Tag Archives: bill camp

Everybody’s a Victim: HBO’s The Night Of Season One Finale, “Call of the Wild,” Recap & Review

Share

Spoilers

Unknown-4

Despite some viewers’ disappointment that we never learned whodunnit on HBO’s hit crime drama The Night Of, the finale “Call of the Wild” was a good deal like I expected it to be. I didn’t think the writers would ever reveal who actually killed Andrea Cornish (Sofia Black-D’Elia), and I didn’t think the police or the District Attorney would ever pursue anyone else as her murderer — at least, not as long as they had Naz (Riz Ahmed) in custody. I was glad to see Detective Box take another look at the suspects — finding yet another in the long list of those that Attorney John Stone had already turned up. I was glad, though a bit surprised, that DA Weiss decided not to prosecute Naz again after the hung jury resulted in a mistrial. I suspected that Naz would be found guilty and imprisoned for life; I predicted that he might commit suicide as Petey did in a previous episode. “Call of the Wild” gave us an even more somber finale, one in which everyone is a victim of violent crime as well as of the criminal justice system.

images

Detective Box

The lead investigator, Detective Box (Bill Camp), was shredded on the witness stand in last week’s episode, when Chandra questioned his handling of the case and his never looking for other suspects. Since we saw Box not enjoying his retirement party, it wasn’t a surprise that he returned to the investigation and found another suspect. I don’t know if the obvious nature of the other suspect was the result of poor writing on the part of the show’s staff, or the result of bad investigating on Box’s part, but his finding another suspect so incredibly easily — after looking at more surveillance video and phone records — made it a bit implausible that no one in the police department had ever found the guy. Isn’t a look at financial records a given in a murder investigation? Still, Box became a victim because his career was already publicly blighted during the trial. Since he didn’t do his job properly in the first place, he wasn’t a victim for whom I felt sympathy, but he was still somewhat of a victim because everyone would always know that he didn’t go out with a bang but with a really whispery whimper.

nightoffinalehelen

DA Weiss

District Attorney Weiss (Jeannie Berlin) has been concerned with nothing but winning ever since Box first brought the murder suspect to her attention. From the beginning, she was more interested in how she might lose the case than she was in whether justice was being done. It was no shock then that, when Box brought her evidence of another strong suspect  — Andrea’s financial advisor & part-time boyfriend — Weiss said, “We have more on the kid.” She has long shown that she was willing to manipulate witnesses and script their testimony as long as it helped her win.

Did she ever want justice for the murder victim, Andrea? That wasn’t clear. But after the jury came to its split 6/6 decision, making Weiss a victim of the very system she has obviously long manipulated, I didn’t feel much sympathy for her either, though I was surprised that she didn’t wish to try Naz a second time. Even though she asked Box to help her go after the other suspect, she still didn’t win the case against Naz. That’s all she’s cared about since the beginning, so she became a victim of the criminal justice system.

Unknown-3

Naz

Oy, vey, Naz (Riz Ahmed) is such a victim, it’s hard to feel sorry for the guy even with those Bambi-eyes of his. After all, this is a guy who did so many stupid things — not to mention all the criminal things  — that his presumed innocence of Andrea’s murder is the only thing that makes him at all empathetic. Let’s recap some of his dumb acts:

stealing his father’s cab,
taking unknown drugs from a stranger,
taking more drugs from said stranger,
having sex with that complete stranger,
taking the knife from the murder scene,
breaking back into the murder scene after he forgot the keys to the stolen cab,
ignoring street signs that clearly state No Left Turn,
throwing a classmate down the stairs, breaking his arm,
throwing a full Coke can at a classmate, hitting him in the face,
swallowing condom-wrapped drugs,
smuggling said drugs into Rikers,
shaving his head before trial,
getting prison tattoos in places that can’t be hidden,
selling his prescription Adderall to classmates,
leaving a paper trail of his drug-dealing,
lying to his attorney,
lying to his attorney,
lying to his attorney,
helping Freddy kill another inmate…

In fact, Naz has committed so many stupid and criminal acts that I actually ended up not feeling sorry for Naz, though he was clearly a victim of the criminal justice system. Predictably, prison made him more of a criminal. At trial, Naz wasn’t found guilty, but he wasn’t found not guilty, and he’ll pay for that for the rest of his life. He got out of jail, but he will certainly never be free because, as Sam Adams of Slate.com writes, Naz is “saved only by what amounts to a spanner in the works: a deadlocked jury, split 6 to 6, which is like escaping a firing squad because the gun jammed.” And, furthermore, because the firing squad decided not to reload.

Naz returned to his parents’ home, knowing his mother thought him capable of monstrous violence, if not actually guilty of rape and murder. His brother’s evil-eye as they sat at dinner made it clear that Naz is going to have problems with his sibling as well as in his community, who members shunned him. Naz is addicted to crack-cocaine, and his violence is more blatant now, as evidenced by the intimidating look he gave the classmate who testified about Naz’s drug dealing. Naz may have become an unwitting victim of the criminal justice system, but he was a victim of his own poor choices and of his own criminal behavior first.

Unknown-1

Chandra

Chandra, Chandra, Chandra… Did she become a victim of a young and inexperienced professional woman’s poor choices? Or was Amara Karan, the actor portraying Chandra, merely a victim of supremely bad writing? Quite a few reviewers vote for the latter choice, and I’m among them. Because of the ridiculous Chandra-initiated kiss in the penultimate episode, a kiss which didn’t logically follow from anything previously presented in The Night Of or from anything in Chandra’s character, there was never any question that Chandra would become a victim.

But to have her deteriorate to the point where she supplied illicit street-drugs to her client just before his testimony? To have her smuggle the drugs into the holding cell in her bra and in her private parts? To have her remove the drugs from her body cavity under the unforgiving eye of surveillance cameras? That is just bad writing, as Matt Wilstein of TheDailyBeast.com points out.

But it is the sight of Chandra pulling a condom of heroin out from between her legs that is far more disturbing — and far less believable — than the makeout session that scandalized viewers the week before. If The Night Of, so subtle and nuanced in its first several episodes, had a jump the shark moment, this was it. (emphasis mine)

I’m not even going to mention the fact that Chandra would be supremely unlikely to know how or where to purchase illicit drugs, that no street-drug dealer with half a brain would sell drugs to a young woman wearing a business suit and heels, that said drug dealer would he be highly unlikely to hand over illicit drugs to a young woman in a business suit in the open on the street corner, that rich or professional people would usually get their drugs from their similarly rich or professional companions or colleagues, or that Chandra would be an absolute idjit — I mean, IDJIT — to hand over illicit street-drugs in the very same holding cell where she kissed Naz and already got caught on surveillance video and got seriously Busted to the point where she is not able to deliver the Defense’s closing statement, has lost her job (with instructions to clean out her desk as soon as the trial is finished), and will, most likely, be disbarred. I’m not going to discuss those things because they all fall under the category of really bad writing. While those things make Chandra a victim, they make her character more a victim of bad writing than of bad personal choices.

