The Lincoln Lawyer (Season 2, Part 1): When the first season of “The Lincoln Lawyer” was released last year, one of the primary features that perhaps bolstered its popularity was a vintage feel of a procedural show released by a streaming giant like Netflix. Unlike legal shows like “Perry Mason”, which chose to embrace its legal trappings along with its period settings to its full advantage, most of “The Lincoln Lawyer” coasts along amiably, lacking the engagement which a show like “Bosch” (another adaptation of a series of novels by Michael Connelly), manages to produce in spades.
The Lincoln Lawyer (Season 2, Part 1) Recap:
Episodes 1 & 2 – Korean The Case of the Tattoo Guy
This writer is choosing to differentiate the five episodes being released so far into chunks. The chunks are purely narrative-based, focusing primarily on the main plot of the season. Thus, surprisingly, the first two episodes hint at the future overarching plot of the season but deal with the fallout of an open-ended plot thread from the previous season.
As Episode 1 (The Rules of Professional Conduct) opens, we see Mickey Haller (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) in Photoshop for what we learn is a magazine. The “Hottest Defence Attorney of LA” is on top of the world, and while he tries to be humble, it is not a spot he dislikes. The last two cases and their rigmarole truly made Haller, with the not-guilty conviction of video-game developer Trevor Elliott, now a convicted murderer (and also dead), as well as an innocent victim, Jesus Menendez, a man who had been convicted of murder but was declared innocent. But as Mickey Haller heads off for his first case this season, Izzy Jetts (Jazz Raycole) can see through the blinding lights of fame: the man who used to deal with issues off the backseat of his Lincoln Navigator is now redecorating his offices and is the hot topic for the media.
The main plot begins with Mickey investigating the case of a man named Russell Lawson, who is charged with a felony for mistakenly breaking into his neighbor’s house. After Mickey succeeded in having him exonerated, he thought that Russell Lawson’s story would come to a close. Mickey thought Russell was innocent because he thought he was a very shy person and that he would be traumatized and cautious going forward. But mysteriously, Russell had paid for his full retainer, and at the end of the first episode, the connection becomes clear.
At the end of Season 1, we see a man with a kanji tattoo on his arm looking out at Mickey Haller as he goes surfing. Mickey Haller tracks down Gloria Dayton, AKA Glory Days, a crucial witness who vanished during the trial of Jesus Menendez, the man accused of killing Martha Renteria. Due to Dayton’s disappearance, Menendez had been sent to prison, but Dayton finally admitting the marker of the actual murderer helped free Menendez. However, the inevitable happens in the second season as the case is reopened by Detective Raymond Griggs. Thus, Mickey would have to resume the search for Glory Days so she can testify again about Menendez’s innocence.
That night, when Mickey finally returns, he finds Lawson waiting at his house after having broken into it. And as the shock dissipates, Mickey sees the kanji tattoo and realizes that Lawson is the murderer, and because he has put Haller on a retainer, attorney-client privilege forbids him from revealing any of the details about this conversation, keeping Lawson clear because Mickey will be in a conflict of interest. Mickey is under pressure since, on the one hand, he has assured Menendez that the matter would be resolved definitively, but on the other, he is now under the thumb of Russell Lawson. Following his consultation with David Segal, Mickey comes up with a secret strategy (even from Cisco and Lorna).
Mickey’s plan hits a snag because Dayton had been caught red-handed in a narcotics case the day before she had been scheduled to deliver her testimony. And as Mickey tried to help her out, Dayton refused to divulge the drug dealer’s name. Under Mickey’s orders, Cisco finds out that Hector Moya, a key figure in the Tijuana Cartel, is also Dayton’s source. And this is how Mickey chooses to use Dayton as bait.
Mickey had solved the case of Jesus Menendez, but in the process, he had caused the arrest of corrupt cop, Macdonald, who had been a key witness in the case. Mickey’s ex-wife Maggie (Neve Campbell) was the lead. Because of that, as the season opens, her career is in a rut, while Haller has been flying high. This also indirectly causes a blowup at their dinner when Maggie and Haller disagree with their daughter’s new interest in horses. Now, though, Haller appears to be trying to make things right; he will reveal the whereabouts of Hector Moya if the DA’s office would drop the charges on Glory Days. Maggie takes a day but ultimately agrees.
Meanwhile, Russell is taunting Haller by flexing how much control he has over him, bringing in a traffic violation for him to make it go away. But Lorna is also surprised at how seriously Mickey has been taking Lawson’s case. Mickey plays 3D chess with Russell, where he leaves the folder along with Glory’s discharge papers beside them, placed intentionally so, so that Lawson would make the move. Now Mickey chooses to take a break for the whole day so that no blowback would fall on him, and even subtly points out to Griggs to keep a watch on Dayton’s house in the suburbs. Thus, when Lawson finally attacks Dayton at her house, the officers can capture him red-handed. This allows Haller to ensure Menendez is completely exonerated of the crime and the case is finally closed once and for all.
