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The DA is an interesting casting decision.

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I said this to my son last night.

Jeannie Berlin is the daughter of a famous (to me) comic actress, writer, and director, Elaine May. Jeannie was in a pretty famous movie from the early 70s, "The Heartbreak Kid," written by Neil Simon and directed by her mother. She looked a lot like her mother in those days.

But then she kind of disappeared. I know she is also in Woody Allen's new movie, "Cafe Society."

She had a very strange opening speech to the jury--strange in terms of how the actress delivered it. It was the first time that I thought that she was just not right for the role, and I wondered aloud how they happened to cast her.

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There were times where I couldn't understand what she was saying, and it was like she had dip in her cheek or something.

Great call. So much so that I'd be surprised if it doesn't end like that. I think I'd really like it, too, thematically speaking.

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He keeps lowering his standards of what he won't do in prison.

I think he gets off for the murder - but before he leaves prison he is asked by Omar to kill someone and does it with no remorse like he pushed the kid down the stairs.

He leaves prison "innocent" of the crime he was accused of but has become a criminal/murderer.

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And then season two is "The Nights of: Naz's rampage"

and he becomes a stone cold serial killer haunting the dark streets of NYC at night? Honing his craft, taking out people Omar wants him to kill out in the real world?

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Great call. So much so that I'd be surprised if it doesn't end like this. I think I'd really like it, too, thematically speaking.

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yeah....but if so, exactly what are we supposed to feel then?

innocent man wrongly accused. justice is finally served. but in the end he becomes that which he was accused of.

are we happy for him? sad? or just confused. i think the point is to make you conflicted about it all and realize the system and prejudices are terrible.

It's sort of like Sopranos and Breaking Bad but from a different perspective. Someone we like but that does despicable things - but in this case it wasn't sort of a conscious decision to go down that path (Tony becoming a mob boss in effect for his family, Walter White becoming a meth dealer for his family because he is dying). In this case he isn't doing it for his family and in reality his family is paying a high price too under the belief that he is a good person.

the biggest problem with such an ending is that it's a boring cliche

An innocent man being accused of a murder that's a slam dunk case for the prosecution, only to have the scrappy defense team pull off a Hail Mary win as said innocent man ultimately commits murder in prison... is a cliche? I've literally never seen that plot before, ever.

innocent man enters prison

acquitted but leaves a hardened criminal

yawn

adjectives don't vastly improve the arc

sorry for being so cynical I guess

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the biggest problem with such an ending is that it's a boring cliche

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oh good....the biggest wet bag of adding nothing has chimed in.

if you do nothing but crap on a show and other peoples comments and ideas.....and yet offer nothing yourself in the way of critiques or pros/cons or even one single original thought other than "everything sucks" which isn't even original....

ummmmm. get a new hobby. and find another show.

...and like TCTTS said....i've never seen that show/movie

I am finishing up Stranger Things. no complaints whatsoever thus far.

I think that arc would be okay, but IMO, the cliche-heavy path they took to get there would sort of spoil the whole batch. If that's how it turns out, I think it needs something particularly interesting, compelling, etc. in how it goes down to help ratchet it up.

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At the beginning we were seeing the judicial system through the eyes of a character that we had sympathy for. Now with the horribly clichd and overly heavy handed prison scenes, Naz is turned into a character that the viewer doesn't care about one way or the other.

It's fine to have the viewer be conflicted about the main protagonist, but it takes skill in achieving that while not having it be too in your face. Breaking bad managed to achieve it, although admittedly that was over a much longer story arc.

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I was just talking about this last night. I'm not a fan of the heavy handed prison scenes. I really thought this would be more about the crime/evidence/investigation than a breaking bad story line. I'm not sure I care as much about him now that he is breaking.

...and his tattoos are dumb as *****

SIN

They couldn't come up with a good one that at least took 4 letters.

Yep. Brilliant idea to get a tattoo where the jury can see it.

It just doesn't seem believable to me that he would become this person so quickly. It feels too rushed to me.

'sin'...and then later, 'bad' on his other hand. and the lone wolf howling on his shoulder. so dumb.

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Yep. Brilliant idea to get a tattoo where the jury can see it.

It just doesn't seem believable to me that he would become this person so quickly. It feels too rushed to me.

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the time elapse from the murder until now isn't really well known, but my guess is that he has been at Rikers for several months.

At least he didn't get this on the other shoulder

I had to go to prison to become a criminal.