Of the reviewers who thought it was probably necessary for Chandra to make bad decisions so that Stone could deliver the closing argument, many still thought it was bad writing as it was handled. Scott Tobias of The New York Times thought that

[the] one victim of the show’s machinations is Chandra, whose dignity has been martyred for the cause. Until tonight, the show’s biggest misstep was her moment of indiscretion with Naz in the holding pen, which undermined her as a professional by having her succumb to a jailhouse crush. In an otherwise stellar finale, the incident gets further reduced to a mere plot device to bring Stone in front of the jury for closing arguments — something that may need to happen for dramatic reasons but leaves Chandra’s career in ruins. It makes sense for Stone to have his day in court, since he’s not second chair in this series, and his words to the jury are specific to his instinctual faith in Naz and his own poignant shot in the big leagues. But there’s a cost: Andrea was the first victim in “The Night Of,” Chandra is the second. (emphasis mine)

I agree with Laura Bogart of Salon.com, that “almost anything else, even catching a bad flu, would have sidelined Chandra and positioned Stone to prove that he is far better than his subway ads might suggest.” And, as Todd VanDerWerff of Vox.com pointed out,

the last two episodes seemed custom-designed to push Chandra into many bizarre decisions and directions. Why did she want Naz on the stand? It was never clear — and she very nearly got him sent to jail for it… Why would she smuggle in drugs for him? This was also not entirely clear. To be sure, I can come up with answers for both of those questions. But Chandra never made sense as a character in the way that Naz or Stone or Helen or Box did.

Chandra was, in fact, marginalized in the finale. As Laura Bogart writes, once Stone is given the responsibility of delivering the closing argument,

Chandra is more or less iced out of the finale, a development that is so fundamentally dissatisfying because she’s the only character who is so thoughtlessly disregarded. Everyone else gets a complete arc except the aspiring young career woman.

Yes, Chandra became another victim, but Amara Karan’s character was more a victim of bad writing than of any logical behavior on Chandra’s part.

Unknown

Attorney John Stone

Stone (John Turturro) was proven right when he insisted that Naz’s testifying would be a really bad idea. As he told fellow-counsel Chandra after the testimony, he thought Naz had a 10% chance of getting off before he testified; after, Stone thought that slim chance had completely evaporated. Despite Stone’s attempt to “cut a deal” by getting a mistrial with the surveillance tape of Chandra kissing Naz in the courthouse holding cell — which, surprisingly, was delivered by Freddy (Michael Kenneth Williams), who considered Naz his own private unicorn — the trial not only went on, but it went on with Stone’s having to deliver the closing argument. (Don’t worry: he did just fine, which is what you’d expect when an actor as tremendously talented as John Turturro takes on the part.)

Despite the severe flare-up of Stone’s asthma and eczema, necessitating a visit to the ER, Stone was less of a victim than anyone else in the finale of HBO’s The Night Of. After all, he’s proven himself a frightfully good investigator, and he got a chance to prove himself as an attorney at a murder trial. Even though he returned to his life representing guilty scum who no doubt got his name and number from the subway ads, Stone proved himself a more than competent attorney, and one of the few truly moral characters in the show.

Besides, he got to keep the cat.

images-15

Related Posts

Gripping Crime Drama:
HBO’s The Night Of Mini-Series,
episode 1, “The Beach,” Review and Recap

HBO’s Dark & Powerful Mini-Series:
The Night Of, e2-3, Recap & Review

Legal & Medical Pariahs:
Naz & Stone are the Victims in HBO’s Limited Mini-Series
The Night Of, Episode 4, “The Art of War,” Recap & Review

The Stone Also Rises: HBO’s The Night Of,
episode 5, “The Season of the Witch,” Recap & Review

Did Samson Kill Delilah in HBO’s The Night Of ?
Episode 106, “Ordinary Death,” Recap & Review

Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon:
Chandra Shines on HBO’s The Night Of, 107 Review

Share

2 Comments

Filed under Actors, Crime Drama, Movies/Television, Recap, Review, The Night Of, The Night Of miniseries

Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon: Chandra Shines on HBO’s The Night Of, 107, Review

Share

Spoilers

49061080.cached

HBO’s limited mini-series, The Night Of, is an intense and merciless crime drama. Created and written by Steven Zaillian and Richard Price, and based on BBC’s Criminal Justice, it examines the contemporary criminal justice system in America through the case of Nasir “Naz” Kahn (Riz Ahmed), a Pakistani-American college student, in the post-9/11 world of New York City. Accused of raping and murdering a rich, white girl, Andrea Cornish (Sofia Black-D’Elia), who got into Naz’s father’s cab after Naz “borrowed” it, without permission, in order to attend a college athletes’ party, Naz has been subjected to the impersonal maws of the justice system, which simply does not care whether or not he is innocent. The police, the detectives, the DA, the Judge, the Medical Examiner don’t care about the evidence unless it fits their preconceived storyline about Naz’s guilt. Meanwhile, interred inside Rikers since his arrest, Naz has steadily been rising in the criminal ranks, under the tutelage of inmate-murderer Freddy Knight (Michael Kenneth Williams). Now entering the Defense phase of the trial, Naz revealed more ugliness to his character in “Ordinary Death,” while his attorney, Chandra (Amara Karan), began to shine.

images

Chandra at Trial

We already had a glimpse of Chandra’s talent last week, when she gave a concise opening statement, after agonizing over it for hours, as well as when she dismissed DA Weiss (Jeannie Berlin, below) with the statement to the jury, “She likes to be called Mrs. Weiss.” You wouldn’t think a small statement like that would make a difference in your perception of someone, but it did. Instantly, you realized that DA Weiss is misrepresenting herself, for some unknown reason, in a professional world where she already has an impressive title: District Attorney. Chandra’s swipe was powerful and unexpected.

Unknown

In “Ordinary Death,” Chandra continued to shine as she took the role of lead Defense Attorney in Naz’s trial. Though it was settled earlier in the season that she would handle the trial because Naz’s original attorney John Stone (John Turturro) had no trial experience, she surprised me with her confidence and her handling of the witnesses. Without even knowing that Box (Bill Camp, below) and his fellow detectives discovered another victim that is, according to him, clearly identical to the murder of Andrea Cornish, Chandra shredded Box on the witness stand. She made him seem like an arrogant punk in his mis-handling of the evidence (when he took the asthma inhaler from the crime scene and gave it back to Naz). She made Box seem incompetent because he hadn’t interviewed — or even found — any other suspects. Just before his retirement, in fact, she trounced him so soundly that he couldn’t even enjoy his own party.

retire_ep7

Chandra was as effective dismantling Box as DA Weiss was at shedding doubt on one of the Defense’s key witnesses, Dr. Katz revealed evidence about the Five-Finger-Filet (FFF) Knife Game, which Chandra (or the show writers) mistakenly called Mumblety Peg.  Katz revealed that The Victim’s skin cells had been found in a gash in the coffee table, indicating that her wound had come from playing FFF with the suspect, Naz.  Katz also revealed things about the crime scene that the detectives seem to have missed, such as the defective lock on the security door. Katz gave good testimony for the Defense, but Weiss attacked his character in her cross-examination. Chandra did the same thing to Box on her Cross. That’s a Defense Attorney at her professional best.

