would think the father would put a hit on the teen and there would be no tracing it back to him.  
 

They sure did drop enough unsubtle hints that it will be traced back to,the kid.  

[Robert Lynch]

Bryan Cranston is so phoning this in it's not even funny. He so much better than this. This is so run of the mill.

[sadie]

I’ll give it one more because I love Cranston, but wow, this was not good. If I was supposed to feel sympathetic for the son, big fail. He hit and killed someone and wasn’t in so much “shock” that he didn’t try to clean up the crime scene, just awful, I wanted to punch him. I felt zero sympathy for him, at his age he should know better. It was an accident and all he had to do was be a decent human, get an ambulance there and at least appear to feel bad and be trying to help.  The kids family would have still been devastated but I doubt they’d try to murder him. Yes they might try to have him put in jail, as they should, but now they’re gonna track him down like the trash person he is and now will probably kill him. 

I see where I think they’re going, good guy Dad tries to protect son from evil mobster family but ugh! I’m rooting for the mobsters, their son was RUN OVER AND LEFT IN THE STREET TO DIE LIKE A DOG. 

If the next ep is this bad I’ll be out.

[EtheltoTillie]

As soon as I heard what the plot was, I cringed.  The kid should not have done a hit and run, as he would have been safe from prosecution had he reported the incident.  One could argue that if he knew it was the mobster, he'd fail to report because he'd be afraid of retribution from the mobster--but he didn't know! 

So it creates an uncomfortable situation that is just hard to take.  I watched this first episode, but I couldn't stand a lot of it.  The courtroom scenes were ridiculous. 

[aghst]

Maybe they contrived the situation with the inhaler so that Adam wouldn't come across as an irresponsible kid who completely ran away to not face responsibility for what he did.

 

For instance, if he was drunk or high and killed the other kid and ran off, there would be no sympathy for Adam or Michael who is trying to cover it up.

Let's even say that Michael didn't recognize the father of the victim was a murderous criminal.  Let's just say Michael was up for re-election to keep his judge seat but decided even an accident would be bad for his campaign.

So they had to have these extenuating circumstances, like it was an accident and the kid was having a medical emergency at the time and in the aftermath could not call and communicate what happened to the 911 operator.  Then the other circumstance is that if Michael turned Adam in, they would face violent revenge.

Michael and Adam are doing the wrong things, illegal things, but they still have to get viewers to sympathize and root for them to get away with it, to be safe essentially and not have to face the consequences.

 

 

[heatherchandler]

On 12/6/2020 at 1:29 PM, aghst said:

 

There's blood all over his car and clothes but he puts on a hoodie to get some gas, leaves without paying for it, gets home, throws all the bloody clothes and his sneakers into the washer and dryer.  He has a shitty car, no phone but the judge has a nice washer and dryer.

Guess he didn't want to spoil him?

 

I don't think he was able to get the gas.  How about the guy behind him who was honking and honking, but all of the other pumps were open!  No one sits in the car and honks at someone who is pumping gas.  I would be like wtf go around?!

There were so many HUGE plot holes, it makes no sense.  I was yelling at the tv the whole show.  Why not get writers who can write coherently?  The viewers notice!

 

On 12/7/2020 at 1:18 PM, aghst said:

But is Adam any less sympathetic than Jesse Pinkman at the start of BB?

 

YES!  I don't know why but I really don't like this guy.  Is there something wrong with him, other than the asthma?  He was making bad decisions even before the accident.  Driving around like he is out for a sunday drive in gang territory where the gangs clearly want to kill him.

 

On 12/7/2020 at 11:33 PM, dwmarch said:

 

I still think it's too early to judge if this show will be good or bad. As I recall, Breaking Bad wasn't brilliant right from the beginning either.

I could do with less gore though. The big cough up of blood and whatever else, the squashed kid's lung noises, the kid with asthma having a big booger hanging down... we could skip all of that and I wouldn't miss it at all.

 

 

I thought Breaking Bad was brilliant from the first episode.  I remember watching it, and thinking that I hope it stays as good as the pilot. 

This show is really bad.  I guess I am watching this like I watched the Undoing, hating it the whole time, yelling at the tv about plot holes and inconsistencies, but watching it for some reason... because there is nothing good on tv!  

I had to turn away when I first saw the blood.  Then I glanced back and the dog was lapping it up.  I cannot handle bodily fluids, AND I was eating dinner while I watched.  Gross.

