The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Premiere: Does the Famous Courtroom Drama Deserve Another Adaptation?

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney reunite in the courtroom to recap the two-episode premiere of ‘Presumed Innocent,’ the Apple TV+ limited series starring Jake Gyllenhaal. They start by discussing the benefits of translating this well-known courtroom drama into a serialized iteration, the strong ensemble of actors led by a showstopping Ruth Negga performance, and the violent nature of the story (1:05). Along the way, they unpack how swapping out Harrison Ford for Gyllenhaal significantly alters the chemistry of the Rusty Sabich character (28:00). Later, they talk through David E. Kelley’s lasting imprint on legal television and whether a single case is enough to sustain an eight-episode arc (37:31). Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney Producer: Kai Grady Additional Production Support: Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Bill Simmons. I am thrilled to announce our newest YouTube channel. It's called Ringer Movies. If you're a fan of our movie coverage here at The Ringer, then you're in luck. Because every episode of The Rewatchables and The Big Picture, now on YouTube. Like Bill said, Ringer movies will feature full episodes of my show, The Big Picture, the Rewatchables, as well as special live episodes, deep dives into movie history, and a bunch of other fun stuff featuring other movie-loving Ringer personalities.

Search Ringer movies on YouTube and Experience the Joy, Chris Ryan impersonating Wayne Jenkins on camera. Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joyne Robinson, and we're back, baby. It's Rob Mahoney. Hi, Rob. We're so back. So, so back, Joe.

I miss you. I miss Kai. We're all together again here to talk about a sick little murder mystery in Chicago. This is our sweet spot, I think. I think so. We're here today to talk about the new Apple TV Plus series Presumed Innocent. First two episodes dropped today. Wednesday, double premiere.

So we're here to talk about episodes one and two of presumed innocence that's bass is loaded and the people versus Rosette Savage. So if you have not watched this first two episodes, you might want to go scoot, dial up your Jake Gyllenhaal fandom and go ahead and do that and come back and listen to us. Talk about this. On the spoiler front for this, this is like a murder mystery. This is a court like drama sort of thing, courtroom drama. This is based on a book by Scott Turrow, like a bestselling book. based on a very popular, made a really depressing amount of money. And by depressing, I mean, like, nobody makes as much money on, like, a courtroom

drama movie anymore. So just existentially depressing, you know. With Harrison Ford. So that movie exists. That book exists. I've seen the movie. I've not read the book. Rob is innocent of all of that.

He has only watched these two episodes. But we're not going to be talking about what happens at the end of this story or even in the middle of this story. So my continuing mission to keep Rob, like, frozen and amber of his knowledge of the story that we are covering continues. So we'll talk a little bit about the Ford movie, just like sort of to talk about why you would want to make a TV show out of an existing popular movie. Yeah. But we're not going to talk about details of the story. Do you want to start there with the why?

Because I feel like it is kind of a mission statement in a way for unlocking the point of all this and the point of why we're here. I want to do one thing first. Do it. Which is just to ask you, Rob Mahoney, did you like these episodes of television? I really loved it. Yeah.

Honestly, these conversations dovetail for me because prestige TV doesn't have to be twisty murder mystery drama. Mm-hmm. But it's a lot cooler when it is. Be a whole lot cooler for worse. Yeah, I also really liked these episodes. You and I were behind the curtain, like you and I were figuring out what we wanted to cover next.

And to be clear, we're not going to go week to week on this. We might do a mid-season check-in. We're not sure we do plan to come in, at least, for the finale. So we're going to do some check-ins, but this is not going to be like a week-to-week, Rob and Joanna Joint. But we were looking around. We're like, what's happening on TV? There were some other options, and we were not as into them. And then I watched these screeners, and I was like, oh, Rob, I think this is it for us.

This is the one. But also, I don't want to rule it out, you know? Like, write your Congress people. Make some noise. If you're watching this show and loving it, if this is something that people are into and the way that they've been into, like Shogun and some of the other things we've been covering,

I would love to do this show week to week. I think it has the meat for it, which to me is the reason to make a serialized drama or a TV drama out of a story, right? When you think about the kinds of stories you can expand, Joe, the ones that work for me are usually detective-type stories, ones where you can either splinter off in different character directions and understand motivations

and potential suspects, and witnesses and all these little threads that you're following up over the course of a case, or it just gives you more time to wade through all of the evidence that, for example, the movie might present, or that the novel might present, but the movie doesn't have time to get to. Yeah, and having not read the book, I don't know exactly what the movie cut out to get to its endpoint. But we should say, I mean, like, this show, I agree, the expansion, as far as I can tell so far, having just watched these first two episodes, the expansion seems to be a bit in the home life front in terms of, you know, not just like, you know,