Though Chandra didn’t see the threatening looks Naz was giving a former classmate who was on the witness stand — testifying that Naz dealt drugs, selling individual Adderall pills from his prescription — Chandra managed to stay cool despite the Reveal of more negative aspects of Naz’s character. After we learned that Naz dealt drugs, though on a small scale, and was attempting to intimidate one of his “customers” on the witness stand, we learned that the violence Naz displayed while in high school was not an isolated incident. Chandra was in the midst of cross-examining Naz’s high school basketball coach — who earlier in the season revealed to Stone that Naz had thrown a classmate down the stairs, breaking his arm, without provocation — when the coach revealed that two students had been assaulted by Naz.

Though Chandra’s voice went quieter, and her body went slightly more rigid, she managed to continue to ask about the Two. It seems that our boy Naz threw a full can of Coke at another student, just as soon as Naz returned from the suspension he earned after assaulting the first boy. Despite Chandra’s attempt to relate these violent assaults to post-9/11 persecution of American Muslims, the only thing viewers — and jurors, presumably — took away from the coach’s testimony was that Naz, once again, has lied about his past. Chandra acted like it was a mere blip on her radar, though it surely rattled her. At the Defense table, Stone was giving Naz wary, almost terrified glances while Chandra managed, somehow, to continue the trial and retain her professional demeanor.

Unknown

Chandra and Naz’s Mother

Chandra is handling all aspects of the murder trial professionally, including the behavior of Naz’s mother. Safar (Poorna Jagannathan, above) conspicuously walked out of the courtroom while slides of the victim were being shown. Chandra later went to the bathroom and told Mrs. Khan that the jury had to look at the slides, so Mrs. Kahn had to do it, too: for Naz’s sake, Safar couldn’t walk out like that. Safar Khan was having none of that, however. She wouldn’t let Chandra comfort her, she didn’t return to the courtroom, she stopped coming to the trial, and, furthermore, she continued to refuse to talk to Naz when he called her, despite Chandra’s telling Safar that Naz wanted to talk to her.

Though Safar’s leaving the courtroom and no longer attending the trial are going to look bad to the jury, I can’t say I blame her. Naz’s behavior on “the night of,” even if he didn’t kill the girl, has ruined his family’s life. Both parents are working crappy jobs, desperately trying to support the family; they had to pawn their silver, jewelry, and other precious objects to get cash; and both parents were victims of attacks. Naz’s father Salim (Peyman Moaadi) has been continuously confronted with racism, and his cab partners forced him to sell out his third of the cab so that they could buy a new one — without him. When he objected and called them “thieves,” one of them said, “And you are the father of a murderer.”

While looking at pictures of Naz as a baby and a young child, Naz’s mother was threatened with a rock thrown through Naz’s bedroom window. His parents’ lives have been permanently altered for the worse by Naz’s selfish and careless behavior. Safar has reached a point where she may no longer believe that her son is innocent; more important to her, however, is the question, “Did I raise an animal?” She doesn’t want to be responsible herself for Naz’s behavior. Chandra was unable to answer Safar’s question or to convince Naz’s mother to come back to the courtroom, but Chandra showed herself a compassionate professional when she attempted to get Safar back into court, and to answer Naz’s phone calls.

chandra_ep7

Chandra and The Kiss

The only failure of Chandra Kapoor’s professional character in the episode was the weird moment when she kissed the imprisoned Naz (and let’s just hope the kiss, which was clearly captured on surveillance video, won’t get Chandra debarred). I realize that Chandra doesn’t know that Naz snitched on fellow inmate Victor, who was sexually abusing Petey (Aaron Motey). Chandra doesn’t know that Naz conspired with Freddy to kill Victor, acting as a decoy by asking the guard for a new asthma inhaler while Freddy went to the prison TV area and sliced Victor’s throat. Chandra doesn’t know, as Vikram Murthi of Vulture.com writes, that Naz “may not have murdered Andrea, but he has now murdered someone [i.e., Victor], albeit indirectly.” Nor does Chandra realize, as Vikram continues, that Naz’s “mother may not have raised an animal, but[Naz] has become one.”

Despite Chandra’s professional lapse — which she seemed to regret immediately — and despite the fact that the scene was extremely short, it’s generated lots of discussion, far more discussion than the length of the scene would seem to justify. This may be due to the fact that virtually everyone was stunned by that kiss. Though at least one person on a forum wrote that it was about time the two kissed because “Chandra’s super hot,” that comment had no replies, and other viewers thought the kiss made no sense at all. Most critics and reviewers seemed to agree with Scott Tobias of the New York Times:  (emphasis in quote below is mine.)

“Ordinary Death” makes the show’s first significant misstep by following through on the romantic tension that’s been building between Chandra and Naz. It makes a certain dramatic sense. Naz would have taken the plea deal had Chandra not persuaded him to follow his conscience. Unlike Stone, who doesn’t trust a jury to reach the right decision regardless, Chandra believes an innocent person should assert his innocence. It becomes a contract between them: She trusts in his innocence; he trusts her to rescue him from a life sentence. It could be argued that there’s an intimacy between them that goes beyond a lawyer-client relationship, because there’s so much at stake for both of them. But having them actually kiss, however much Chandra seems to regret it afterward, undermines her as a professional. “The Night Of” goes to great lengths to emphasize the grind-it-out dignity of veterans like Box, Stone, and Helen, but it does a disservice to Chandra by giving her a jailhouse crush.

Jason Concepcion  thought the kiss was “in a subplot that feels like it was teleported in from a different show.” A fantasy or a science fiction show, perhaps, which is certainly not the genre The Night Of  has been aiming for with its scrupulous contemporary realism. Kevin Fallon of The Daily Beast just found the kissing scene to be bad writing (emphasis below is mine).

The extent to which Chandra is out of her element becomes evident not in the courtroom, in which she does a brilliant job casting doubts that Naz could be the killer during testimony from the pathologist she and John hired, and then credibility-ruining questioning with Detective Box (Bill Camp). Instead it becomes evident during a meeting with Naz in which the two end up kissing, she so entranced by his new, confident demeanor, assured manner of speaking, and bulked up sexual appeal. In a show that’s been praised for the realism with which it portrays this kind of crime story, it’s a twist that threatens to, as they say, “jump the shark.”

