S03.E03: Excessive Force

[thewhiteowl]

The team consults on the defense of a police officer involved in the shooting of an unarmed man.

[namelesscommenter]

I really can't with this show anymore. It was kind of interesting when they were purely the trial science aspect, but now it's just a regular legal drama. 

Having only watched half this episode, I'm downright angry that they thought this episode was okay to air. It's like they wanted to do a new angle on racist cop shootings without acknowledging ... that racism actually fucking exists. 

Chunk's 30 second sound bit on "the talk" didn't do shit, and following it up with "I'm proud to be part of the team that finds the truth" ... when, they're not, not at all. They're part of the team who is paid to manipulate the people who decide the truth. 

It's reminding me a lot of the people who think being accused of being a racist is worse than being the target of racism. It did not sit well with me, at all. 

[JackONeill]

They tried so hard to find something different to say about the topic-of-the- decade, i.e., white-cop-shoots-black-man, but all they could they could come up with was it being a conspiracy (and that word lends too much sophistication to it) between the shooter and the victim. Here they have a worthwhile subject and they not only DON’T address it head on, they come up with a solution that isn’t even sophisticated enough to show up in the Hardy Boys books. (Not that there was anything deep, like racism, in the Hardy Boys books.)

They almost had an interesting route to take when at the beginning, Dani admitted to Benny that she was pissed they were considering taking the case. If she had teamed up with Chunk (is that really his name?), and argued with Bull about taking it, that would have been interesting. Have them threaten to quit, or do something to further show the divide, and to show Bull his team is important, and they aren’t just going to blindly follow him if it goes against their beliefs. But that was all dropped like a hot potato because it is a hot potato. Well, don’t even raise the issue if you really aren’t going to explore it!

[preeya]

That was the "twistiest" of twists in a show that I've ever seen. Never saw the "romance" thing coming. Also, I'm sure the proposed settlement was something substantial, why didn't they just take the money and run? Asking for $25mil was absurd.

Edited October 9, 2018 by preeya

[Novel8]

This show threw me for a loop....did I miss something...did i unbeknownst to me that i dozed off near the end? One minute the cop has ruined her defense and the next, she is admitting to an affair with the accuser. How did Bull know this? When did she confess to him that she was lying all along and that this was a setup between both her and her accuser? Could someone please, enlighten me? If there is no logic explanation, than i am through watching this show.

[preeya]

12 minutes ago, Novel8 said:

This show threw me for a loop....did I miss something...did i unbeknownst to me that i dozed off near the end? One minute the cop has ruined her defense and the next, she is admitting to an affair with the accuser. How did Bull know this? When did she confess to him that she was lying all along and that this was a setup between both her and her accuser? Could someone please, enlighten me? If there is no logic explanation, than i am through watching this show.

There was no evidence on the video (body cam) that the guy puked. Bull deduced the scam from that. The rest was behind the scenes that we weren't privy to, and the next scene was back in court.

[Ellee]

Not only did the guy not puke but the bodycam video was reviewed again and it appeared that the victim might not have been trying to take the gun but point it so that he would be shot in the arm and not the chest. 

[Bobbin]

A recycled plot twist, similar to, I believe, an "LA Law" episode where a lady cop pulls over a driver with a broken tail light. She insists on peeking in the trunk where she finds his freshly murdered wife's body and the murder weapon. Open and shut? Nope. No probable cause for the search, evidence thrown out, case dismissed. Except that a veteran cop would know better. Lo and behold, a stakeout catches the two having an affair. But I can't hold that against "Bull." After nearly 80 years of TV police & lawyer shows, fresh plots are hard to come by. Call them "classics." No one complains about all the movie remakes of "King Kong" and "A Star is Born."

[HurricaneVal]

Once again I got a whiff of a possibility early on in the show about what might happen at the end.  I didn't call the relationship between the two, but I picked up that the bodycam footage will show a detail that will turn the case.  I was all "Hey, why did he barge into the ladies room anyways?  Did the shock of getting shot settle his ooogie stomach?  Oooohhhh, maybe he spontaneously targeted her when he didn't hear the door lock click, and the bodycam footage will show him actually pulling the trigger with her finger just along the trigger guard."  So I called a scam, but I wasn't sure if it was a crusader scam, just a flat out money scam, or both.   I did not call that the two were in cahoots, though him hitting on his also petite Uber customer should have clued me in. 

