It might be starting to lose me.
While the show remains gripping by default (it’s still head-and-shoulders above most everything else on TV right now), I found myself shaking my head at episode six. While it’s been a flawed show in the past, the flaws came from a place of ambition, not missteps.
But first, a recap of where things stand: Naz is falling deeper and deeper into prison life, accepting Freddy’s offer of protection. Meanwhile, Jack and Chandra are doing their own investigating, finding potential suspects the police might have missed (remember that chase from last episode?). We’re reaching the end of the line here as opening statements in Naz’s trial get underway.
The Night Of is a repository of great writing and great ideas, but this episode seemed not so tightly sewn up as episodes previous. For me, a lot of it is in some out-of-character (for both the series and the characters) choices made by the show runners.
With Naz trying to continue to survive in prison and the Jack/Chandra team continuing to push the bounds of legality in their preparation of his defense, there’s a duality of purpose that’s interesting yet puzzling. We are forced to watch Naz as he continues down a self-destructive path, making poor choices that won’t help his look in court even as his lawyers are doing all they can to make him seem as perfect as he can. Up to this point in the series, Naz has been pretty insistent on his innocence. So then why would he voluntarily ink himself up with visible tattoos in prison (on his fingers, no less). Same with shaving his head in the last episode.
Now, I’m not saying that tattoos and shaved heads are the obvious marks of a criminal. What I am saying is that it just seemed oddly out of character to me. Smuggling drugs inside? Works for me as an act of staying on Freddy’s good side. Tattoos? Less so. And I get it: he’s trying to fit in with Freddy and his gang to survive, and more and more of his dark side is being revealed. But the way in which it’s going makes Naz seem less like a complex character and more of an inconsistent one, dangerously close to ruining this fascinating and ironic path of self-destruction as the truth to his case is getting closer and closer to the surface.
At this point in the show, The Night Of seems to be telling two stories. First, there’s the story of Naz’s navigation of the criminal justice system, with all the thematic punch that made me so enamored with the show in the first place, despite thinking aspects of it were flawed. Now there’s this other story of Jack and Chandra doing their investigation of their client’s case, which seems to be leading to some answers I’m not sure I cared about in the first place. (That would be: who killed Andrea Cornish?)
While I’m intrigued as always and still love watching these actors at work, I found the show losing me a little with this episode. It’s turned from a socially revenant and resonant character drama to something of a combination courtroom drama/police procedural. The story the show seems more interested in telling right now is not the show I feel like I signed up for.
Now, I can’t sit here and complain and criticize the show and say that it’s bad because it’s not what I want it to be. And to be clear, that’s not what I’m doing (I hope). Rather, I feel that The Night Of of episode six is not The Night Of I signed up for with episode one. What started as something daring and fresh now has the feeling of another cop show (albeit one exquisitely written, produced, and acted with all the familiar shades of subtlety that it does so well).
But maybe I’m being too harsh. But it’s only because I’ve come to expect so much. This episode was the weakest for me, but it also seems necessary going into the penultimate chapter. This is the set-up, the final winding of the clock so that it may tick with all of its inevitable motions.