That kiss was more than jumping the shark, more than “a moment of television in which there is a gimmick or unlikely occurrence that is seen as a desperate attempt to keep viewers’ interest.” Beyond the fact that most viewers are already sufficiently interested in The Night Of without any sexual activity beyond the premiere episode’s (mostly implied) interaction between Naz and The Victim, that kiss between Chandra and Naz was completely unnecessary to the storyline. If anything, the kiss alienated many, if not most, viewers. Further, it didn’t evolve from anything in the previous episodes. Though Naz called Chandra late at night at least once, letting us know that he was either extremely lonely or that he might be attracted to Chandra, she has never given any indication of reciprocal feelings. It’s true that she broke up with her boyfriend and was distressed about it, telling fellow attorney Stone about the break-up in a previous episode, but there has never been even the slightest hint that Chandra found Naz even least bit interesting as a person rather than as a client, let alone that she found him sexually attractive.

Unprepared for by earlier episodes, completely out-of-character, and unnecessary to the storyline, the kissing scene was more than “jumping the shark” because it was more than just bad writing. The Chandra-initiated kiss was an insult to professional women. Many reviewers and critics were appalled by Chandra’s blatantly unprofessional act. As a professional woman myself, I was most sincerely offended. Virtually all professional women I have ever worked with or known personally have gone out of their way to be even more professional than their male colleagues, simply because women must be more professional and more successful than males in the same field in order to succeed. Having Chandra kiss Naz, who is not only a prison inmate but her client, who is not only her client but a college boy several years younger than she is, was insulting and offensive to professional women everywhere. It was also ludicrous: are we to believe that a grown woman, already established in a law firm, albeit as a young lawyer, and already experienced in trials, would risk her entire professional career by kissing a boy client?

I wasn’t the only reviewer who found it insulting. Peter Allen Clark of Mashable.com complained that

Everything we have been shown presents [Chandra] as a professional, intelligent, competent woman who would never start making out with Naz in a jail cell. That, one of the very few things that actually happened this week, was insulting to her and to us. I get that Naz reached out more and more, but she never seemed interested in reciprocating. That scene made The Night Of seem like boring, pedestrian TV. (emphasis mine)

Very boring. Very pedestrian. Very jumping the shark, I’d say. It would have made more sense, given Naz’s ability to dissemble, had Naz initiated the kiss: in fact, even though he did not, at least one reviewer postulated that Naz may to use that kiss to betray Chandra and frame his appeal. But it was Chandra who initiated the kiss. Chandra kissed Naz first, though he responded. So we are left with this question: did Chandra kiss Naz because she’s unprofessional, or did the writers simply throw it in because there hasn’t been any sexual activity in The Night Of since episode one?

If the former, we have no idea why Chandra would suddenly become so severely and flagrantly unprofessional.

If the latter, then Shame on you, Writers.

In any event, Chandra, this is for you:

Girl, you’ll be a woman soon.
Soon, you’ll need a man. 

A man, Girlfriend, not a boy.

And certainly not a boy who’s a criminal besides.

Next week is the finale of The Night Of, which is rumored to be about an hour and 45 minutes long. Though we don’t know if we’ll get any resolution to the question of Naz’s guilt or innocence, and I seriously doubt that the show is suddenly going to disintegrate into any Perry Mason moments and have the real murderer confess, the finale is bound to be an intense episode. The finale airs Sunday 28 August at 9p.m. ET on HBO.

Related Posts

Gripping Crime Drama:
HBO’s The Night Of Mini-Series,
episode 1, “The Beach,” Review and Recap

HBO’s Dark & Powerful Mini-Series:
The Night Of, e2-3, Recap & Review

Legal & Medical Pariahs:
Naz & Stone are the Victims in HBO’s Limited Mini-Series
The Night Of, Episode 4, “The Art of War,” Recap & Review

The Stone Also Rises: HBO’s The Night Of,
episode 5, “The Season of the Witch,” Recap & Review

Did Samson Kill Delilah in HBO’s The Night Of ?
Episode 106, “Ordinary Death,” Recap & Review

Share

4 Comments

Filed under Actors, Crime Drama, MiniSeries/Limited MiniSeries, Movies/Television, Recap, Review, The Night Of, The Night Of miniseries, True Detective, Videos

Did Samson Kill Delilah in HBO’s The Night Of? Episode 106, Recap & Review

Share

Spoilers
& Biblical Parallels

As soon as I heard the mortician-undertaker in episode 6 of HBO’s The Night Of refer to the book of Judges from the Hebrew Bible, I knew it referred to Samson and Delilah, without even knowing the name of the show’s episode. When Chandra later read passages to Naz’s attorney John Stone, I was surprised that someone as savvy as Stone didn’t already know that story in its entirety. If creator-writers Steven Zaillian and Richard Price were giving that information to us viewers, however, then I’m less surprised: how many people even know the story of Samson and Delilah these days, let alone that it comes from Judges? More interesting to The Night Of, however, is how the story of Samson and Delilah relates to that of Naz, a Pakistani-American college student accused of rape and murder,  and to that of the murder victim, Andrea (Sofia Black-D’Elia).

images

In Judges 13-16, Samson is favored by God from the moment of his conception. In fact, an angel of God comes to Samson’s mother, who has been barren, and tells her that she should have no wine or other fermented drink because she is to bear a child. As he grows, Samson is blessed by God, though we are never given a specific reason for this, and, further, “the spirit of Lord stirs in Samson.”

Always the bad-boy himself, Samson has a thing for the foreign ladies. He falls for a Philistine woman and wants to marry her, to his parents’ dismay. They ask, “Must you go to the uncircumcised Philistines to get a wife?” (14:3) But God is controlling the story of Samson in order to show His own might: “[Samson’s] parents did not know that this [love for the Philistine woman] was from the Lord, who was seeking an occasion to confront the Philistines; for at that time they were ruling over Israel” (14:4).

Eventually, after shows of strength, being betrayed by his wife, and displays of both anger and strength, Samson falls for another foreign woman, Delilah. We can only assume that, since God causes or allows Samson to love his first wife, who is ethnically and religiously “foreign,” God also allows Samson to love Delilah.

In order to be betrayed? So that Samson will lose the “gift” of his strength and, after he is a blind captive, return to God, showing God’s forgiveness and power?

I’m not sure of the reason: God doesn’t explain Himself. But Samson is betrayed: Delilah cuts off his hair, causing him to lose his strength, and he is captured by the Philistines. Imprisoned, Samson prays to God for one last burst of strength to pull down the pillars of the Philistine temple, knowing full well that he himself will die with the enemies of his people and of his God.

images-2

I don’t know if The Night Of  intends to take the story that far, but its writers are the ones who named the episode after the Biblical story, and then quoted it in the episode itself, so let’s see what we have.