Ruth Nega is here as, as, uh, Russie's wife Barbara. We love her, yeah, boy, is she? Yeah, she's phenomenal. But, like, the kids, like, his role is, like, I think the kids are much more expanded. His role is, like, a dad is a bit more expanded. And then I think, like, for characters, like, Raymond, Ray Hogan, Bill Camp's character,

like, I don't think we meet his wife. Like, his, there's no wife character in the movie for this character. So, like, expanding that home life and, like, I can only hope and dream that we're going to get to know a bit more about, like, what makes someone like Tommy Moldo, Peter Sarsgar's character, tick, stuff like that. So I think just sort of digging a bit into the home life or the personal lives of these characters, because I think what's interesting in these first two episodes, we move pretty quickly, like, through, you know, we're at, you know, Carolyn is dead, like, two minutes in he gets the call. Before minute five, we see the body. Like, you know, he's already arrested by the end of episode two. Like, there's a lot. It's going kind of quickly on the case front.

So it just means, like, for the personalities, I think. And what I liked to skip ahead to the end of episode two, when he walks into the courtroom and we see who's standing behind the two tables at the front of the courtroom. And we've got Tommy and we've got Ray and we've got Nico and then we've got Rusty. we know all the dynamics of all these four characters already. That's what we spent the first two episodes really establishing.

And that's fun to walk into a courtroom and I'm like one, two, three, four, I'm interested in all these characters sitting behind these two tables, you know? They're getting those character beats and they're well earned, right? You're right. We spend a lot of time understanding who these people are in a workplace context, sort of their political

ambitions and why they're budding heads and you see them needling each other both privately and publicly through the media too. But you also get just like that elite legal thriller bullshit like a prosecutor turning defense so he can defend his co-worker like this is

what I live for Joe. This is what is bringing me to the table. I will say this. There are a lot of elements of this story that if you look at on a logline level or even a trailer level, you may think oh, that would never happen. Someone in

in Rusty's position would never be handed this case to investigate in the first place to insert himself into independent of the fact that he was, I think, to quote, what was it, having sex with the victim? Like, did it never occur to you to disclose that you might be having, that you were having sex with the victim? Independent of that, just how close he is to, like,

to the death in the first place. Yeah, yeah. This would never be his case. But I think what all of the character beats do and what the political side of these two episodes does so well is create some plausibility as to why this might actually be happening. Like, once you understand the, factions involved, you couldn't see some logic in the fact that Rusty would be handed this case

because to hand it to anybody else, one, would mean that it probably wouldn't go solved until after this DA election. And there's all these kind of downstream effects that come from that. And so, yeah, people are doing weird, manipulative shit basically from the jump in the show, but they're doing it for pretty well-articulated political reasons. The setting of Chicago is a really fun one for me. This is everything I know about the Chicago political scene. I learn from the good one. wife, another banger of legal television series. So probably it's not, you know, like historically, perfectly accurate.

But the idea of Chicago as this like, you know, notoriously sort of corrupt, politicized town is a really fun setting for this. And I think that I'm really interested in the casting. I want to talk to you about the casting of this show. I kind of want to work a little bit down the cast list up to land with Jake. I want to start with Peter Sarasgard, who is. I don't think you and I have ever talked about this, but you and I share fairly similar.

Peter Sarsgaard, once upon a time, I would have told you was my favorite actor, and he's done nothing to change that except do less work than he used to in the early arts. He used to be, he used to work a lot more. Now I think he's just like, hey, guess what? I have a family.

I don't care. I love him. I think he's so amazing, and there's something so, you know, off-kilter and, like, always a little sly. about the way that he reads his lines. And this is true across the board, I think, of this cast,

that a lot of the lines, you're doing a lot of exposition work, you're doing a lot of, like, HALIS establish our relationship work. I don't think it works as well if you don't have as talented a cast sort of behind some of these early setting the premise lines. And Sarsgaard especially. Just like someone, you know, when he is interrogating rusty and revealing the affair. There's just like some of,

just like the pauses he takes and the looks he gives and his sort of like his incredulity. Oh yeah. His offended, injured incredulity. His smirking, like all this stuff. I just, he's making a meal of everything

and I'm really excited for it. Tell me your SARS-guard feelings. Yeah, especially when you think of the character, Tommy Malto is really poised to be a really natural foil for Rusty and a rival. You know, there's these pretty clear parallels. Like there's the DA, there's the chief deputy, and these two are at odds, clearly from the first time we see them interacting.

