Sunday can’t come fast enough.
That’s about the only way I can think to describe how I felt after watching the latest and penultimate episode of The Night Of this morning (I know, I’m a late-comer). I’ve been pretty hot-and-cold with the series so far. Even as I think it has its faults, I’m still endlessly compelled by it, to the point where I’ve found myself wrapped-up in its murder mystery (something I initially wasn’t interested in). Everything has been so tightly and neatly wound through seven episodes of (mostly) masterful storytelling that I can’t wait to see the last uncoiling of the spring.
There’s a lot to talk about with The Night Of. It asks its audience to face some tough social realities without taking a side of its own. It’s a difficult piece of television to handle at times while also stringing the audience along with a well crafted murder mystery, and I’m always intrigued at how it handles its characters. As I said last week, I’ll do my best to write a longer piece after next week’s episode, a sort of wrap-up where I’ll dig more into the themes and social questions the show asks and maybe doesn’t answer as a whole (now that I’ve said it twice, I have to do it, right?). But for now, I’ll focus on episode seven.
Oh, and, as always, there will be spoilers coming ahead.
This episode was as much an episode of Law & Order as it could have been, but that’s not a bad thing. The best summary that can be offered is that the defense is heard in Naz’s trial. But the court drama, like everything else in the show, is done with the typical dread, ambiguity, and wonder character-driven writing that’s come to define the show.
This is an episode of transformation. The arcs of the characters are coming to their conclusion as the result of their ordeals. Detective Box has retired with whatever doubts he may or may not still have about Naz’s guilt; Jack Stone has found a cure for his eczema, theoretically putting an end to his outsider status, but he’s unable to find anyone to care (save the cat); Safar, Naz’s mother, has completely lost faith in her son.
But the most ironic transformation (irony seems to be the running theme in these reviews, huh?) is Naz’s. In particular, I’m talking about the last scene. Whether or not he was a killer before, he certainly is now by being an active participant in a prison murder, even if he’s not the one who slit the throat.
One of my favorite aspects of The Night Of is how it never lets anyone off easy. We can sympathize to an extent with each of the characters, but as the show has gone on, we’ve been let in on their darker sides and their secrets. Each one of them has their faults. Even the (we think) well meaning Box, who at one time early on seemed to be Naz’s only saving grace, may in fact be as much of a broken part in the machine that is the justice system as everything else we’ve seen (thinking of the inhaler). And that’s what makes this show so compelling: like its characters, it’s not perfect; but, it’s complex and always finds a way to beautifully undercut your expectations for an intellectual and emotional punch.