Is Naz the Samson in The Night Of? Naz (Riz Ahmed, center) doesn’t seem like a strong-man, though his attack on the Rikers inmate who burned him gave us a hint of the depth of Naz’s strength, anger, and violence. Naz doesn’t seem like a man blessed by God either, though because of his ethnicity and religion, he is in a post-9/11 land that is relatively hostile to him, despite his having been born in New York city.

images

An outsider like Samson, Naz also has secrets, as Stone (John Turturro, above R) and Chandra (Kara Amaran, above L) learned in the previous episode and again last night. Samson’s secret was the key to his strength: his unshorn hair. Naz has already shorn his hair, so that doesn’t seem to be the key to his “strength.” In fact, I’m guessing most viewers don’t think Naz has much strength, unless naïveté and stupidity count as “strength” when you have enough of either one.

images

In fact, let’s count Naz’s shaving his head before going to trial for rape and murder as one of his more  stupid choices. I’m not even going to go back to episode 1 where Naz stole his dad’s cab to go to a party, picked up a strange girl, took unknown drugs from her, had unprotected sex with her without even knowing her name, woke to find her dead and ran out, broke back in after he found he’d forgotten his keys, then ran out again with the bloody knife in his pocket. From the premiere, we knew Naz was unrealistically naïve and foolish.

gallery-1471028960-naz-tattoo

But in episode 6, we can add getting prison tatttoos, just before your murder trial, in places you can’t hide (on the knuckles), tattoos that say Sin and Bad, no less, among those incredibly stupid choices that Naz makes. Oh, and let’s not forget Naz’s free-basing with Freddie (Michael Kenneth Williams).

images-6

I realize that Naz is in prison, and that he’s asked Freddie for protection, but nothing says Naz has to do drugs and further dull his already-befuddled mind in order to survive. His ability to beat up one inmate and intimidate others has proven that the boy already has most of what it takes to survive the penal system.

Unknown-2

But back to the metaphor of Samson and Delilah.

Samson fell hard for the seductress Delilah, and she apparently toyed with his affections in order to learn the secret of his strength so that she could betray him and have his enemies capture him. Delilah asked Samson multiple times what the source of his strength was, and Samson lied to her every time but the last.

Unknown-4

Samson’s secret was the source of his strength, and, in The Night Of, Naz has more than enough secrets: his rage, his capacity for violence, and his taking illicit amphetamines which can cause further rage as well as psychotic episodes. But do Naz’s secrets give him strength? I suppose it depends on how you look at it. They seem to be helping him survive in prison, even amongst the baddest of the bad boys.

Did those secrets get him involved with the victim? Naz’s secrets don’t seem to have had anything to do with that, unless the illicit Adderal “persuaded” Naz to steal his father’s cab and to have drug-and-alcohol-fueled sex with a complete stranger.

So, if Naz is the betrayed Samson, then who is Delilah in The Night Of? Is the murdered rich girl Andrea the seductress? As a representative of the type of girl Naz dreamed of, perhaps Andrea unconsciously tempted him much as Delilah tempted Samson. Of course, she’s not the initial reason Naz stole the cab, but she did get his mind off the party he was planning to attend, and she did convince him to take drugs, get him back to her home, and get him to play dangerous games with knives.

images-13

In the original biblical story, however, Delilah is the one who betrays Samson, after he is already in love with her, though it is understood that Samson is as much responsible for his own downfall as is the seductress Delilah. After all, had Samson not abandoned his God to be with a foreign woman, he would never have revealed the secret of his strength, been shorn and lost his power, then been blinded by his captives.

(I realize there’s a problem with the story of Samson and Delilah itself, since God is the one that causes or allows Samson to initially be attractive to foreign, Philistine women, so that God can show His own strength and power through Samson, but that’s one of the unresolved mysteries of the Bible stories.)

In any event, though Judges presents Samson in a relatively non-judgmental, mostly sympathetic light, Judges still puts the burden of responsibility for his ultimate capture and suffering solidly on Samson’s own shoulders.

If we are to follow that interpretation of the biblical story, then Naz, as Samson, is the one mostly, if not completely, responsible for his own downfall. Just as Samson got involved with a woman who was not of his ethnicity or religious beliefs, a woman whose loyalty was to the Philistines and to the money they would give her for her betrayal, Naz became involved, if only for part of one night, with a woman who was not of his socio-economic class, his ethnicity, or his religious faith.

Whoa. Are the writers of The Night Of getting moral on us here? Or did their protagonist Naz just make some incredibly stupid and immature choices that night, choices that happened to involve a rich white girl? After all, if Andrea is the Delilah of this story, then she ends up dead, not wealthy after the betrayal of her lover.

As we learned in last night’s episode, Andrea was wealthy from the death of her mother. She was, in fact, wealthy enough to make her stepfather angry after she refused him half of her mother’s estate. As attorney Stone learned last night, Andrea’s stepfather has a history of marrying wealthy, older women. Thus, the stepfather has become a suspect in Andrea’s murder.

So far, Andrea doesn’t seem like much of a Delilah, despite the mortician-undertaker’s referring to Judges, and despite his calling Andrea, whom he met only briefly, a “cat” that plays with men like “yarn.”

Unknown-1

So what is all this Samson and Delilah stuff in The Night Of? Are viewers supposed to look at the source of the Biblical story — Judges — more than at the story itself? If so, who are the judges in this limited mini-series that is exploring the criminal justice system, and that finds it most sincerely corrupted?

images-7

Is Detective Box (Bill Camp), who never for an instant doubts Naz’s guilt nor seeks any other suspects, a Judge, condemning Naz without a trial?

Unknown

Is DA Weiss (Jeannie Berlin), who has virtually coerced her witnesses into testifying according to her script, a Judge, also condemning Naz without trial, and, worse, manipulating said trial witnesses’ testimony so that Naz is condemned without sufficient evidence?

landscape-1471184407-night-of

Are attorneys Stone and Chandra the Judges? Though they represent Naz, they see his flaws, and they realize that he has secrets and that, worse, he has lied to them: about his personal illicit drug use during the night of the murder, as well as about his violent past when Naz, without provocation, threw a fellow student down a set of steps, breaking the boy’s arm, and got expelled from school so that Naz then had to transfer to another high school.

I’m guessing that we viewers are the Judges in The Night Of. 

Not only are we judging Naz and his victim, we’re judging the criminal justice system itself, from the police officers to the detectives, from the attorneys to the judges, from the penal system to our society itself. We are judging the criminal justice system and finding it corrupt, biased, and inhumane.

Further, we are judging the criminal justice system and finding it terribly and relentlessly horrifying for anyone who happens to get caught up in its maws.