-Andy Dufresne:

Sin on one hand

Bad on the other

oooo... Mufasa! say it again say it again

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Yep. Brilliant idea to get a tattoo where the jury can see it.

It just doesn't seem believable to me that he would become this person so quickly. It feels too rushed to me.

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the time elapse from the murder until now isn't really well known, but my guess is that he has been at Rikers for several months.

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Yeah, how long does it take for a murder case to go to trial? Could be even over year.

Do all the people complaining about the show's time lapse suffer from an inability to draw inferences?

A limited series is not going to address all the minutiae of the New York County DA's prosecution of a murder.

Maybe it is because I enjoyed Law & Order in the past or because I have too much other stuff on my mind than the perfection of an HBO crime drama.

I'd say the only weak spot for me is the casting of the stepdad, but only because he is the same boring character from House of Cards.

I have enjoyed six episodes thus far and will enjoy two more simply because it is an interesting story.

I'm good with the time lapse. With only 8 episodes and needing to go from murder to trial, it's necessary and I don't think they've done a bad job with it. At times is seems a little odd because the events with the characters seems more linear and closer together, but I think that's hard to avoid.

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I'd say the only weak spot for me is the casting of the stepdad, but only because he is the same boring character from House of Cards.

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He was so bad on HoC that I legitimately thought he was a real-life journalist who they had let play a journalist on the show for some reason. I was shocked to read that he was a legit, working actor.

If I remember correctly they wanted to fast track the trial bc of the media circus or something.

I loved the support groups reaction... I lol'd

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Jeannie Berlin is the daughter of a famous (to me) comic actress, writer, and director, Elaine May. Jeannie was in a pretty famous movie from the early 70s, "The Heartbreak Kid," written by Neil Simon and directed by her mother. She looked a lot like her mother in those days.

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Heartbreak Kid was a pretty funny movie and Cybil Shepard was beyond hot in it.

I thought the DA was a ****** the first couple times she was on screen. I don't understand that casting choice at all. Or the stepdad.

****** = male turned female.

Short of Naz being killed, the ending will ultimately suck because we have seen too many films/TV shows.

These are the likely outcomes we have seen
1) create reasonable doubt by deflecting to the "real killer"
2) innocent dude gets locked up, wampwamp
3) some technically gets him off

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the biggest problem with such an ending is that it's a boring cliche

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oh good....the biggest wet bag of adding nothing has chimed in.

if you do nothing but crap on a show and other peoples comments and ideas.....and yet offer nothing yourself in the way of critiques or pros/cons or even one single original thought other than "everything sucks" which isn't even original....

ummmmm. get a new hobby. and find another show.

...and like TCTTS said....i've never seen that show/movie

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How dare you talk to cone in that manner. Who are you to berate a fellow poster on this board? Cone is entitled to say whatever he pleases. This isn't the movie/show review board. It's the entertainment board. Take your righteous babble some place else.

Is this a joke I'm missing?

I haven't seen the last episode. The show is really sucking. Lost interest with all of the foot fetish and sparse detective work from both sides.

The speed in which they've gone to trial is fairly unrealistic. Especially when Omar is also indefinitely in Rikers awaiting trial and box and stone are still investigating.

i think they're trying to be 2 things - a bigger story of the criminal justice system and also a procedural. That's not working.

I'm also a little disappointed the path this show has gone down. I wanted and hoped it would end up being Box vs Stone. That's the way I felt it was being set up in the beginning. Now I'm not sure really whats at the heart of this show. Trying to tell multiple stories and angles at once? I'm not sure it has worked for a mini series when every episode is precious.

With only two episodes, we probably get a lot of the courtroom drama next week, a resolution in the last episode but then probably the last bit will have to be on the "after", how everyone's lives has been affected?

I'm guess at the end of this, Naz will have gone from someone who cared and wanted to be set free because he didn't commit this crime to someone who doesn't care about his fate at all. Maybe that's what this show boils down to and that transformation.

The crime though -- makes it such a good whodunit! That's the disappointing part to me, plus the setup of Box vs Stone in the first couple of episodes.

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I'd say the only weak spot for me is the casting of the stepdad, but only because he is the same boring character from House of Cards.

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He was so bad on HoC that I legitimately thought he was a real-life journalist who they had let play a journalist on the show for some reason. I was shocked to read that he was a legit, working actor.

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This-then I saw him in Boardwalk and I think he's good in that. He's ATROCIOUS in HoC though.