There's a version of that character that is just like very straightforward antagonistic. And what I love about this, Ars Guard performance to what you were saying is, the almost pained way that he is going through his questioning. It's like he's so exasperated by this whole situation that it's not even like he's taking any particular joy out of it anymore. Like you can tell there is an axe to grind and he does want to exact some sort of like personal retribution on like on rusty in particular. It has to be kind of pep talked in this episode into maybe doing his job honestly.

But the way in which when it does come to a head and he has to straight up ask him like, were you and Carolyn romantically involved? Wow. A SARS-good impression on the plot. I love it. It begs it. You know, like I find, I find his performance so interesting. And I think there is a version of that with most of our major characters where there is

the caricature, bearer. bones version of this person that we've seen in so many similar stories. And then there's this. And that's what's making it really fun right now. I completely agree. The person that I was like most just, I think most over the moon about personally, just because I didn't like necessarily expect it from him is O.T. Faggbenly, who I know from The Handmaid's Tale and like Black Widow. I've seen him do stuff. He is a British actor. He does a very good, just like straightforward generic American accent. That is not what he is doing here.

The way he's talking in the show is not how he talks as a British person, not how he talks usually when he does his American accent. It's just he's made a very specific choice to make his character sound like the duchiest, most privileged asshole of all time. And I'm just like devouring it. I just like he's making a decision. The way he's holding his jaw, it's just like this huge choice that really, really works for me. I'm like, who is this absolute prick?

I love him. What are your feelings on good old Nica Delaguardia here? Massive douchebag, clearly. Yeah, you love it. There's something, too, in these legal stories, the way that non-trial lawyers are set up, like, they're always discussed within the story among the characters with such disrespect.

This is the guy that drags things out to basically extort money so that defendants have to give up their cases, so they have to take pleas. And there's just like a different characterization of that relative to the first time we see Russie is in a courtroom, talking very earnestly to a jury about this is the sacred responsibility we've been given. Why don't we do our jobs together?

And there's something in that moment from Jake Joan Hall that I think shows his power, what he can do with a little bit of a smirk and how quickly he can win over us and any character in this story and how likable he can be. I have to say OT is almost the exact opposite because there is that smarm, there is that doucheback quality. And yet, when you see him in front of a microphone, I immediately go, oh, that guy's electable.

Like, that could 100% be a district attorney. He could 100% run for public office. There is a way that he communicates and a poise that he presents that is very accessible from like a voter standpoint. And so, yes, he is someone that I think is kind of despicable every second you see him on the screen, especially behind closed doors. And yet, there's no question as to how a political animal like him would kind of worm their way into power.

And I think some suggestion of what they might do to protect it. I love that. Yeah. His talking points, I'm like, oh, God, this would work on me probably. Yeah. Like, probably. I'm like, unlike my opponent, I prosecute violence against women. Yeah. Let's not let these crimes against women go on punited, you know, anyway. Yeah, it would work on me. I forgot to look up the pronunciation. How do you pronounce, it's Renata, is it Rensvet? Like, how do you pronounce this beautiful Norwegian name?

We don't know. Great. We'll look it up before we come back next time. Renata, who is in the worst person in the world, a tremendous 2021 film is here as Carolyn Palimus. And, you know, we meet her in flashback, mainly. I think this is tremendous casting. I really love the worst person in the world.

I think it's a wonderful movie if people haven't seen it. But, like, it's so interesting because in the movie version, it's Greta Scotchi, Italian, I might have mispronounce that. But, like, she's, like, kind of oozing sex in a way that Renata is a very, like, beautiful and, like, sexual sort of person, but not, like, in the way, in the more sort of, like, generically obvious way. And that is no knock on Greta, who is, like, incredible in that movie. But, like, Carolyn Palimis as, like, the object of. obsession and the way that it is characterized in this show is different, and I find it a fascinating

casting choice. What do you think? I can't wait to get through this series and kind of revisit some of those differences because I love this characterization. I love the way that their relationship is sort of explored. Again, it's a format that's not so foreign to us, right? A woman is dead. We learn about her life and her personality and kind of what she means to the people who were around her or working with her through their memories, through these little snapshots. All of that is kind of old hat, I would say, especially for prestige TV.