Related Posts

Gripping Crime Drama:
HBO’s The Night Of Mini-Series,
episode 1, “The Beach,” Review and Recap

HBO’s Dark & Powerful Mini-Series:
The Night Of, e2-3, Recap & Review

Legal & Medical Pariahs:
Naz & Stone are the Victims in HBO’s Limited Mini-Series
The Night Of, Episode 4, “The Art of War,” Review

The Stone Also Rises: HBO’s The Night Of,
episode 5, “The Season of the Witch,” Recap & Review

Share

2 Comments

Filed under Actors, Crime Drama, MiniSeries/Limited MiniSeries, Movies/Television, Recap, Review, The Night Of miniseries

The Stone Also Rises: HBO’s The Night Of, episode 5, “The Season of the Witch,” Recap & Review

Share

Spoilers

Unknown-1

It is certainly no surprise that Naz, the Pakistani-American college student arrested for rape and murder after a night of drink, drugs, and sex with a hot stranger whom he picked up in his father’s “borrowed” cab in Manhattan, is slowly but ever so surely sinking under the oppressive weight of the American penal system.  Inmates don’t learn to be good in prison: they learn to be better criminals. It’s a matter of survival, and who can blame Naz for his increasingly dangerous criminal activities, especially since they will no doubt help him survive? As Naz (Rhiz Ahmed) is steadily deteriorating at Rikers, his attorney, John Stone, magnificently portrayed by John Turturro, is steadily rising. From the bedraggled and rumpled ambulance-chaser who happened to be in the “right place” at the “right time” to catch the big case, Stone has become the best investigator in all of New York city.

images

Naz Sinks

In “The Season of the Witch,” episode 5 of the 8-part limited HBO mini-series, The Night Of, created and written Steven Zaillian and Richard Price, viewers were given adequate evidence that Naz is morally drowning in Rikers. Naz shaved his head so he’s not quite the pretty boy any longer (though, of course, it’s a really bad move for his impending trial). After an invitation from Freddy and his crew, Naz beat the guy who burned him with baby-oil-and-boiling-water napalm.

images-10

Naz flexed his metaphorical muscles by blocking the view of prisoners watching television, then changed the channel on them when one of them told him to get out of the way.

On visitor’s day, at the behest of his protector, Freddy, Naz swalllowed four “eight-balls” smuggled in by another prisoner’s mother. Naz is sinking so quickly that, soon, he may not even come up occasionally for air.

nightof5karanturturro

After Stone questioned Naz about taking illegal substances, Naz lied about having amphetamines in his system on the night of the murder; he tried to pretend the tox-screen was mistakenly identifying  his asthma inhaler ingredient as “uppers.” Stone quickly dismissed that, badgering Naz by naming various controlled substances that he suspected Naz of taking. Naz finally admitted using Adderal, a controlled substance, which can cause anger, agitation, and psychotic episodes. Stone (above, R) and his new associate Chandra (Amara Karan, above L) aren’t the only ones crossing Good Boy off Naz’s list: Detective Box (Bill Camp) also crossed it off. Literally.

images-7

In addition to using amphetamines illegally and lying about it to the police and to his attorney, Naz has a serious amount of rage under his placid exterior. Even gangsta Freddy (Michael Kenneth Williams) was astonished by the violent anger Naz displayed, commenting on it later to Naz.

images-6

I still think Naz might be innocent — which doesn’t mean he won’t be convicted — if only because, as Todd VanDerWerff of Vox.com writes, his attorney John Stone still believes Naz to be innocent. Stone is so street-smart that he doesn’t seem likely to mistake guilt for innocence; in any event, Stone would represent Naz even if he were guilty, as Stone made clear to his son’s high school class when questioned about whether he would represent someone he knew to be guilty. Representing someone who “deserves” fair legal representation is quite different from doggedly pursuing evidence of a client’s innocence. Stone seems to be doing the latter. While seriously investigating Naz’s case, Stone has proven that he is more than street-smart: he is the most competent “detective” in the series.

Unknown

Stone Rises

Of course, Stone doesn’t have to do everything himself to become a good investigator. He clearly has the connections necessary to be a top-notch criminal attorney. At the murder scene, Stone and Chandra watched as Stone’s hired investigator went over the place, noticing that the outer security door didn’t latch, even when locked, and even when repeatedly closed tightly. The investigator also found blood outside in the back courtyard (?), which may be “squirrel blood,” but which also might be the blood of another suspect since Naz left by the front door. Stone may not have the requisite trial experience to warrant the respect of the police, detectives, and prosecuting attorneys, but he has more important connections in the investigative field. Further, Stone is doing what no one else in The Night Of is doing: looking for other suspects who might have killed the girl.

images-9

While Box is compiling the timeline of the murder night (above), and while DA Weiss (Jeannie Berlin, below) is getting her witnesses in line, having them practice their “Naz is Guilty” lines, as she did with the coroner after showing him a photo of Naz’s cut hand and asking if it could have happened when Naz’s “hand slipped from the handle to the blade as he was stabbing” the girl,

images-1

Stone is not only looking for another suspect, he found a couple.

Remember the two African-American males who were walking down the street in front of Andrea’s home? Remember how one of whom insulted Naz by calling him “Mustafa” and asking if he’d forgotten his “bomb” materials? That’s Trevor. When interrogated by Detective Box, Trevor lied, saying he was alone that night. Viewers know he wasn’t. To make sure viewers didn’t miss the fact that Trevor wasn’t alone, the camera zoomed in on the face of his (silent) partner. After Stone found silent partner Duane in episode 5, the camera zoomed in on his face again, like this,

images-11

just in case any viewer forgot that Trevor was, indeed, with another person in front of Andrea’s house when Naz was going up her front steps.

Unknown-3

In a laundromat, Stone intimidated Trevor into revealing the identity of his partner that night, something that even DA Weiss was unable to do (though, in fairness, she may not yet realize that he was with another person, though this may be evidence of her lack of investigative skills and her over-reliance on the detectives). So, Stone not only found one viable alternative suspect on paper, Stone found the guy in person, even if the guy started running, leaving Stone in a dangerous-looking abandoned warehouse at the end of the episode. Stone proved that he is, so far, the most competent investigator on the case by finding evidence at the crime scene that police missed, and by finding other viable suspects.

Yes, you read that correctly. Suspects. Stone found Trevor’s silent partner, but Stone also found Andrea’s drug dealer, and coerced him into admitting that Andrea owed him money. Considering the fact that the dealer owes other people money himself, Stone found a motive for the dealer’s violence: if he was attempting to get Andrea to pay her debt, the dealer might have gotten carried away. Another suspect. Stone is really shining as an investigator. He’s using the same heavy-handed, coercive tactics as the police and the detectives, but by assuming that Naz may not be guilty, Stone is finding more suspects.

chandra-512x512

Stone also got himself a partner in Chandra, who came to him after her boss, Crowe, quit the case. Crowe had arranged a plea deal with DA Weiss, and when Naz muffed it in court, Crowe quit in a tiff. I guess she didn’t want to go to trial, despite telling Naz’s parents that she was more qualified to represent Naz in a criminal trial than Stone would be. Chandra not only asked Stone if she could help him on Naz’s case, she offered to pay him (from the large firm that employs Crowe). Stone didn’t get the $50K he requested, but he got $30K. Since he’s been working pro bono so far, that’s an improvement as well as a testament to the fact that he’s no pushover. Street-smart and savvy as an investigator, Stone has also proven himself to be an adequate financial negotiator.

images-13

Stone is also standing up for himself personally: he is beginning to doubt the medical treatment prescribed for his eczema, if only because the steroids are making him unable to perform sexually. After his pharmacist loudly and publicly announced that no pharmacy in the area had any Viagra, Stone bought some on the black market. (It was in vain, since his sexual partner is a prostitute, and she ignored Stone after a paying customer appeared at the bar where Stone had ordered champagne to “celebrate” his return to sexual activity.) Though I find the eczema story the least interesting so far, I suppose its purpose is symbolic, as I said in “Naz and Stone are the Victims,” so who am I to complain about the continuing exploration of Stone’s medical condition, which symbolizes the frustration and hopelessness of Naz’s legal condition? In any event, Stone rose to the occasion, metaphorically and literally, in last night’s episode, taking control of his own health and treatment plan.

