HBO's 'The Night Of'

Can't believe there's no thread on thism Unless I'm blind?

Wife and I just watched episode one and I'm hooked. That might have been the most uncomfortable I've been watching a show ever. Amazing acting, and from what I've read, it's a dead on take to how the criminal justice system really works.

In not sure if we'll actually finish it, but I'll probably watch at least two more episodes tomorrow.

I was so salty about the ending it made me dislike the entire show.

It was gripping while I was watching it though.

Two things really bothered me about the movie.

1) How much time they spent on Turturro's character (Jack's) development. Don't get me wrong, the scenes with his feet and cat are acted well and in a different kind of show/movie, it would be great for character development, but it pulled focus from what was important in the series, wasted time and ultimately added very little to the story. You could completely remove it and other than some additional sympathy for Jack, you'd lose nothing. Same with his family life with his ex/kid. It was never central enough to the story for me to care. It seemed like it was just added to add dimension to a character who didn't really require much. And it could have been in there, but they didn't need to keep going back to it so often.

2) I also didn't buy a young female attorney (Chandra) falling for her client and being so stupid as to kiss him and pass drugs to him in front of what she'd have to know would be an area under video surveillance. It was just so far fetched, with out further development.

And, so, here is how I fix these issues. I take the foot/cat/kid/ex time away from Jack and add it to Chandra's back story. Sprinkle in her encounters with racism in her past by flashing to it while she encounters racist comments against Nasir throughout the episodes. So you show them in parallel. Then you have her meet Nasir in the holding cell to discuss his case and you split time between them talking from normal camera shots and then the surveillance camera. Every so often, she clearly makes "eye contact" with the surveillance camera. Nothing happens in this meeting, but in a later scene we then see her kissing him in full view of the security camera she obviously knows is there. We never get concrete proof, but there is enough there to suspect she's doing this not out of an inability to control her lady passion, but as an ace up the sleeve in case the trial is going poorly.

Ultimately, it's not enough and she throws away her career for nothing. But at least there is way more meaning to the gesture than just "silly, love struck girl".

All that said, I enjoyed the shit out of it, even despite these flaws.

2) I also didn't buy a young female attorney (Chandra) falling for her client and being so stupid as to kiss him and pass drugs to him in front of what she'd have to know would be an area under video surveillance. It was just so far fetched, with out further development.

It just made no sense to me as to why this was even included. There were a number of things that I didn't think were fleshed out enough, like this, Naz' school experience, Jack's relationship with his son and, really, how long this whole thing took. I couldn't tell if Naz had been in jail a week or two years - especially when he got "SIN" tatoooed on his hands for no real reason at all.