S02.E08: The Devil, The Detail

[MyAimIsTrue]

Bull agrees to help the parents of a former employee sue a drug company when their son commits suicide during a drug trial. However, the task is complicated when the company brings in their own trial scientist, Arti Cander.

[JessDVD]

The side eye smirks between Bull and Chick Bull every 14 seconds got real old by about the second act.

So we never figured out if evil pharma actually had a bad drug, they just settled with the parents to make the trial go away? Also totally confused about the roommates/friends and who changed their name to what and who did or didn't od on heroin. And who did or didn't pay off witnesses to make up stuff.

More Chunk would make this show better.

[MerBearHou]

6 minutes ago, JessDVD said:

The side eye smirks between Bull and Chick Bull every 14 seconds got real old by about the second act.

So we never figured out if evil pharma actually had a bad drug, they just settled with the parents to make the trial go away? Also totally confused about the roommates/friends and who changed their name to what and who did or didn't od on heroin. And who did or didn't pay off witnesses to make up stuff.

More Chunk would make this show better.

Totally agree.  I enjoyed Archie on the Good Wife and was excited for her to be on this show and match wits with Bull, but the frequent side-eyes were a joke!  Simon's suicide was so sad.  He seemed so lost and easily defeated and the drug literally pushed him over the edge.

Much of the case was left unanswered, at least to me!

I liked the judge.  

Edited November 15, 2017 by MerBearHou

[marina to]

This was Cable's show. She gets to sing Oliver and had lots of nice emotional notes to play. Awesome to see.

Big ups to Benny and Chunk this week too.

Bull, on the other hand, was pretty much an asshole through the whole thing. I have mixed feelings about that. 

What a waste of Archie Panjabi.

[marina to]

Did a little research on the actor playing Cable. According to IMDB, her first role was playing the lead in Annie when she was 5. Her father is the co-executive producer of the show but she's paid her acting dues so it's not straight nepotism.

[sinkwriter]

Quote

So we never figured out if evil pharma actually had a bad drug, they just settled with the parents to make the trial go away? Also totally confused about the roommates/friends and who changed their name to what and who did or didn't od on heroin. And who did or didn't pay off witnesses to make up stuff.

That was so annoying. It seems like they thought, "Well, Bull doesn't care about this kid who killed himself, so the audience probably doesn't care either! We don't need to wrap anything up. They can just assume the parents got settlement money and all is well. No one cares if the drug was truly bad or not..." 

Um... no.

That was such a frustrating case. I hated the Female Bull (and Original Bull) because they both cared more about winning and cared nothing about human decency. That kid probably died because of that pharma company's drug, and that woman spent the whole time gloating whenever she was able to get one over on Bull. Seriously, lady? You don't give one damn who you're representing? And Bull... you seriously don't care about the case or that kid? And even if you don't really care about that kid because you don't remember him... you don't care at all about Cable's feelings?

Part of me wonders if they're trying to make him such an asshole because he's somehow acting out emotionally after his big case loss last week. But that's not what they really showed. Instead they just showed him being an asshole.

And Cable hugged him in the end for it? WHY?? The rest of the team did all the work (Cable herself, Danny, Chunk), gathering the info to use in the trial, and Benny did all the hard work cross-examining the evil pharma CEO, so why is Cable hugging Bull like he did anything, especially after the horrible way he talked to her and about her friend? He wasn't just being crabby; he was being offensive. Her friend just died and he's pissed that he's losing? That's all? Fuck you, Bull. She should have made him apologize instead of letting him off the hook completely. That was ridiculous.

[Netfoot]

11 hours ago, sinkwriter said:

I hated the Female Bull...

I think that would be "Cow". 

11 hours ago, sinkwriter said:

The rest of the team did all the work (Cable herself, Danny, Chunk), gathering the info to use in the trial, and Benny did all the hard work cross-examining the evil pharma CEO, so why is Cable hugging Bull like he did anything...

All he did really was poison the jury against his own case.  The weird strategy of selecting jurists who favoured the opposition had noting nothing to do with the win.  The case went their way because they discovered two pieces of evidence:  i) that the room mate was lying (possibly bribed) to implicate the jumper as the heroin addict and to suggest the heroin OD was a deliberate suicide attempt, and ii) the CEO paid to cremate the body of the other suicide, to hide the evidence.   These discoveries won the case despite Bull's jury-tampering.

And I might wonder why any drug company would go to such lengths to market an anti-depression drug that causes depression to the point of suicide!  But I have a niece who made an entire career of going after big pharma, so the shenanigans of the drug companies don't come as much of a surprise to me.

Edited November 15, 2017 by Netfoot

[JessDVD]

3 hours ago, Netfoot said:

I think that would be "Cow". 