Naz is morally sinking into the morass of prison life as well as in the opinion of his attorney. Naz, with his hidden reservoir of rage, his lies, and his illegal prescription drug-use, is no longer a shining star, a perfect young man with nothing to hide. While Naz is falling, his attorney John Stone is steadily rising. From the ethically low but not necessarily immoral “ambulance-chaser” who took on Naz’s “assault” case without realizing that the young man was being charged with rape and murder, to the most competent investigator involved in the murder case,  Stone is beginning to shine, casting all the others involved in the prosecution into shadow, if only because they are all operating under the assumption that Naz is guilty.

Of course, whether or not Naz is innocent, he may end up convicted, and not necessarily because Stone is incompetent as a trial lawyer. At the trial, John Stone may surprise everyone, including himself. Given The Night Of’s negative portrayal of virtually everyone involved in the criminal justice system, however, Stone’s being competent as an attorney at a criminal trial may be completely irrelevant. In The Night Of, the entire criminal justice system is corrupt, so Naz will probably be convicted, and viewers may not ever learn if he is actually innocent. After all, it would be more realistic if viewers did not know whether or not Naz was guilty. It would mirror the real world more accurately.

In any event, Naz’s guilt or innocence is irrelevant to the show’s bigger message: no one involved in the criminal justice system has anything other than self-interest in mind when s/he makes decisions that impact someone else’s life. Viewers are already learning, however, that Stone, who may have only had his own self-interest in mind when he took Naz on as a client, is much more than the Columbo he seems to be. Instead, Stone is the most competent and clever investigator New York has ever seen. The sun may be setting for Naz and his freedom, but The Stone shines ever brighter as he rises.

Related Posts

Gripping Crime Drama:
HBO’s The Night Of Mini-Series,
episode 1, “The Beach,” Review and Recap

HBO’s Dark & Powerful Mini-Series:
The Night Of, e2-3, Recap & Review

Legal & Medical Pariahs:
Naz & Stone are the Victims in HBO’s Limited Mini-Series
The Night Of, Episode 4, “The Art of War,” Review

Share

Leave a Comment

Filed under Actors, Crime Drama, MiniSeries/Limited MiniSeries, Movies/Television, Recap, Review, The Night Of miniseries

Legal & Medical Pariahs: Naz & Stone Are the Victims in HBO’s Limited MiniSeries The Night Of, e4, “The Art of War,” Review

Share

Spoilers

images-3

HBO’s critically acclaimed limited mini-series The Night Of  examines the current state of criminal justice in America via a fictional New York murder case. Created by Steven Zaillian and Richard Price, and based on the BBC series Criminal Justice, the miniseries has metaphorically battered the legal system starting with the show’s premiere. From the police to the attorneys, from the prison guards to the judges, the criminal justice system in The Night Of  assumes that everyone accused of committing a crime is most certainly and without exception guilty. In episode 4, “The Art of War,” this metaphorical slash and burn was expanded to indict the medical establishment alongside the legal one. In symbolically parallel stories involving the accused murderer, Naz, and his attorney, Stone, the legal and the medical arenas were mercilessly dissected. Naz is a victim of a legal system that is predisposed to find him guilty because of race, ethnicity, religion, and circumstances, while his attorney Stone, suffering from disfiguring and painful eczema, is a victim of a medical system that appears to have little empathy for anyone’s suffering.  Both Naz and Stone are victims. They are pariahs and outcasts — unwelcome and undesirable.

images-13

The Night Of  began its twisted journey with a young Pakistani-American college student-tutor, Nasir “Naz” Khan (Riz Ahmed) taking his father’s cab, without permission, to attend a party for members of the basketball team. Though he is a good student and a tutor, Naz is an outsider to these players. He is not an athlete, and, probably worse, he is a good student. One basketball player invites Naz to the party, but another is annoyed by Naz’s inclusion. Naz doesn’t care that he’s not fully welcome: he just wants to meet the type of girls who will be at the party, girls he ordinarily would consider out of his league. Instead of making it to the party, Naz is sidetracked by an enigmatic stranger (Sofia Black-D’Ellia) who gets into the cab and asks to be taken to “the beach.”ep-1-clip-knife-games-2-881115-1_PRO1-300

Naz takes the girl to her home, where a passing African-American who sees the couple calls Naz “Mustafa” and inquires about his “bomb” materials. Though Naz is approximately the same age as the girl, he is not the same race: he is again branded as an outsider. Once inside the girl’s home, after doing some drugs and shots of tequila, Naz has sex with her. When he awakes later, he is in the kitchen, and the girl is dead upstairs. At the crime scene, the police and detectives assume that the “Arab” who was with the dead girl is guilty by race, religion, and circumstances. Before he is charged, Naz has become a pariah.

Enter John Stone (John Turturro), an “ambulance-chasing” attorney who takes Naz’s case simply because Stone was “in the right place, at the right time.” More importantly, Stone probably takes the case he is an underdog himself. He seems to specialize in representing underdogs and undesirables: he is shown helping transvestite/transgendered prostitute Paul-ine, so it’s no surprise that Stone appoints himself Naz’s attorney after he sees the young man completely isolated in a holding cell at the precinct. After Naz’s family hires a more important lawyer because she offered to represent Naz pro bono, Stone continues to investigate the circumstances of Naz’s case. Instead of being an “ambulance chaser” in it for money, Stone seems to be the only one who actually cares about Naz’s welfare. A fellow outsider and pariah, Stone empathizes with Naz in a way that no one else in the judicial system seems to.

allison-crowe-512x512

Attorney Crowe (Glenne Headly), who lives up to her name as a scavenger and predator, goes to the DA and brokers a plea deal for Naz. Despite Crowe’s statement to Naz’s parents that she would fight for the accused young man because his case reminded her of why she went into law in the first place, and despite Crowe’s denigrating comment that Stone would do nothing but “cut a deal” because he isn’t a trial attorney in a big, exclusive (insiders’) firm like she is, Crowe immediately sold out her client without even attempting to gather any evidence in the case. After negotiating a plea with the District Attorney, Crowe went to Naz and said she would try to get the very deal to which she’d already agreed on his behalf. Naz is nothing but a means for Crowe to further her own career. He is a prop, an actor who needs to “rehearse” his lines in her play.