It is confirmed by Haller’s meeting and imprisoned by Lawson for the final time, where he retorts to Lawson’s threat by reminding him that he has clients across prisons all over the country who owe him a favor, and Haller will not be averse to pointing them in Lawson’s direction unless Lawson stands down. This is one of the few times “The Lincoln Lawyer” genuinely manages to evoke a sense of creepiness and danger in Lawson and Mickey’s interactions. He genuinely feels like a legitimate antagonist for Mickey, which is why the show’s decision to solve this case within the first two episodes felt like a welcome addition in terms of structure.
This writer genuinely thought that the show would employ these micro-arcs, but having seen the first five episodes being released, these two episodes are some of the few bright spots in this season, instead of the actual overarching plot, which takes over the rest of the season, as the final moment of episode 2 is punctuated by a phone call by Lisa Trammell, informing Haller that she has been arrested for the murder of businessman Mitchell Bondurant.
Episodes 3, 4 & 5 – The Lisa Trammell Case
The dinner with Maggie is where Mickey first meets Lisa Trammell, the chef of the restaurant, who sends him her compliments for the choicest dishes on the menu. Haller’s love for the food is only amplified by his meeting with Lisa, and that is a great thing because Lisa shows him around her restaurant and the garden where she grows her restaurant. When they finally go to bed together, the viewers buy the attraction because the actors have fantastic chemistry. But as we soon realize, Lisa is not averse to using the great Mickey Haller to grease her palms a bit.
To Mickey’s surprise, she drops by his office to inform him that businessman Michelle Bondurant had sent her a restraining order because she had been leading protests against Bondurant’s efforts at gentrification in that neighborhood. But now, after Lisa informs him that she is being held for murder, Mickey drives over to where she is being held. After talking with the detective (and promising him to look over the case of the detective’s brother-in-law), Mickey finally gets an opportunity to confer with Lisa before she is transported to county jail.
While the detective believes that Lisa has more or less confirmed having committed the murder, Mickey tries to hear Lisa out and also inform her of the current situation while also vehemently trying to make her understand that his belief in her innocence is irrelevant to his prowess as a defense lawyer. In all fairness, his not having preconceived notions might remove any bias from the case. But because Mickey had already been involved with Lisa, there is a huge conflict of interest at the heart of this case, whether Mickey wants to admit it or not.
At the elevator, Mickey runs into Andrea Freeman, the DA responsible for trying this case. While they have a nice competitive back and forth, it is clear that she manages to get under Haller’s skin, as immediately after exiting the elevator, Haller informs the media that he has taken over the case and that Trammell is innocent. Lorna, Haller’s assistant, already knows that was not the wisest of moves. In the courtroom, after hearing both of their arguments, the judge agrees to split the difference and set the bail at 2 million dollars. Lisa is immediately distraught at the amount, and Mickey, quick at his feet, decides to draw up a contract such that the rights to her life and this current case be sold for publication, with him handling all of the legal proceedings. That way, he believes, there would be a chance of some amount of remuneration from this debacle for both of them.
But back at the office, Haller and the team, including Izzy, whom Haller had deputized to help Lorna around the office, check out the evidence from Discovery. A coffee mug and a glass fragment are discovered at the crime scene. Margo Schafer, a staff member at Mitchell Bondurant’s office, have also recognized Lisa leaving the premises. Mickey wants to discover the missing hammer from Lisa’s toolbox because he knows the prosecution might use it against him if they got their hands on it.
There is a knock at the door, and Lisa, relieved to be released from jail, enters while everyone discusses the case. She introduces Mickey to podcaster Henry Dahl, who conducted an interview earlier that year with her and helped her get a bailout. She reveals that he plans to re-edit the previous podcasts and convert them into films using her story. Mickey pulls Henry aside and displays the power of attorney Lisa had previously signed, granting Mickey complete access to Lisa’s life rights and subsequent dealings with the media. His relationship with Dahl already starts as combative because he believes Dahl to be a conman with a completely self-serving angle.
Meanwhile, Mickey is also busy co-parenting his and Maggie’s daughter, Hayley. On the second day of Hayley’s horse-riding lessons, while conversing with her, Hayley reveals that Freeman and Maggie would often meet at their home during off-work hours, and Hayley had overheard Freeman describe the case. This immediately had Mickey’s gears grinding, and he calls Lorna and asks her to add more motions to the already drawn motions so that they can have Andrea taken off the case on the grounds of conflict of interest.
