“Part Four” – Aired on December 27, 2020
Writer: David Matthews
Director: Clark Johnson
Grade: 3,5 out of 5
Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers
“Part Four” kicks off with an unexpected turn of events that feels like a letdown rather than a surprise. The corpse of Kofi Jones is transported out of prison in a body bag, his face still swollen from an obvious beating. Wait, what happened? “Part Three” ended with Kofi walking into Carlo’s cell, looking like a man with a plan to save his neck by spilling the beans on how he had nothing to do with Rocco’s murder. It was an intriguing cliffhanger, making the audience wonder what the consequences of Kofi filling Carlo would be, and by extension, the Baxters, in on the details of how he was only asked to drive a car to a junkyard, but forced later to plead guilty only after the plan stumbled.
Yet, in a way that squarely undermines the apropos build-up to that cliffhanger, it turns out that Carlo merely executed Kofi. Off camera, that is… If I didn’t know better, I would chalk one up to an error in editing. There are several meaningful ways Kofi’s demise could have been handled, and this was not one of them.
We switch over to the Desiato household where Michael solemnly informs Adam of Kofi’s death and claims ignorance as to how it happened when Adam asks for details. All Michael knows, or says that he knows, is that Kofi’s death had nothing to do with them.
Jimmy scolds Carlo during a jail visit for having killed Kofi with so little time left to serve in his sentence. Carlo snaps back, “Fucking motherfucker killed my brother.” And when Jimmy reminds him that he was going to take care of Kofi, Carlo drops the bomb: “That’s not what Mom said.”
In the official synopsis** of the episode on Showtime’s website, neither Gina nor the Baxters are mentioned. I can only imagine that they did not wish to give too much away, because the alternative explanation would be that it was inadequately written. Gina’s clout is indeed the central revelation of “Part Four.” Jimmy may be the “face” of the Baxter crime gang, the official boss, so to speak. Gina, however, is the driving force behind the “Baxter juice.” She decides to whom it gets administered, and how much. She doesn’t need Jimmy’s approval either because she rules behind closed doors. She knows it, Jimmy knows it. And this outing foregrounds it enough so that the viewers know it.
** “Complicit in multiple lies and agonized by guilt, Adam moves from one dangerous liaison to another as tensions escalate. Elizabeth steps in to protect her grandson. Family dinner at the Desiatos is plagued by secrets and lies.”
Speaking of “Baxter juice,” Sheriff Royce walks in the visiting room and uses some legal-babble to basically say that as far as he is concerned, “this never happened.” Carlo can go back to Angola prison and serve out his sentence. But Royce has some explaining to do later to an irritated Lee about what happened to her client. He mumbles something about a head trauma and them “getting to the bottom of it.” He’ll happily turn over Kofi’s intake property to Lee and let her take it to the family though. Yep, the jerkwad hadn’t even bothered to call Kofi’s family.
At one point during the dialogue, the sheriff takes a jab at Lee in a mocking tone: “Oh, yeah, you and suicide. You have that little thing.” Add that to the growing collection of vague references about Lee’s past in New Orleans (remember also her conversation with Michael in the garage at the end of “Part Two“). My curiosity is now piqued to the maximum. Give me Lee’s backstory in New Orleans, please!
One thing that Your Honor excels in doing is putting together montages of different scenes with fitting background music. We get to relish another splendid one here, featuring the voyages of Kofi’s corpse and Robin’s car into nullity.
The coroner (Andrew Dolan) ties a string to Kofi’s ankle that reads, “JK10181.” That is now his name. As if to drive the point home, it is even explicitly stated in the conversation. JK10181’s corpse gets stored away to the corresponding freeze box. Mixed in with these scenes are shots of Robin’s car getting towed to the junkyard, smashed, and stacked away to oblivion. Case solved, Robin’s car and Kofi’s – I mean JK10181’s – corpse are now mere entries in the records.
The coroner knows Kofi was beaten to death, but never mind that. After a few well-chosen words of wisdom by Sheriff Royce, the coroner’s official report reads, “JK10181, pending tox screen. Preliminary findings listed as undetermined.”
Michael and Charlie meet in the backroom of the barber shop where they met in “Part Three,” to discuss the latest developments in a weird dialogue in which Michael cloyingly goes on a morality rant, even castigating Charlie at one point for only thinking about his election. Charlie shakes Michael back to reality by harshly reminding him that this mess began with Michael asking him for a favor. The scene lasts around three and a half minutes, and in my opinion, misses its mark. It adds nothing of substance to the plot and I am not convinced that we needed three minutes to confirm what has already been drilled into the viewers’ heads in the first three episodes: yes, Michael feels ashamed of going down a rabbit hole, and yes, he is profoundly conflicted. It would have made the scene more passable if the writers kept the first 15 seconds when Charlie tells Michael that he had nothing to do with the murder of Kofi at OPP, leading Michael to heave a sigh of relief, along with the last 10 seconds when Michael invites Charlie to a shrimp dinner and the two men hug, and eliminated the superfluous bulk in the middle.
More annoying to watch than Michael going on a morality spree is Adam blabbering on about how “fucked up” his life is and how he is living a “big lie” to every Tom, Dick, and Harry, and getting mad at them when they don’t necessarily feel sorry for him. Frannie is his latest victim, at school in a classroom no less. Naturally, he turns mawkish when Frannie fails to react in the way he would like her to — I mean, how dare she worry about mundane things like others learning of their secret affair or hearing about the true cause of Rocco’s death?!? If it were me, of course, I’d suggest that he takes his ass to the precinct, confess to the hit-and-run, go to jail, and wait for his dosage of “Baxter juice.” Maybe even give him a preview, for good measure, by citing the details of Kofi’s grim adventure at OPP.
