It looks like The Firm knows exactly how it wants to play its hand. After its intriguing two-hour debut on Sunday, the show arrived on its regular night and time with another episode that put character before conspiracy.
Having joined forces with Kinross & Clark, Mitch found himself assigned to defend a partner’s son who had accidentally killed his girlfriend when he backed into her with his car following an argument over a failed marriage proposal. Yet even as he tried to coerce the kid to man up, someone else confessed to the murder, and that someone (played by Brian Markinson from the American version of Touching Evil) had half a bucket of screws loose. Mitch found himself in the position of trying to get a serial killer off the hook, while getting a good kid onto it.
There wasn’t anything particularly revelatory in “Chapter Three,” and that was a good thing. Our main characters behaved according to how they’d previously been established. The idealistic Mitch was determined to make the right thing happen, even though he was legally bound by attorney-client privilege to keep the kid’s statements to himself. I wasn’t surprised to find out that he had a weak stomach, at least when it came to dead bodies, given how close he’d come to being one.
On the flip side of the coin, we had Mitch’s ex-con brother Ray, who was more driven by his emotions and had a different approach to their mutual problem. Where the episode hooked me was in the brothers’ interactions; they were almost a physical manifestation of two differing schools of thought. Ray had a valid point of his own, and the way he wanted to do things made sense given what we already knew about his background and less restrained personality. Watching them disagree was like giving the audience a chance to evaluate the argument.
I like the characters of Mitch and Ray as individuals, and I like them when they’re in scenes together. Their differences serve to illustrate more about each of them, and make the show itself more well-rounded as we don’t see just from Mitch’s point of view. Not to mention that actors Josh Lucas and Callum Keith Rennie really do click together. I never would have guessed that combination, but it truly works.
I’m sure no one was shocked that the serial killer did in fact turn out to be a serial killer, or that his confession wasn’t genuine. The nuts and bolts of the case of the week were pretty obvious. But they weren’t the point; like last week, it wasn’t so much about the bottom line as it was about the players involved.
If there was one weak spot, it was Abby’s subplot involving a cheating student in her class. Obviously, she deserves a part of her life outside of the firm, but I felt she was strongest when she was involved in the case, and able to show how she was just as smart as her husband. When the episode was talking about dead bodies and missing girls, I really wasn’t interested in some kid’s test scores.
The Firm seems like it’s going to slow-play its conspiracy theory (the only real piece here was something about Sarah Holt’s laptop), which could be a mixed bag. (Although I’m tired of the flashforwards already). If someone came into the show last week expecting a grand-scale thriller with the mob and corporate intrigue, at this rate, they might run out of patience. However, as I’ve mentioned before, if you like the characters, then you’re probably more willing to wait it out. There needs to be something big around the corner to make it worthwhile – but so far I’m content to bide my time with the brothers McDeere and answer my own questions about who they are.
Clacked by Brittany Frederick 
on Jan 13, 2012 @ 07:55 EST5EDT