While that does not occur, the move overwhelms the judge with so many motions that the judge finally accepts the motion to remove her from the case. This jars Andrea enough to send in all the evidence to the defense offices as quickly as possible. While this has been a minor victory for Mickey, it does not sit well with Maggie, who has been angry at Mickey for essentially using their daughter; upon realizing that Mickey had slept with Lisa, she points out Mickey’s hypocrisy in not recognizing his conflicts within the case.
Her warning, however, does recontextualize Mickey, who refuses Lisa’s offer when she comes to his house to offer him food and company (he does not refuse the food, obviously). But he also emphatically states, to assuage Lisa’s doubts, that he believes she was notthe murderer. As Mickey watches Lisa leave, he does not notice Dahl sitting in a car in the opposite lane, keeping a watch on them.
As Andrea buries the defense team with boxes and boxes of evidence, Mickey and his team try to identify the probable cause for the murder, while Lorna posits that Lisa Trammell had both the motive and opportunity to commit the crime. The head wound, which they had discovered in photographic evidence of the victim, possibly matched the missing hammer. Mickey heads up to converse with Lisa regarding the hammer as well as dig up information about her past and her ex-husband, Jeff Tramell, to whom the hammer belonged.
While he cannot find out about Jeff, she does promise to supply his whereabouts in any way she can to him, either with a phone number or an email address. She, however, is perilously close to breaking down, as her business is down right now because suspected convicts are not good for business. But she does ask Mickey to come to the pay-what-you-wish food drive she is holding for the low-income members of the neighborhood.
Mickey, however, has strong reasons to believe that Andrea Freeman does not have much of a case. However, when Andrea calls to meet up with him and offers a plea deal from the prosecution’s side to decrease the charges from first-degree murder to voluntary manslaughter, Mickey has to begrudgingly admit that the offer is tempting. It would decrease the sentencing time to 6 years, 5 for good behavior, which would be a far better alternative than life imprisonment. However, when he describes the deal to Lisa, she refuses because of her stubbornness that she is innocent, even if it means going to trial.
Meanwhile, the team has recovered Bondurant’s laptop, and while Mickey goes through the real estate mail, which he cannot make heads or tails out of, he comes across a mail sent by Bondurant to a financier named Alex Grant, and the tone of the mail seems sketchy, as it feels like Bondurant has been threatening Alex. On Mickey’s orders, Cisco digs around and identifies Alex Grant as Alex Karzakian, the son of dreaded mob boss, Ada Karzakian, the head of the Armenian Crime family, who is handling their operations from prison. Mickey realizes that they have a legitimate shot at shifting this case’s perspective from Lisa to someone else with a greater motive for murder.
He calls Lisa to inform her of this new development, and she instructs Mickey that they will continue the fight. However, Mickey’s excitement is short-lived as the morning after, on meeting with Andrea, she reveals that the offer is not valid anymore and they will be going to trial anyway, as circumstances behind the scenes have changed. This raises Mickey’s eyebrows, as that implies that Andrea has a smoking gun, and they need to prepare for it by finding it out amidst the evidence. He reluctantly calls his team and informs them that this will again be an all-nighter. As he informs Lisa of this recent development, he also asks again about her husband, which finally forces Lisa to snap at him and retort at him to stop talking about her. Lisa’s relationship with Jeff has not been great.
As the DA’s case begins, Mickey’s goal is to raise a reasonable doubt about all of the DA’s witnesses. He manages to be successful with her witness, the police detective, whom he dismisses by bringing into question how much of her testimony is hearsay, as she had not been in the room while Trammell had been questioned and the lead detective is having surgery and is out of commission. However, as the opening salvo goes, Mickey is not taking Freeman lightly and informs Lisa the same: to not count their chickens until they have hatched. Meanwhile, Lisa informs him that she emailed Jeff and asked him to call Mickey.
Jeff calls Mickey that night and emphatically states that he will not testify for Lisa, even as Mickey tries to convince him that it would help Lisa get off the hook. He is also unable to answer questions about the whereabouts of the missing hammer. The next day, the cross-questioning of Margo Schafer again goes in Mickey’s favor. In a previous occurrence, Lorna had tested Schafer and informed Mickey that her eyesight was excellent. This is the witness Freeman had been relying on for her entire case, and thus Schafer’s testimony that she had seen Lisa Tramell outside Bondurant’s office immediately before the murder could have been a slam dunk. Lorna, under Mickey’s orders, conducts an experiment, blocks the traffic on the street outside Bondurant’s office, and takes photos of that exact moment.