Totally. I thought it was deployed really well here. And in general, to your point about the exposition and the kind of the quality of actor we have delivering that stuff, I thought the framing devices, you know, of, again, a very like troubled, masculine character in therapy, pretty standard stuff. But I thought their scenes worked pretty well.

And I thought that they were written well. Again, that's like a lot of that comes down to casting because I roll my eyes a little bit at the therapy premise because it felt a little bit, you know, David E. Kelly, who's running the joint here, is famous for his, you know, courtroom shows. You're Allie McBeal's. You're, you know, practice and legals. You're the practices all the way back to LA law. Like, this is his bread and butter.

His sort of like late stage career moves have been in the prestige murder space a bit more. So like Big Little Lies or the Undo. and Big Little Lies had this like therapy, you know, as exposition or therapy as like a way to get inside someone's head. It's very useful from a writing standpoint. You can understand how they get there. Totally. But casting Lillie Rabe as a therapist and actress who I love, I was like, okay, all right. Like I will, you know, especially in a second session where she's just like in a t-shirt and has like cigarettes.

I was just like, okay. And like you're a liar. Yes, of course you are. I was like, I don't know if this is legal, but I enjoy it. Well, I think that's the part that really worked for me, is that it veered from very standard. How does that make you feel? Tell me what happened. Recount your memory of this dead woman you slept with.

And it veered into something a little bit more adversarial where you can feel her kind of poking and prodding with him in a way that I think genuinely in the real world works well therapeutically for some people. And they need a little bit more urging. They need a little bit more insistence. And in her case, sometimes she is putting a voice to things that Rusty almost can't admit yet or doesn't quite know yet or hasn't quite acknowledged yet. I think in particular, this idea that he believes that he knows Carolyn so well. And he is kind of shaken up in the aftermath of her death by the fact that, oh, actually she had a secret, basically teenage son that you didn't even know about. In addition to like a whole former life, she has all these sides to her that maybe you were ignoring or you weren't fully conscious of in the time. And so I think this is sort of the beginning of the exploration that we really get over the course of these two episodes as we get even deeper into what Carolyn may or may not have done professionally as far as what she was willing to cut to get people convicted.

And the idea that she may have seen Rusty as something very different or much more or less, I guess, in some ways than just a person she was sleeping with. Right. That idea of like was she attracted to him, his power? Right. Was this like a career move as much as anything? anything else. That's a question that's hanging in the air. The peeling back of the layers on their relationship and the like, I don't know if you, are you where you must

remember this podcast fan? I'm not. It's one of my great personal failings, honestly. No, you're a tremendously perfect human being, Ramahoney. But the, you must remember this series on the erotic 90s is one I really recommend people check out. It's like the last long series that Karina did.

And so exploring this idea of sort of the 90s erotic thriller and how we don't get those movies anymore. And so then we get the, like, you know, graphically sexual flashbacks of this affair, which was not just, like, sexual, but, like, you know, violently sexual at times.

I'm like, we don't do this anymore. This feels like a very 90s, like, vibe. And I think that it's like an interesting kind of story to tell that is sort of vanished from our film. in our television, and I think it's like an interesting throwback. Were you surprised, I mean, like, Apple, I don't know,

you know, I don't know how much Apple has tried to sort of play in this space that seems like fairly owned by HBO, but like, what did you think of that depiction? Well, for one, not knowing anything about what the characterization of the relationship would be,

I think there's an initial jarring effect to just like, oh, we're, you know, we're choking, we're grabbing, you know, We're biting. It's a little bit more aggressive in the way that makes sense, given who those characters are. But you're kind of getting up to speed on that. And then you're getting up to speed on the way it's being portrayed and exactly everything that we're going to see. And some of, look, the contrasting violence as we're trying to figure out who Rusty is and what exactly he is trying to solve or trying to hide.

And there's clearly this blurring line, as his therapist speaks to, between the aggressiveness of their sexuality. Right. like how violent and how aggressive it can be to the point where she has to delineate in the session, oh, we're talking about the sex now. Like, oh, we're waiting into that territory. This isn't just a relationship dynamic. There are dynamics within dynamics.

And I love the way that that colors every time you look at Rusty, and every time you see the crime scene, and every time, you know, it changes the way that we as an audience are coming to the pieces of evidence and coming to the pieces of information that unspooled naturally over the course of a mystery, and that's like that's again where you want to be. I know there's going to be some inevitable sort of manipulations to that from a story standpoint.