 

[iMonrey]

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I don't think he was able to get the gas.  How about the guy behind him who was honking and honking, but all of the other pumps were open!  No one sits in the car and honks at someone who is pumping gas.  I would be like wtf go around?!

He pumped the gas but he didn't pay. I didn't see him use a credit card at the pump, and he parked on the wrong side and had to pull the hose over the top of his car to get it into the gas tank compartment, then took it out and took off after the guy behind him started honking. So not only is he on the hook for hit and run manslaughter, he's also a drive-off at the gas station.

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This show is really bad.  I guess I am watching this like I watched the Undoing, hating it the whole time, yelling at the tv about plot holes and inconsistencies, but watching it for some reason... because there is nothing good on tv! 

I actually think this is worse than The Undoing. The Undoing was a tidy little whodunnit that just fell apart in the final episode IMO. This show is already falling apart and it's only the first episode.

[SoMuchTV]

I was interested in this but I don’t have  Showtime. Looks like I don’t need it. Thanks for all the recaps guys!

[aghst]

Premiere got good ratings.

https://deadline.com/2020/12/bryan-cranston-your-honor-ratings-viewership-record-showtime-1234653475/

 

[LoveLeigh]

I can't watch this: too triggering and it's making me sick. It's just too heartbreaking. 

[aghst]

S01E02:  Part Two:

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On the anniversary of his wife's death, Michael creates an alibi for Adam on the day of the accident; Michael pulls his close friends into the web of deception; Kofi is approached about a job.

Wow a lot happens in this episode, turning a cover up of a hit and run into something a lot worse, potentially huge.

First Michael wants to go over an alibi with Adam.  He makes his son go to the cemetery of his late wife and makes Adam put a picture of her and flowers and say something, so that he's able to use it as an alibi if necessary.  Even annoys a homeless beggar accusing him of wanting money for booze or drugs so the guy would remember this alibi.

Then he figures he'll hit up Charlie, some kind of a fixer, to get rid of the Volvo that was involved in the hit and run.  Charlie gets a street gang to get some gangbanger wannabe to come and steal the car from Michael's driveway if Michael leaves the keys on the left front tire.

So Kofi, a 17-year old black kid, walks through Michael's neighborhood, drawing all kinds of stares from the neighbors.  Maybe leave the car somewhere else to have it get stolen?  His story is that when he goes trail running he leaves the key on the tire and that is what Adam does as well?

At the same time Michael is reporting the car stolen to Detective Nancy Costello, who won't have any of it when Michael says it's not a big deal.  She's like real gung-ho to find the car.

Kofi gets pulled while driving the Volvo and the trigger happy cops were ready to shoot him but arrests him instead.  Detective Nancy calls Michael to come down and pick up the car but while they drive it out of the garage, a piece of Rocco's motorcycle falls out.

Come on, all that distance Adam drove and then Kofi drove and the part falls out because of a speed bump in the police garage?

Meanwhile, Jimmy Baxter, the ruthless gangster who scares Michael, is emotionally falling apart, pummeling Rocco's pet bird and sobbing.  But he has a crooked cop on the payroll and this Detective Cusack learns about the Volvo with the motorcycle part and takes Kofi to some abandoned warehouse to get a confession but Kofi is like "what phone" (Rocco's phone that Adam used to call 911 and then throw away).

So here's a novel enhanced interrogation technique, they lock Kofi up in a car and pumps some gas into him.  Kofi starts to gasp for air, pass out.  They cut right to Adam at home loudly breathing in his inhaler because he's still feeling bad.  The writers probably though this was clever but it looks like a cute gimmick.

Then they send a SWAT team to his home to look for Rocco's phone and terrorize Kofi's mother and younger siblings.  What do you know, it's the same shotgun house that Michael visited in the pilot and it's the same family from the trial in the pilot where Michael basically undermines the cop's testimony that he saw Kofi's mother hiding drugs in the bathroom from the front door.

Another cute coincidence!  I didn't recall but Kofi must have also been in the court room in the pilot.

Come on what are the odds that Michael's fixer would hire a gang which would get the son of the mother whose case he tried to get rid of the Volvo?

As soon as Kofi goes to jail, his cell mate hands him a phone, where the Desire gang boss tells him to plead guilty and his family will be safe or else.  So in the court room, before "curious" Michael and "guilty-looking as hell Adam" Kofi does plead guilty for his family's sake.

Kofi's mother recognizes Michael and pleads for him to help his son and he screams that he can't, right in front of the public which includes Jimmy Baxter.

