“Part One” – Aired on December 6, 2020
Teleplay: Peter Moffat
Director: Edward Berger
Grade: 4,5 out of 5
Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers
A young man and his girlfriend wake up in bed. After she leaves, he feeds the dog and drives off to place a framed picture on a sidewalk in front of a long-closed corner store, at the spot where his mother presumably died a year ago. As he puts the picture down, he notices unsavory characters from the neighborhood approaching him, which puts him on tenterhooks. He hurries back in the car and nervously drives away. He soon finds himself in dire need of his inhaler which, as tropes go, seems to be out of his reach somewhere beneath the passenger seat.
Unable to think clearly, he meanders through the streets of the neighborhood, at one point circling back by the corner store only to see the picture of his mom smashed. The SUV that seems to be tailing him only exacerbates his condition. His inhaler insists on being out of his grasp as he bends down in panic to retrieve it, enough to lose sight of the road. These elements, as expected, cumulatively add up to a catastrophic accident when Adam’s car crushes head-on into a motorcyclist coming in the opposite direction. The motorcyclist flies off and eventually dies in a pool of blood where he landed. Injured himself, the terror-stricken driver somehow gets out of the car and watches the victim die in agony. He is in shock and unable to respond to the 911 dispatcher on the phone. Instead, he gets back in his car and flees the scene.
Intertwined with this storyline, are two other narratives with smaller cuts, but enough to set the stage for the rest of the episode. First one involves a young man who receives a motorcycle as a gift from his father in front of the family’s luxurious home. He is excited to say the least, and he wastes no time in getting on it and zooming down the street for a first ride (yes, he is that motorcyclist). Second one shows an older man jogging early in the morning. He runs through the streets and a cemetery, including a short stop at the front door of a house to look inside for unknown reasons at the time (but later revealed in a meaningful way). He eventually ends up downtown at the courthouse where he takes his shower in preparation for his next courtroom séance. He is a judge and, as we learn soon enough, the father of the asthmatic boy driving the car.
The above three paragraphs constitute a whopping 20 minutes, over one-third of the episode, and they are explosive in style and set-up machinations. As far as introductory sequences to a new show are concerned, this one is a masterpiece. Each component of the sequence looks (and feels) like an elite production embellished by quality camera work, apt score, and remarkable performances by actors. Ocular aesthetics serve as effective vehicles as the morning activities of these characters are presented with great aplomb, and facial closeups of stillness prove that first-rate actors can convey a thousand words with their expressions while not uttering a single one. If you are searching for Exhibit A on why the say-less-show-more approach works, “Part One” is all you need in one package.
Your Honor is created by Peter Moffat (résumé includes Undercover from 2016, a series with an intriguing premise but somewhat marred by a messy narrative progress). The show’s most notable asset, judging from the pilot, is in the singular conflict created by the calamitous event that kicks it off. The outing establishes early on that it will inevitably pit two families (more specifically, two high-profile fathers) against one another. The accident’s victim is a young man whose father makes a career out of criminal operations, while the accident’s culprit is young man whose father is well-respected, with a bona fide reputation as a judge friendly to the plight of the marginalized. The viewer is faced with a paradox: whose side to take?
Working the ins and outs of this conflict may be the crowning achievement of Your Honor. Or, it may cause its downfall. Intentionally or not, Moffat seems to have put his back, and those of the members of his writing room, against the wall. They must nurture an accustomed cliché (a momentarily preoccupied, stressed-out driver fatally hitting another, and driving away in panic, causing a devastating ripple effect), and muster from it a unique enough narrative that can hopefully distinguish the show from others of the genre.
It is a daunting challenge, one with plenty of potential for slipping into predictability since the pilot and trailers have not left much room for the unknown with regard to what is to come. By that I mean, one form or another of the outline below:
(1) a dignified father in Michael Desiato slowly going down the rabbit hole in the name of protecting his son (read: betraying his life-long moral and ethical principles). The more he tries to cover up, the more he is forced to act outside the parameters of the maxims that made him a role model as a judge,
(2) an emblematic crook in Jimmy Baxter who relentlessly pursues each clue he can find to learn the identity of his son’s killer to satiate his (and his wife’s) need for revenge. He soon finds enough clues to begin suspecting the Desiatos,
(3) the harassment of the Desiatos by the Baxters begin,
(4) the distance between the two families slowly erodes away, leading to the inevitable culmination of events that will impact both forever.
Moffat and co. have their hands full. They must present something different than the calculable outline above, or present it in a drastically different way than the dozens of the genre already seen on screen. Or both, preferably.