Mickey uses those photos to cast reasonable doubt on Schafer’s testimony, as he argues that she could have entirely imagined seeing Trammell and believed in her heart that she had seen her after hearing about her boss’s death. Seeing that the Schafer testimony is proving to be inadmissible in court, the judge calls for a recess. However, Mickey’s happiness is short-lived, as Lisa admits that she was in front of the building that day when Schafer saw her. This is a pattern that Lisa has been exhibiting, of keeping important pieces of information close to herself, and because Mickey is emotionally invested, he is finding himself bamboozled every single time. But the case finally takes a turn when, late in the game, Andrea calls for a forensic expert to conduct a forensic analysis of Trammell’s gardening gloves, which contains specks of blood belonging to Bondurant. The preliminary case is finally in Andrea Freeman’s favor, and it is now up to “The Lincoln Lawyer” to solve this case.
The Lincoln Lawyer (Season 2, Part 1) Ending, Explained:
Meanwhile, this podcast business with Dahl has been a consistent thorn in Haller’s side, with Dahl routinely going behind Haller’s back, once to advertise the podcast on other podcast networks, and finally managing to sell off the rights to the initial interviews being conducted to make movies. This comes at a time when Mickey particularly feels cornered, as even his steadfast belief against Lisa is tested by the evidence, which is proving the DA’s case irrefutable. This, coupled with the advertisement that Izzy sends him regarding the podcast, pushes Haller over the edge, and he calls Lorna and berates her, which turns into a heated conversation.
For their part, both Lorna and Cisco had been dealing with their problems in the background. Lorna, because she is going back to law school and having to face the Dean of Torts who had made a pass at her previously; Cisco, on the other hand, was involved with an old buddy of his of the Biker’s Club who had been granted parole early. However, the leader of the biker gang believes that Kaz, Cisco’s friend, is a snitch, and while Cisco does not believe it to be true, he had been investigating that case in the background for the better part of this season, and this has been causing a strain in his and Lorna’s relationship.
Finally, Cisco figures out that Kaz has been a snitch for the DEA, and he informs the biker gang of the raid that was supposed to happen, which gives them time to remove their contraband. As a reward, Cisco will be left alone, his debt to the Biker’s Gang cleared, as he has been working for Mickey under the purview of the Saints. Meanwhile, Lorna and Cisco meet up with Kaz, who have been hiding in his trailer, and gift him his papers. They inform him not to be seen within the vicinity of LA, as that would involve Cisco, and Lorna does not have it.
As a result, Lorna had been going through a lot, even drawing up all the dummy motions for Haller by working 36 hours straight, as well as working for over 24 hours parsing through the evidence. So, it stands to reason that she snaps when Mickey accuses her of not doing her job when she argues that she had been professional and that the document involved with Lisa’s life rights is still at the back of the Lincoln because Mickey had not been specific about how to handle that case, primarily because he had been stretched thin all over the place.
Finally, when he goes down to the garage to retrieve the document, he finds the file empty. Before he can process his frustrations, he is attacked by a couple of goons in the parking garage and left unconscious. There is a high possibility that Dahl is involved in this, or it could even be members of the Armenian mob, removing the pest meddling in their affairs. Either way, things look pretty dire as “The Lincoln Lawyer” Season 2 reaches its halfway point.
The Lincoln Lawyer (Season 2, Part 1) Review:
It is interesting that the Louis Roulet case, which even the 2011 movie “The Lincoln Lawyer” tackled, would be wrapped up in two episodes, while the season would deal with a case that is frankly not as interesting. The bigger problem is that a show like “The Lincoln Lawyer” is so dependent on its procedural trappings that it needs interesting characters and dynamic actors to heighten the blandness of both the primary plot and the subplots. This had been a recurring problem since the prior season itself, and while Manuel Garcia-Rulfo is a charming and charismatic leading man, he is hamstrung by a supporting cast that cannot rise beyond their archetypal definitions and manage to give him a distinct personality.
It is further hampered by how the show is structured, due to which the main plot feels stretched even though it has only been in the limelight for three episodes. Perhaps it is not surprising that one of the highlights of this season is a standalone case that Mickey takes up, about a young girl painting the wall of a high-end clothing store black as a sign of protest. Instead of acquiescing to paying for the damages, Haller manages to turn the tables by “painting” (pun intended) that wall as graffiti art, which becomes a tourist attraction and drives sales of the store. Thus, Haller negotiates a royalty for every subsequent sale in the store due to this newly minted promotional campaign.
This case was a highlight because it showcased Garcia-Rulfo’s charm and Mickey Haller’s cleverness. It also dealt with newer marketing strategies employed by Gen-Z and other capitalist ventures. In short, “The Lincoln Lawyer”, in preparing to forego its procedural trappings, is showing its Achilles’ heel in not being able to construct a compelling serialized narrative. The show needs further tweaking if it wants this viewer to continue watching and perhaps lean more toward its strengths. For a show called “The Lincoln Lawyer,” this season so far had disappointingly little of Haller investigating his cases from the back of his Lincoln.
![Incendies [2010]: Mercilessly Shocking and Beautifully Destructive](https://www.highonfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/large_incendies_blue_blu-ray_7-768x461.jpg)