Jimmy though thinks the Desire gang killed his son deliberately, like some payback for some conflict between his gang and the Desire gang. His lieutenant was getting DNA from Adam's bloody inhaler that he carelessly left at the scene of the crime but Jimmy is going to clean up the streets, meaning probably going to war against the Desire gang.

Michael feels guilty that not coming forward may start a gang war but he believes Jimmy would kill both him and Adam if he found out the truth.  So he starts to sweet talk Lee, who's apparently a criminal defense lawyer, to help Kofi rather than saddle him with a public defender.  He dangles the prospect of them going out for wine and maybe more.  When he was chatting her up, I realized they gave Cranston a hairpiece so that his hairline didn't look receded.

So there's a potential for a lot of carnage out of Michael's decision.  Adam was on the verge of cracking when the cop came into the home to use the bathroom, thinking the jig was up.  See Adam is a sensitive kid, who LOVES Vivian Maier, the great street photographer who connected with her subjects by making a lot of eye contact.

The other thing is, Michael may have had a pattern of ruling vs. police overreach, as the cop who drives him home tells him that he set free a guy who went on to commit 3 rapes.  So the NOPD may see him as some kind of bleeding-heart judge.

 

[LoveLeigh]

Why can't this show have separate threads for each part? Is this now a discussion of only part 2 or all the parts? 

"where the Desire gang boss tells him to plead guilty and his family will be safe or else." Why did he tell him to plead guilty? I am already lost.

Edited December 13, 2020 by LoveLeigh

[aghst]

Yeah I didn’t request a separate forum because I didn’t think of it before until the show was premiering in a few days.  So I created just one thread for the whole limited series.

Also wasn’t sure there would be many people discussing it.

I don’t think we know for sure why the gang made Kofi take the fall.  Maybe Charlie the fixer (Clay Davis from The Wire) wanted to do a favor for the judge so Mitchell would owe him in return).

 
There are witnesses who can blow up Michael’s alibi for Adam, like those gangbangers who saw him at the site where he made a little shrine and then whoever was in the black SUV which was following Michael up to the time of the accident. 

So there may be a surprise witness who emerges later.  

It also seems likely that Jimmy is going to find out about Michael and Adam at some point and they will be in danger.

And Kofi may face danger in prison since the showrunner wrote The Night Of.
 

 

[LoveLeigh]

5 hours ago, aghst said:

And Kofi may face danger in prison since the showrunner wrote The Night Of.
 

 

Why would he face danger in prison if he did what they told him to do? Wouldn't they then keep him safe? 

[aghst]

3 hours ago, LoveLeigh said:

Why would he face danger in prison if he did what they told him to do? Wouldn't they then keep him safe? 

Maybe Jimmy has contacts with some other prison gang.

Or maybe something happens to Kofi in prison so the guilt could weigh even more on Michael.

[LoveLeigh]

4 hours ago, aghst said:

Maybe Jimmy has contacts with some other prison gang.

Or maybe something happens to Kofi in prison so the guilt could weigh even more on Michael.

This is a very difficult show to watch. 

[preeya]

Michael & Adam are two fuknidiots, for the mere fact they keep turning up in places where they shouldn't be.

[LoveLeigh]

Why did the other gang member insist Kofi plead guilty? Did Charlie put two and two together and out of loyalty to Michael tell him to tell Kofi to plead guilty?

Edited December 14, 2020 by LoveLeigh

[iMonrey]

I question the wisdom of this convoluted plan to frame someone else. It seemed like all Michael wanted was for the car to disappear. So he asks a guy who asks a guy who asks a guy. That's a lot of people who could blow this whole thing up. 

It doesn't help that I kept thinking about Walter White and Jesse trying to get rid of the RV. You know better than this, Bryan Cranston!

[Pavlov98]

1 hour ago, iMonrey said:

I question the wisdom of this convoluted plan to frame someone else. It seemed like all Michael wanted was for the car to disappear. So he asks a guy who asks a guy who asks a guy. That's a lot of people who could blow this whole thing up. 

I agree that it wasn’t the plan to frame someone else—it was just to destroy the car.  I can’t believe Michael was too stupid to wait until after he received confirmation that the car was destroyed before reporting it stolen.  I was just shaking my head at that.  He could have used the whole keys on the front wheel thing as his reason for not reporting it right away—he felt stupid for leaving the keys or whatever.  
 