Kind of a strident episode.  When Chunk was playing devil's advocate in the trial prep, I was really buying it.  I think he meant it, but he's also cognizant of what his job really is, so when he shifted gears to the compassionate Chunk, I was all like "whew...so that happened..."  Reluctant!Danny catching fire when Bull asked "where's the puke?" was nice to see--she's an ace investigator at heart, so even if it doesn't go her way, she's an advocate for finding the truth.  I could watch Benny work a courtroom for the entire episode, that's usually my favorite part, and he did not disappoint!

[brgjoe]

I also didn't see that relationship coming.  But I did call it when she basically sat on the stand and torpedo'ed her own case.  I figured at that point they were in it together.  She cracked way too quickly during her testimony. 

I just figured that while the incident did happen, they decided to make the best of it and then conspired to make $$ off of it.  I didn't see they possibly knew each other before then.

Something I didn't quite understand though.  In the beginning, Bull seemed to be very hesitant about taking the case.  Why not?  He was willing to work with an insurance company before.  And he was complaining about not getting enough publicity while he was out.  Why not take this case and get paid and get his name out there once again?  I would have expected him to take a case like this in a heartbeat.

[Rae Spellman]

15 hours ago, preeya said:

That was the "twistiest" of twists in a show that I've ever seen. Never saw the "romance" thing coming. Also, I'm sure the proposed settlement was something substantial, why didn't they just take the money and run? Asking for $25mil was absurd.

Thought they said the teacher requested 10x what was offered. So, NYPD offered $2.5 million. Not a lot for two people who each earn less than $60K in one of the most expensive ares of the country. Of course, they deserved nothing. And, while the teacher had room mates I wondered why  a duo with modest incomes spent money on the hotel instead of going to her place.

[Dowel Jones]

Alec Baldwin/Nicole Kidman did this plot in a 1993 movie called Malice.  I didn't catch on until Bull mentioned the lack of vomit.  What I would like to know, besides plot requirements, is why the NYPD, with all their in house attorneys (plus the city staff), would have Benny arguing the case.  TAC's specialty is jury selection, not trial litigation.  And, since Bull made it clear that the PD was his client, why was the officer sitting up at the defense table?  One, that implies that she was on trial for a criminal offense instead of the city being subjected to a civil action; and, Two, since she appears to be his client, selling out your own client in public would be a grievous breach of attorney responsibility.  I hope that law schools show these episodes to their classes with the admonition of "Don't do this.  Really.  Just.  Don't."

[JackONeill]

7 hours ago, brgjoe said:

Something I didn't quite understand though.  In the beginning, Bull seemed to be very hesitant about taking the case.  Why not?  He was willing to work with an insurance company before.  And he was complaining about not getting enough publicity while he was out.  Why not take this case and get paid and get his name out there once again?  I would have expected him to take a case like this in a heartbeat.

To me, this has been the BIG question hanging over the show since this season started, but even from when the series started. WHAT is Bull, and what does he want, and what is he willing to do to get it? We’ve heard about money issues, women issues, drinking issues, heart attack issues. He treats his staff like shit ... except when he doesn’t. He can be a softie, but he can be a horse’s ass, which is th mode he usually stays in. He did and said so many things to the police commissioner, that had it been Tom Selleck’s Frank Reagen, Bull would have been fired in the flap of a fly’s wing. But Bull goes (not quite merrily) along his way until he stumbles upon the way to solve the case, forget the fact that there have already been teams of police and forensics experts all over the crime scene and evidence.

So—What IS this show? And who is Bull?

[JessDVD]

This ep would have been way WAY better if Tom Selleck/ Frank Reagan had been the police commissioner and really, that would have been a brilliant move on CBS's part.

I'll grant that 2.5 mil in NYC wouldn't have gotten them that far (although surely enough to retire to the country), but there's a mile or so in between 2.5 mil and 25 mil, that you'd think they could have settled on??? I mean, I am a terrible liar and would crack in about .3 seconds under cross-examination, but even a good liar would have to be really, really good to keep their story straight and not have a tell or something that would have given it away in court. 

Rockstar investigation, that nobody noticed the guy never ended up puking until halfway through the trial.

Portraying racial issues and cop issues with nuance is probably way, way above these writers' pay grades, but they could have, I don't know, maybe tried a little?!