images-5

Crowe misrepresented herself to Naz’s parents, and treated them as annoying inferiors who had to be chastised. Outside the courthouse, when Naz’s father Salim (Peyman Moaadi, below) asked, in a whisper, if he could make a statement to reporters, Crowe coldly scolded him, ordering him never to “interrupt” her again. Like his son Naz, Salim is an outsider to the justice system as well as to the entertainment business: Crowe is a legal insider who wants to be a celebrity, à la Nancy Grace.

salim-khan-512x512

Crowe misled Naz’s parents, but she lies to Naz outright. With Naz’s life in the balance, Crowe’s showed herself ruthless and self-absorbed. She was furious with Naz when he didn’t answer the DA’s questions “correctly.” Instead of pleading “guilty,” as insider Crowe had instructed, the outsider Naz went rogue: in court, Naz stated that he did not, in fact, kill the girl. It was obvious that Crowe wasn’t upset because she believed Naz to be guilty and wished to save the state the cost of prosecution. She was concerned with her legal reputation and with the fact that Naz’s response had upset the judge’s expectations.

Naz is an outsider who breaks the insider rules of the plea deal, and he further alienates himself from the justice system when Crowe quits. At every move, whether because of his own action or that of others, Naz becomes more of a pariah. Though Naz metaphorically fights back against the legal system by refusing to admit guilt in the plea deal, he is already in prison without bail. Given that stark reality (and the clear bias against the legal and judicial system that The Night Of is presenting), it is not likely that things are going to turn out well for Naz. He is an outsider, and it looks like outsiders get destroyed in The Night Of.

images-27

Imprisoned without bail at Rikers as he awaits trial, Naz is mercilessly reminded that he is a pariah. Everyone gives him advice, but most of it is conflicting and ends up hurting him. From Attorney Crowe to the judge, from the “friendly” inmate who later viciously assaults Naz to the powerful convict, Freddy (Michael Kenneth Williams, below), who wants to “protect” the college student, everyone wants something from Naz. None of these insiders has Naz’s best interests in mind as they attempt to manipulate and control Naz. He is an outsider that others want to use, not help.

images-22

A pariah in the post-9/11, racial-profiling world, Naz is a victim of a criminal justice system where he is already and forever an outsider simply because he is not a policeman, detective, attorney, prison guard, or judge. Further, once he is an accused criminal, and the worse kind of criminal at that, Naz will remain an outsider, unwelcome and despised by the insiders.

There seems little possibility that Naz will be able to successfully fight the impersonal justice machinery. The police and detectives have, from the beginning, assumed his guilt rather than his innocence “until proven guilty.”  The attorneys do not wish to be “stuck with the truth,” or they care more about their personal reputations than Naz’s fate.  The inmates and guards in the violent and merciless penal system care only for their perquisites, their “names,” their standing in the convict society. In the criminal justice environment, Naz is an undesirable because of his ethnicity as much as because of his alleged crime. He is undesirable unless he can somehow help someone else’s career, be it legal or criminal.

The only person who seems to genuinely empathize with Naz is attorney Stone, who is an outsider himself. With his rumpled, disheveled suit and overcoat, he is given advice on an appropriate tailor and on what kind of proper suit to wear to a trial of this magnitude by District Attorney Weiss (Jeannie Berlin) after their own plea deal falls apart.

helen-weiss-512x512

He is heckled by police officers as an ambulance chaser. He is ridiculed by chief investigator Detective Box (Bill Camp).

Stone is threatened by the Director of a Rehab House (cameo/guest appearance by Turturro’s cousin Aida Turturro, below) after he is seen taking photos while investigating the murder victim in Naz’s case.

Unknown

Though Stone is a street-wise attorney who technically should automatically be an insider in the criminal justice system, he remains an unwelcome outsider. To emphasize his pariah-status, The Night Of  writers have  Stone fruitlessly fighting the inhospitable medical establishment, which is set up as a symbolic parallel to the justice system that Naz is fighting.

images copy

Seeking a treatment for his incurable eczema, which stands as a visible symbol of Stone’s “undesirable” status, Stone faces doctors who regularly contradict each other or who dismiss their colleagues’ treatment plans, as well as pharmacists who openly scoff at the prescribed medications. By showing Stone’s following the recommended “medical” treatments — like applying Crisco onto the eczema-affected areas then encasing his feet and lower legs in Saran Wrap —  The Night Of reveals Stone’s desperation to be healed, to be cured. It is also his desperation to fit in, to become an insider rather than to remain an outsider.

Unknown-6

The symbolic sub-plot of Stone’s adversarial and confusing “fight” with his eczema as well as with the members of the medical community brilliantly parallels Naz’s “fight” with the criminal justice system. Insiders of both the medical establishment and the legal system consider Stone and Naz to be uncooperative outsiders, guilty of disobeying the “rules,” whether they are supposed to be following scripts for plea deals or told to follow recommended medical treatments. No matter what these two men do, neither system will accept Stone or Naz as one of the privileged insiders. Neither of them will be welcomed to the inner group.

Stone is street-wise, tough, and not easily intimidated: his interactions with the police officers at the precinct where Naz was jailed, with the lead investigator Detective Box, with the judge at the bail hearing, and with the District Attorney during a plea deal all prove that Stone is competent and clever. He knows the personal and professional lives of his “opponents;” he knows how to “attack” them even if they seem to be baiting him in jest. Technically, Stone should have already been accepted since it is clear that he is an insider. For some reason that remains unclear to viewers but which is symbolized by Stone’s incurable and disfiguring eczema, the attorney remains a pariah. He is not accepted. He is not welcome. He is undesirable.

Just as Stone’s disfiguring eczema can be managed but not cured, Naz’s race and ethnicity could be tolerated, but they cannot be changed or completely ignored. His race and ethnicity, combined with his religious beliefs, made Naz an outsider and a pariah before the circumstances of the murder make him appear guilty of a heinous crime. Naz and Stone are pariahs, undesirables, unwelcome outsiders in a criminal justice system and in a medical system that will, no doubt, forever remain closed to them.

If you’ve missed The Night Of, your summer is not nearly as exciting as it could be. No matter how harrowing its presentation of the American justice system, this show is compelling drama, well written and extremely well acted. You can catch up any time on HBOgo or HBOnow. The mini-series airs Sundays at 10p.m. ET on HBO, and the rest of the week on other HBO channels. Viewers who are HBO subscribers can watch the premiere “The Beach” free. Other viewers can see the tease or the official HBO trailer for the miniseries.

Related Posts

Gripping Crime Drama:
HBO’s The Night Of MiniSeries,
episode 1, “The Beach,” Review and Recap

HBO’s Dark & Powerful MiniSeries:
The Night Of, e2-3, Recap & Review

Share

Leave a Comment

Filed under Actors, Crime Drama, MiniSeries/Limited MiniSeries, Movies/Television, Recap, Review, The Night Of miniseries