The quality of acting was phenomenal, particularly the characters of Adam and Big Mo. They are my joint favourite characters. I’m not usually taken in by criminal badasses but Big Mo was just perfect.
*****SPOILERS*****
Adam
visits the sight of his mother’s murder on the first anniversary, 9th
October. Being intimidated to leave (then follow), Adam accidentally kills a
guy. Michael, a judge and Adam’s father, takes Adam to the police station but
when he learns the guy was Rocko, son of mob boss Jimmy Baxter, Michael decides
they need a cover-up.
Michael
asks a favour from his friend Charlie who makes Kofi get rid of the car. The
police think it’s stolen so Kofi is blamed for Rocko’s death. Charlie makes
sure Kofi takes the fall.
(Admittedly, this was via torture: Kofi
is locked in a car with rising CO2 levels, making it harder to breathe. This
scene has intermittent flashes of Adam using his inhaler, making it easier to
breathe. Both Kofi and Adam are exposed to gas but to different effects. That
was a great bit of cinematography.)
Michael is the judge of Kofi’s case.
Considering Kofi is accused of stealing Michael’s dead wife’s car, I’m
surprised Michael’s allowed to judge it.
Once Kofi is sentenced, Adam stands
in the empty courtroom on the accused side. So Adam feels guilty for Rocko’s
death and Kofi’s prison time. As Kofi dies and other events unfold, this guilt
keeps on eating away at Adam. You can see the weight of it all by Adam’s
mannerism and posture.
Adam and Frannie
In
the first scene of episode one, Adam wakes up with a woman in his bed. As the
episode goes on, as things get worse and worse and Adam gets more and more
scared, his whole demeanour diminishes so that appears years younger. It’s like
his age went from twenty-four to fourteen.
Show naked Adam and Frannie in very
first scene. Don’t see nakedness any other time in show. Yes, it was good to
see them in bed to solidify that they were together but nakedness wasn’t needed
to emphasise the point.
It
turns out that the woman he’s seeing, Frannie, is his photography teacher. Adam
being seventeen means it’s not illegal but shagging your pupils must be against
school policy. Frannie stepped in when Adam’s mother died. So Frannie is his
surrogate mother… and he’s shagging her? Mummy issues.
Adam starts seeing Sophia, sister of
Rocko. It was disappointing to see him cheat on Frannie. But: he’s a bundle of
emotions; he can date Sophia out in the open but not Frannie; and he’s obsessed
with Rocko so being with his sister is an extension of this. None of this makes
cheating okay, of course, but it does make it understandable.
Near the start in photography class,
Adam said of photographer Vivian “I love her. Like, really, really love her”
and it was clear Adam was talking about Frannie. Later, Adam and Weasley seem
to be friends again (if not a little awkward) and Frannie asks to see Adam. Frannie
says has put in her notice: Adam’s nearly eighteen so they won’t have to hide
their relationship so Frannie’s applying for jobs near MCU, Adam’s chosen
university. Considering Adam wants to stay in New Orleans with Sophia, this is
unfortunate on Frannie’s part.
Frannie sees Adam and Sophia holding
hands and says high when they sit down in a café. Frannie asks Sophia if she
has Italian roots: on mum’s side (dad’s side is Scottish, yet everything’s been
done to make dad look like Italian mob boss). Frannie repeats Adam’s words
about Vivian. Ouch! Later they meet alone and Frannie says Adam’s simply
fascinated with her because he killed her brother. I’m glad I’m not the only
one who noticed!
Once Charlie knows about Adam and
Frannie, he approaches her in a bar. She was always a young teacher but she’s
shed her years, appearing almost childlike. Frannie can’t tell if Charlie’s
campaigning or hitting on her. That’s brilliant. Then he replies that she
should know what’s appropriate because she’s a teacher. Burn! What Charlie says
is open to interpretation yet Frannie right there admits to it. Charlie tells
her to end it with Adam and Frannie replies that it will hurt sensitive,
seventeen year-old Adam. Charlie’s reply? “Exactly.” Ouch. But then Frannie
says it’s a shame a seventeen year-old left someone to die in the gutter. What
a way for Charlie to find out what Adam did! It put him on the back-foot for
the first time.
Michael’s
Deception
For
a judge of all people to cover up a crime is awful. Yet Michael’s first duty is
for the safety of his child.
Michael is smooth at lying. I won’t
say he’s ‘good’. It’s just that with all the lying he’s seen in court, he knows
what makes a bad lie, so he knows what to avoid. Mob boss thinks Michael killed
Rocko and Michael, of course, doesn’t correct him in order to save Adam from
danger.