Having said that, the splendid cast assembled for the show is definitely a step in the right direction. Bryan Cranston playing the main character, Judge Michael Desiato, is as astute a choice as it gets. He is a proven master of delivering dissertation-length material for character studies regardless of whom he represents on screen. Accompanying him are Hunter Doohan (Truth Be Told) taking up the role of Judge Desiato’s hapless son Adam, the seasoned-actor Michael Stuhlbarg portraying the pooh-bah mobster Jimmy Baxter, and the in-form Hope Davis playing his distraught wife Gina.
There is also a plethora of minor revelations, surely designed to come into play at various times throughout the season. Other than Adam suffering from asthma, some of these include his mother’s (possibly tragic) death a year ago, Michael and Adam both carrying the mental scars from it, Michael being respected by the lawmakers in town and well-liked by the minority community in tune with his exploits – see the many smiling faces as they salute him and the somewhat theatrical courtroom scene drumming the beats of current real-life events –, and Baxter being hated and/or feared by everyone including Michael – see the tremendous scene as Michael makes a life-changing decision at the police station in a matter of seconds as he spots the Baxters from behind a door window and observes their agony, realizing that his son killed their son Rocco (Benjamin Wadsworth).
The rest of the episode mostly delves into the efforts of Michael as he makes the ruinous decision, for his son and himself, to leave the police station without saying anything, and spends the rest of his day, and night, desperately trying to get rid of any possible evidence left behind by Adam. Cranston handles these scenes with such dexterity that you can almost sense the judge’s anguish. He knows his efforts may well be in vain and that he may not be able to “make it go away,” but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t try to save his son.
Sure enough, Adam’s inhaler is recovered by Frankie (Tony Curran), Baxter’s right-hand man at the spot of the accident (don’t ask how the CSI unit missed it). Not to mention, there is probably an abundance of blood left by Adam while he was at the scene. We already know that he was captured on camera when he stopped at a gas station shortly after the accident and handled the pump with his bloody hands. Then, there is the ubiquitous nosy neighbor who seems to be watching each time Michael and Adam enter or exit their house. Let’s not forget either the bloody rag that their dog dragged away back into the house without Michael noticing as he was cleaning Adam’s car. Et cetera, et cetera…
Last-minute thoughts:
— With Adam driving a rundown car and Michael jogging or using Uber to go between their house and the courtroom, I am going to speculate that the Desiato family has an aversion to spending money on vehicles.
— Nit-pick: Did the low-gas warning (with the indicator pointing to the bottom of the “E,” mind you) have to sound precisely when Michael is trying to drive away from the unsavory characters? Him eventually stopping by the gas station is part of the script, I understand, but it could have surely been done in a more subtle manner.
— Amazing that no cars or people pass by the scene of the accident during the several minutes that Adam spends there. Except for an observant dog who witnesses everything and is seen licking Rocco’s blood as Adam leaves, probably the episode’s most horrific moment for this viewer!
— The motorcycle getting stuck at first to the car’s bumper as Adam tries to drive away is an effective nuance to increase the degree of dread in an already high-tension scene.
— I can’t help but wonder how women will be depicted in the show. The only female character of significance in “Part One” is Gina, and she is so far nothing more than the run-of-the-mill mobster’s wife who sheds plenty of tears as the result of a family tragedy. I hope her portrayal goes beyond the limited scope of the bad guy’s one-note wife whose only concern is to avenge her child’s death, and who therefore encourages her husband to use any means necessary to that end, while spending half of her time on screen with misty eyes and in depression, and remaining outside of any central plot advancement. The talented Hope Davis can deliver so much more than that.
— I totally understand Michael lying about “peeing,” but I do not understand why he lied about having cancer (or wait, I may know actually. Is it so that it can come back to bite him in a later episode, in other words, the script demanded it?). If he simply told the officer who he is – every commissioner and detective in town seems to respect him – and apologized for not being able to hold it any longer, I am willing to bet that the officer would have given him the benefit of the doubt.
— I am a fan of Tony Curran (Frankie) as an actor. Check him out in the film Calibre, as well as the series Defiance and season 6 of Ray Donovan.
— Adam’s girlfriend is played by Sofia Black-D’Elia, known for her work as Sabrina Pemberton in The Mick.
— I read that the show is based on the Israeli series Kvodo with which I am not familiar. I would be curious to know, however, if Your Honor diverges from Kvodo’s storyline at all. But please, no spoilers!
Until next episode…
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