Lee and Michael bring Kofi’s belongings to the Jones in a gut-wrenching scene in which Kofi’s mother laments the loss of her son and the other children soon join her as she starts to wail in agony. If there were an award designated for a single-scene performance by a guest actor in a TV series, Melanie Nicholls-King’s performance as Mama Jones would seal the deal.
In the meantime, Adam gets in a scuffle with his school pal Wesley (Sampley Barinaga, first appeared “Part Two”) who makes an obnoxious remark about Frannie. The school principal (Matt McCoy) is ready to expulse him when Adam’s grandmother Senator Elizabeth Guthrie (Margo Martindale) enters his office and convinces him otherwise via the use of an apt metaphor involving doughnuts. Elizabeth then drives Adam home and the rest of the episode centers on two households’ malaise-filled evenings around dinner tables.
On the Baxter front, the disconnect between Jimmy, Gina, and their daughter Fia (Lilli Kay, more active in this episode) is in full force with multiple snarky remarks made by Gina, even blaming Jimmy for buying the motorcycle and causing Rocco’s death, followed by Jimmy yelling at Fia for rejecting God in front of her mother, and Fia not lacking either in the sarcasm department. It ends with Jimmy giving the order to Frankie to eliminate the Jones family members to appease Gina who, if memory serves, wanted him to “go big” in retaliation for their son’s death. Thus, it’s not a coincidence that we see the house of the Jones family house explode in flames next. Eugene (Benjamin Flores Jr.), Kofi’s younger brother, is spared by sheer luck because he was out getting food for his family with the “lagniappe” given to him by Little Mo earlier in the episode.
On the Desiato front, Michael arrives home with Charlie for the shrimp dinner only to be surprised by not only his mother-in-law Elizabeth being present, but also Nancy, whom Elizabeth apparently invited over because she wanted to meet the only cop who, according to Adam, has shown interest at her daughter Robin’s death. To make matters worse, Lee shows up at the door unannounced, and unaware of the crowd in the house, and gets dragged inside by Charlie.
This sets up an extremely fraught evening at the Desiatos during which:
(1) secrets are unwittingly spilled — Adam learns that his dad knew of Kofi’s troubling demise at the prison, and Michael learns that Elizabeth had been to the cemetery on Robin’s death anniversary and that she had not seen any flowers or a note by Robin’s grave at the cometary like Adam described on the way home,
(2) provocative verbal jabs are heard — Elizabeth refers to Lee as “the intern” along with a couple of other unfriendly remarks, Adam pushes his dad to say more about “the kid” victim, and Lee makes a remark to Charlie about having stayed silent for 400 years so why not talk now about how Kofi was treated by the NOPD,
(3) edgy glances at one another are observed — Charlie and Michael connect eyes as Lee describes the torture Kofi was subjected to and Adam glares at Michael when he understands that his dad lied about not having any knowledge of how “the kid” died in prison,
(4) The bloody rag that Django dragged back in the house in “Part One” is recovered by Michael, and noticed by others at the table.
Clark Johnson’s directorial experience of over two decades, combined with the luxury of having esteemed actors like Cranston, Martindale, and Ejogo perform, cumulatively add up to an explosive dinner sequence, although narratively, some of what takes place comes across artificial.
For instance, the way Nancy appears at the house and accepts to stay for dinner feels forced, as does Charlie’s enthusiasm in pulling Lee inside the house for dinner, as well as Lee letting herself get dragged that easily to the dinner table. And then, there is the uncharacteristic way the otherwise feisty attorney remains subdued while absorbing the belittling comments dished out by Elizabeth. It also seems a bit too convenient for the script’s sake for Django to obsess over the bloody rag under the dresser right during dinner, for Michael to even make the bloody rag visible to the dinner guests, for Nancy to ask loudly, “is that blood?” from at least 6 meters away, and for Michael then to approach the table to talk to the guests while still visibly holding the rag. Oh-kay!
In any case, it all culminates in Adam leaving the table to walk outside with Michael following him, and the two having yet another talk about the conundrum they face, although this time, Adam appears to grasp a bit better the gravity of their situation, which is a much welcome break from his usual wallowing in self-pity. He bicycles to Rocco’s memorial shortly after where he briefly runs into Fia who is also there after having escaped her own family’s suffocating dinner.
Last-minute thoughts:
— Eugene still has the baseball signed by Mariano Rivera in his possession, which begs the question, why on earth did Michael not take it back when he saw it during the visit to the Jones earlier? Surely, it will come back to bite him at some point as evidence.
— With Elizabeth knowing that neither a bouquet of flowers nor a card was left by Robin’s grave on the anniversary of her death, Michael can kiss his pre-planned “we visited Robin at the cemetery on that day” alibi-story goodbye.
— Gina is religious. Fia is not, and she is defiant about it.
— Two established actors in Margo Martindale and Matt McCoy make their entrance to the show as guest actors in the same scene. Impressive! If I had to guess from the characters they play, I’d say Martindale is much more likely to reappear, and at more frequent intervals, than McCoy.
— “You may already know this” note of the week: Charlie promised Rudy the chief of police position if he wins the election and becomes the next mayor.
— In my review of “Part Three,” I wrote the following: “I prefer to wait at least one more episode before I can conclusively say that she [Gina] plays a major role in the central plot of Your Honor.” I would assume that my review above for “Part Four” clearly shows where I now stand on that.
Until next episode…
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