 

I was going to say that in my OP but I chickened (and other farm animals) out.

The case really did fall flat, with Bull choosing jurors favorable to the opposition just to try to beat Female Bull, and it completely failing and saved only by the two bits of evidence that didn't really prove anything but did cause the defense to ask for a settlement rather than endure further investigation. Episode would have been well served by eliminating about 10 smirks and using that extra time for more plot.

[ari333]

I thought this was going to go a different way. The delivery dude had a phone or camera on his shoulder. The girl who he dated kind of dissed him pretty hard. "Your eyes are bloodshot, your hands are shaking; You didnt call or say goodbye; you left a job here to be a runner" etc etc or however she said it; and then he kills himself. I thought Lady Bull had that video and audio of her trashing him. 

I thought they'd blame her, the former gf,  for his suicide.

[JusLaugh]

I think we were supposed to notice some kind of sexual tension between Bull and the lady trial scientist, but I didn't get that at all. It just seemed like a petty rivalry and Bull is lucky his team is so competent. Also, since when does Bull not care about his clients? He barely gave those parents the time of day. This whole episode was just weird and lacked the closure that I am used to with this show.

On a side note, and I know this is just my personal opinion, but I wish they would stop trying to make Bull sexy. Although Michael Weatherly is a good looking guy, it just doesn't work with the character and comes across icky, especially when the women swooning over him are 1/2 his age.

[Netfoot]

35 minutes ago, JusLaugh said:

I wish they would stop trying to make Bull sexy.

I wish they wouldn't portray him as a rake.  Who has he not wanted to shag?

[Janimo]

(In a small voice) it was nice to see Archie again, even though it was a pretty crappy role.

I REALLY disliked Bull in this ep.

[lh25]

On 11/15/2017 at 4:18 PM, Janimo said:

I REALLY disliked Bull in this ep.

Me too.  And I can't decide if that was intentional or not.  They portrayed him as a total a$$, but I wasn't sure if they knew that.  It was all about him beating the female bull, not winning the case.

[GHScorpiosRule]

On 11/15/2017 at 7:18 PM, Janimo said:

(In a small voice) it was nice to see Archie again, even though it was a pretty crappy role.

This is me. I gave up on this show early last season, and by some fluke, saw Archie in the previews for this.

I agree it was a waste of her talents. I’ve missed  her so much. At least she looked great and was able to use her natural accent.

The rest was just a pile of ?. Law & Order did a better job of going after drug companies.

Benny should have demanded an answer to his question first. Or maybe told Snyder “Don’t look at your lawyer; please answer the question.” 

That Tom/roomate did the same thing-kept looking at the lawyer as if “duh! What do I say? How do I answer and not tell the truth?”????

I still can’t believe Weatherly left NCIS for this.

[HurricaneVal]

And then we got this repeat last night.  Why are they pulling season two episodes for repeats this early in the season?  Are there production difficulties on the Bull set?  Is Michael Weatherly under the weather or in jail or something?

 

All these old repeats are doing is making me miss the Cable character.  Maybe that's the point?  Maybe when we come off these repeats we'll get the Cable's death episode?

[AnnA]

4 hours ago, HurricaneVal said:

And then we got this repeat last night.  Why are they pulling season two episodes for repeats this early in the season?  Are there production difficulties on the Bull set?  Is Michael Weatherly under the weather or in jail or something?

 

All these old repeats are doing is making me miss the Cable character.  Maybe that's the point?  Maybe when we come off these repeats we'll get the Cable's death episode?

Magnum was a repeat too.    The networks do this a lot around the holidays.    I expect we'll see more repeats until after the new year.

Edited November 27, 2018 by AnnA

[HurricaneVal]

Magnum was at least a repeat from this season--its only season so far--but it happened to be one I'd missed so I wasn't 100% aware it was a repeat.  But Bull's repeats the last two weeks were from last season, and considering they've killed the Cable character off, it is just kind of jarring.  Why are they choosing repeats from last season?

[HurricaneVal]

19 hours ago, AnnA said:

The networks do this a lot around the holidays.    I expect we'll see more repeats until after the new year.

I think I'm going to have to take off my tinfoil paranoid conspiracy theorist hat.  Last night's NCIS was a repeat from last season too.  Thanks for talking me off the ledge, AnnA.

[AnnA]

2 hours ago, HurricaneVal said:

I think I'm going to have to take off my tinfoil paranoid conspiracy theorist hat.  Last night's NCIS was a repeat from last season too.  Thanks for talking me off the ledge, AnnA.

Glad I was able to help!   We don't want to lose any PTV peeps. 

Edited November 28, 2018 by AnnA