The guy who tried to blackmail
Michael barely knew anything. But Michael tells the mob boss Jimmy Baxter that
the blackmail guy knew everything, just so the blackmailer would be murdered
and thus no longer a problem.
The police officer Nancy has photos
which Michael explains by saying Robin cheated. So either Michael has to tell
Adam that his mum was a cheater or Michael has to tell Adam he said that to
cover their tracks. Michael goes for the former and Adam doesn’t react badly (maybe
it made him think about his own cheating?)
Carlo’s Trial
Carlo,
Rocko’s brother, kills Kofi in jail. His lawyer gets so frustrated with Carlo
which was simply hilarious to watch.
On Michael’s birthday, he throws the
blackmailer into the sea, Carlo Baxter is arrested for killing Kofi, and then
Carlo’s bail hearing is held on the same day. But on many occasions, people
complain how slow the New Orlean’s justice system is, so how can the first
hearing of the case be held on the same day as the arrest? For that matter, how
is the case concluded so quickly? Michael only survives because says can save Carlo
from conviction and hence from execution.
I’m surprised that Michael is
allowed to be a judge on the Carlo case. Carlo killed Kofi and Kofi (everyone
believes) killed Carlo’s brother with Michael’s dead wife’s car. So Michael
could be biased to let Carlo off the hook.
During court case, Michael lets
Carlo’s bestie stand witness, even though he knows the friend has incriminating
evidence. The mob boss is furious but Michael slipped medication into the
friend so that he needed to go to hospital. This meant that as the defence
couldn’t cross-examine him, all of his evidence had to be discounted. This was
clever on Michael’s part: to not allow bestie to testify would have been
suspicious and thus put the whole trial in jeopardy.
This court case contained my
favourite conversation. Carlo says he feared for his life when Kofi shut the
prison cell door and after their kafuffle Kofi walked out. McGhee, the prosecutor,
says the doors can’t be opened from the inside. (In his anger, Carlo calls
McGhee ‘a stupid cunt’.) McGhee then shows the video footage: Kofi didn’t shut
the door. With Carlo’s whole defence in pieces, McGhee asks, ‘Who’s the stupid
cunt now.’ Honestly, that is perfection.
Carlo found not guilty of murder.
But how? None of the evidence pointed that way. Michael did change the verdict
that the jury wrote on paper but at least one of them would know the verdict
read out wasn’t the one they reached.
Michael bans media or observers from
witnesses the trial, other than the families of those accused. Lee and Nancy
are sensible exceptions, the former being lawyer for the deceased and Nancy
being the police officer who investigated him. Adam is allowed in, though I
don’t understand why. How does being the son of a judge let you bend the rules?
Yes, this whole show is about corruption but letting Adam into the court room
is complete, obvious and public disregard of the law.
The Charade
Unravels
Michael
manages to keep the charade going despite some unravelling. But nearing the end
of the series, those closest to Michael start to pull the threads (and the
lies) free.
Nancy does some digging. She goes to
the graveyard and asks the homeless guy if he saw a father and son on the 9th
(the same day Rocko died.) The homeless guy say no, they came on the 10th.
Plus the court records show Michael was in court at that time on the 9th.
So yes, both these things are suspicious, but I don’t understand why Nancy went
to the graveyard in the first place. What made her want to investigate
Michael’s claims?
Lee, Kofi’s lawyer, learns from Big
Mo that Kofi didn’t have the car on the day Rocko died. So she thinks Adam and
Michael are the only ones who could have driven that car on the day Rocko died.
(Never mind it could have been stolen on the 9th, like Michael said,
and then taken by Kofi on the 10th. Of course we know this didn’t
happen but Lee doesn’t even see it as a possibility.)
So in both these cases, I’m not
convinced that the unravelling of Michael’s deceptions is feasible. It was
excellent for the plot, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t executed as well as
it could be.
Heart-breaking
Ending
Adam’s
baseball was in Kofi’s possessions (because baseball and Kofi were in the car
together) so Eugene inherited it. Lee sells the baseball to Michael (who
recognises it as Adam’s). Eugene uses the money to buy a gun and shoot Carlo
but misses and hits Adam in the next. So Adam starts making noises, and blood
starts spurting from his mouth, just like Rocko experienced when he died. I
didn’t expect that at all. Some people might label it as cosmic justice but it
was a fantastic plot twist for me. At Michael got to hug his son as he lay
dying. At least, I presume Adam died. If Adam survived, that brings the
possibility of a second series which I would be thrilled to watch.
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