Your Honor Season One REVIEW
In Greek tragedy, the protagonist often suffers for some unbalanced virtue or some desire for a perfection that is not advisable in such an imperfect world. Oedipus insists that he will discover the cause of the plague that afflicts his people, not knowing that by doing so, he will uncover a secret about himself that, when he knows, brings about his own demise. If only he had not cared about his city so much, he might have been spared. If only he had been willing to “let well enough alone” – to let some tragedies go unexplained.
One might argue that the Showtime series, Your Honor, is a classically tragic Greek play told in modern terms, and that Judge Michael Desiato (Bryan Cranston) is an example of a classic hero in the Classical Greek tradition of tragedy writing. Judge Desiato is regarded by all who know him as an incorruptible, fair, and noble soul. In the opening scenes, we can see that he cares about justice but has a keen eye for mercy. He resists corruption, goes out of his way to uphold the laws and the just society they represent. Furthermore, he loves his son and his dog.
And then the Fates open up a wormhole into his life to try him by fire. When Michael’s son, driving through a seedy section of New Orleans, accidentally strikes Rocco Baxter, the 17 year old son of “the most violent crime family in the history of New Orleans” riding a motorcycle on a deserted street, Judge Michael Desiato makes a calculated decision to do whatever he can to spare that son the certain revenge that he knows would soon follow if Jimmy Baxter, Rocco’s father, ever discovers who it was driving the car that day.
A father’s love soon overwhelms all other moral concerns and, over ten episodes, we watch as the noble hero, Michael Desiato, is dragged by his original compromise into a seemingly endless descent into criminality himself. By the time the final curtains are drawn to the end of season one, Michael “Oedipus” Desiato, clutches his own dying son, shot in the neck by a bullet intended for Rocco’s brother – shot with a gun purchased with the judge’s own hush money by a brother of one of Desiato’s own innocent victims. Karma is not kind to him for letting one virtue compromise all others. In one scene, Judge Desiato tells a juror that she should care more for her daughter than for some abstract justice. In advice that he himself clearly follows, he says, “Nothing is more precious than her. Not principle, not courage, not conscience. “In the last episode as Michael’s cover-ups and crimes in the defense of his son are exposed, he insists to one of those who has found him out, “Justice and principle? Do you think either of those take precedence over the life of your own child? Ever?”
The script writers of this series are clearly going to make the case that Judge Michael Desiato should be allowed to express his love for his son; Just not by using the powers granted him by the State to pursue justice for the victims of violent crimes. For this betrayal of the innocent in the courts of justice, “the gods” will that the judge be made to pay, and it is an ironic and targeted sentence when it comes due.
“Nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than those who make the law,” Antigone says in Sophocles famous play, Antigone. The script writers of this Showtime series have clearly taken the side of Sophocles that the children of powerful men cannot be allowed to become more important to them than the children of their neighbors, the well-being of the innocent, and Justice itself. Some recent political figures and their sons immediately come to mind.
Question for Comment: One of the complicating factors that cast a shadow over every decision that Judge Desiato makes in this story is the violence of certain sub-populations of the city he serves and corruption of the law enforcement agencies of the same. In short, the dearth of morality in the environment disincentivizes moral actions makes moral behavior unwise. The city itself eventually becomes the source of all of its most virtuous citizens’ inability to make virtue their highest priority. To what extent is the moral demise of Judge Michael Desiato something to be laid at the doorstep of the whole community? To what extent is his moral demise his and his alone?
Comments