I also didn't catch why the cop and the guy had to keep their liaisons private? I mean before the Incidents portrayed. I didn't recall either mentioning that they were married to someone else, or any other reason why they had to stay in a hotel for their escapades. Also, crappy investigation that didn't pick up that the two of them were communicating - burner phone, secret Facebook messaging, or anything else.

[LuvMyShows]

On 10/9/2018 at 10:13 AM, Novel8 said:

This show threw me for a loop....did I miss something...did i unbeknownst to me that i dozed off near the end? One minute the cop has ruined her defense and the next, she is admitting to an affair with the accuser. How did Bull know this? When did she confess to him that she was lying all along and that this was a setup between both her and her accuser? Could someone please, enlighten me? If there is no logic explanation, than i am through watching this show.

On 10/9/2018 at 10:30 AM, preeya said:

There was no evidence on the video (body cam) that the guy puked. Bull deduced the scam from that. The rest was behind the scenes that we weren't privy to, and the next scene was back in court.

On 10/9/2018 at 11:27 AM, Ellee said:

Not only did the guy not puke but the bodycam video was reviewed again and it appeared that the victim might not have been trying to take the gun but point it so that he would be shot in the arm and not the chest. 

One other thing that led Bull to his conclusion was that in the limo after she supposedly blew it on the witness stand, she was saying about how sorry she was but was shaking her head while saying it, implying that the words she was saying were false.  So Bull began to question why she would not be sorry about what she said.

[Destiny74]

I didn't predict the twist at the end of the episode but I did comment about how if I had to puke that bad, bad enough to run into the opposite sex's bathroom, the puke would've come out while struggling, or at the very least before I could say "I can't believe you shot me.". Really?  Come on.  Puke, at the point he was at, doesn't just stop, it comes up when it needs to.

Also, he claimed he was walking home and started to feel pukey.  Then why didn't he just find an alley and take care of it on the street?  I lived in NOLA for a few years and I saw this on several occasions.  Rather than walk into an establishment I wasn't a customer in, I would've found a dark alley or bush, or park and let it out.  It's nasty, sure, but if you're THAT drunk, are you really caring about this types of things?

Hole-y ass story.  

Edited October 13, 2018 by Destiny74

[CheshireCat]

Am I really supposed to believe that in our day and age a woman would only feel threatened if a black guy walks into the ladies room and tries to wrestle the gun our of her hand? It seems that they got so wrapped up in the race issue that they completely forgot/ignored the "other" issue. While they were black and white, they were also a man and a woman. Since I didn't believe the cop was guilty of being a racist (that would have been way too easy and since Bull took the case, there had to be more to it ;-)) I would have found it a lot more credible that she wouldn't have reacted like that with a white guy if he had not been going for the cop's gun.

 

On ‎09‎.‎10‎.‎2018 at 9:37 AM, preeya said:

That was the "twistiest" of twists in a show that I've ever seen. Never saw the "romance" thing coming. Also, I'm sure the proposed settlement was something substantial, why didn't they just take the money and run? Asking for $25mil was absurd.

 

As Bull put it, old-fashioned greed.

Edited October 27, 2018 by CheshireCat

[Moxie Cat]

On October 27, 2018 at 3:32 AM, CheshireCat said:

Am I really supposed to believe that in our day and age a woman would only feel threatened if a black guy walks into the ladies room and tries to wrestle the gun our of her hand? It seems that they got so wrapped up in the race issue that they completely forgot/ignored the "other" issue. While they were black and white, they were also a man and a woman.

Amen to this. I'm not a cop, but as a woman, if any man significantly larger than me had burst into my bathroom while I was unbuttoning my pants, I might have reacted irrationally and fearfully as well. I kept saying throughout this episode (until the end, heh) that she reacted the way she did because it was an able-bodied man surprising her, a small woman, in a state of undress, and then grabbing for her gun instead of simply backing off or collapsing on the floor. Obviously now we know why she didn't just say that obvious fact in response to the attorney's questioning about different types of people in the same situation, but that was really a really obvious answer for me, had it been anyone else.

The ending was a cop out. So to speak.

I agree that they should have taken the settlement and run, and idk why the cop wasn't pushing the commish more to "settle and just get this over with" if money was her end goal.

[CheshireCat]

5 hours ago, Moxie Cat said:

Obviously now we know why she didn't just say that obvious fact in response to the attorney's questioning about different types of people in the same situation, but that was really a really obvious answer for me, had it been anyone else.

Even if the cop had a reason for not saying so, Team Bull should have been all over that.