I also don’t get why Kofi kept pulling his hoodie down and looking over at people in the neighborhood (and then putting it back on again).  

It was all very contrived and took me out of the story.

[preeya]

34 minutes ago, Pavlov98 said:

It was all very contrived and took me out of the story.

The premise of this story is interesting and would be more palatable with better writing techniques and less "gimmicks."

[aghst]

I don't think it's necessarily a gimmick but there are probably NO neighborhoods where a young black guy would be unwelcome or get noticed.

However, I don't know why they inserted that aspect of it, unless it's to make viewers kind of sympathize with him, like he's not some random gangbanger who got embroiled in this whole story.

Looked like the Desire gang boss picked him because he was eager to please so he gave him this mission, though they didn't intend or expect for him to be caught.

But now there's a story behind Kofi and his family.  The gimmick part is that Judge Michael presided over an unrelated case involving this family and he got them off.

Too much of a coincidence, really gimmicky but I guess they wanted to make Kofi and family sympathetic.

 

 

[LoveLeigh]

Adam is having an affair with his teacher? 

[iMonrey]

Quote

But now there's a story behind Kofi and his family.  The gimmick part is that Judge Michael presided over an unrelated case involving this family and he got them off.

Yeah that's a little too much of a coincidence. 

Quote

Adam is having an affair with his teacher? 

I couldn't figure out if that was a.) the same girl he was in bed with in the pilot episode, and b.) whether she was a teacher, a teacher's aid, or maybe just another student.

[Starchild]

5 hours ago, Pavlov98 said:

I agree that it wasn’t the plan to frame someone else—it was just to destroy the car.  I can’t believe Michael was too stupid to wait until after he received confirmation that the car was destroyed before reporting it stolen.  I was just shaking my head at that.  He could have used the whole keys on the front wheel thing as his reason for not reporting it right away—he felt stupid for leaving the keys or whatever.  
 

I also don’t get why Kofi kept pulling his hoodie down and looking over at people in the neighborhood (and then putting it back on again).  

It was all very contrived and took me out of the story.

I'm not convinced he was going to report it stolen at all. But the cop he left a message for, when he was going to turn Adam in for the hit-and-run, came asking what he wanted that night, and he had to think on his feet about a plausible reason for why he would have called her. The "stolen" car would have been top of mind.

[Cocosmama]

So tired of shows like this treating black people as props and the lives of black children as meaningless. Adam's life shouldn't be treated as being any more important than Kofi's, yet he is the one tortured and jailed because God forbid he face any  consequences for his actions.

 You would think that in this day and age the folks at Showtime would have thought twice about airing a limited series that is about white privilege but doesn't address it in any meaningful way. The racial bias is almost laughable. In episode 1, the black men walked towards the car, an action so terrifying that Adam had a panic attack and lost his inhaler? Come on. It's 2020. We know better. Let's do better.

[Cotypubby]

7 hours ago, aghst said:

However, I don't know why they inserted that aspect of it, unless it's to make viewers kind of sympathize with him, like he's not some random gangbanger who got embroiled in this whole story.

I assumed they added people noticing him so that there are now witnesses who could place him in the neighborhood on the wrong day. 

2 hours ago, Cocosmama said:

So tired of shows like this treating black people as props and the lives of black children as meaningless. Adam's life shouldn't be treated as being any more important than Kofi's, yet he is the one tortured and jailed because God forbid he face any  consequences for his actions.

 You would think that in this day and age the folks at Showtime would have thought twice about airing a limited series that is about white privilege but doesn't address it in any meaningful way. The racial bias is almost laughable. In episode 1, the black men walked towards the car, an action so terrifying that Adam had a panic attack and lost his inhaler? Come on. It's 2020. We know better. Let's do better.

I don’t think we are supposed to be rooting for Adam or think he is sympathetic. IMO Adam and Michael are the bad guys, and (so far) the people on the righteous side are the mobsters and gangbangers. 
 

And I figured that Adam’s mom was shot by someone from that gang at that store, and they all recognized each other. 
 

Though I agree with the consensus here, this show is not really that good. It started to go downhill for me when they showed the dog lapping up the blood in the street. Not because it’s gross, but because that is such a cheap and amateur type shot to do. The coincidences in Episode 2 are starting to get too eye-rolly for me. The gangbanger who is wrongly arrested for the crime just happens to be the son of the woman Bryan Cranston defended in the first episode, going so far as to visit her house? Really?

Edited December 15, 2020 by Cotypubby