They want you in a certain place so that they can twist and turn you. But I feel well positioned to be twist and turned. I don't feel like I'm just being yanked around out here. I want to revisit this when we get all the way to the top of the cast with Jake. But first let's like take a quick beat to talk about Bill Camp, incredible character actor, Queen's Gambit among a million other things that you've seen Bill Camp. as Ray Hogan here. They're doing an interesting thing

where they're combining two characters in the movie and probably in the book, I would assume. There's a boss character and then there's a lawyer character who comes in to help him. And I will say that like, Raul Julio,

Raul Julia plays the lawyer character in the movie and he, and it's just like a stop the presses like the movie has arrived when he shows up. And so, you know, they did something a little different made it a bit of personal relationship between the two of them.

They're like, you know, boss and, you know, sort of accolay, but also, like, there's like a father and son or, like, friends of the family or just sort of like, you know, mentor, their wives know each other, their families surely have, like, dinner together all the time and stuff like that. So to make it a bit more of a personal relationship is interesting, to put Bill Camp in this role. So, again, like Peter Sarsgaard, like O.T., like a million-a-old. other actors can make a meal out of any line.

And the moment that I knew, I texted you, the moment that I knew that we would do the show is the line he says pretty early on in episode one, when he says, nothing's beneath me. I fucked an Ottoman once, which is just an incredible line well delivered. So if this character has been kind of consolidated slash expanded in its role from the book, or in the movie, I should say, when in the movie do you figure out that the equivalent character is fucked in Ottoman? Is that slow played until later in?

I mean, it's either, you just have to envision this. It's either Ralph Julia or Brian Dennehy. You pick which one you would prefer to envision fucking an Ottoman, and that's your choice. Both, yes, please. But like, put those two actors together and somehow you get Bill Camp, sure. It kind of works, honestly. Yeah, this is also an interesting family joint in this movie,

because not only are Peter Sar's Garden, Jake Gyllenhaal, obviously, brothers-in-law, but Liz Marvel who's played Bill Camp's wife is his real life wife. So, like, you know, we're having just fun family times here on a wholesome show presumed innocent. Ruth Nega.

Oh, my gosh. Oscar nominated actress Ruth Nega. Let's go. Let's fucking go. Tell me how you feel about Ruth being here. I just think she is bringing a metric fuck ton to this character. We've seen so many bad versions

of this exact person in so many equivalent stories. This could just be another sad wife lurking around in the background and the power of Ruth Naga. And first, let me say, can we put her in a movie where she just gets to be happy? Is that a thing that we could have the power to do? Her, like, sad face is so iconic. I know. I don't know that I want to see her smiling. I like when she's just angrily smoking a cigarette in the dark.

Like, I think that's 10 out of 10 no notes. Yeah. Absolutely so. And I think that's really what her power is, is what she brings, without having to say a word, and you can see that this is a person who has been through a lot and who has had to carry too much for too long to the point that when we do get

the gradual reveals in this story and I think one of the sort of expert things in terms of the way this is plotted out is she is aware of the affair from the jump in terms of where we enter the story but gets the double gut punch of the fact that Rusty has revisited it and not only that but the woman he is having an affair with

is pregnant when she died. So all of these things rolling up in a way that is now going to be confronting her family in a very visceral way. This is the sort of performer I want going through all of that internally and playing it out for us. And I think the monologue

that she gets toward the end of the first episode, explaining the way that Rusty needs to basically stop loving Carolyn and that he needs to let go. And almost what she needs in order to continue to be a part of their relationship, I thought was just like the powerhouse moment of these first two

episodes. I also think like there's she's interjecting like, there's humor when she says like when he's talking about the therapist being on her side and she's like well of course I'm the cook old D yeah you know is that a word or is that a construction I think it's a construction I loved it but like also when she says when she says at the dinner table when she basically like announces that this is the moment he's going to tell their kids and she's like I won't be alone in this again right like I I played nice last time essentially but you know you've you've betrayed me on another level here I thought I thought we all

understood the level of betrayal and now I find there's a whole new strata that I have to grapple with. So yeah, she's phenomenal. Just a tremendous actress in general. Just like a really good, really good casting here. Really good writing, I want to say too. I think getting the introduction of her, you know, one of her first lines is that, you know, she's going to try to be there for him, but she can't do the memorial. Eight minutes in. Eight minutes in first indication of the affair, I would say. Yeah. You hit that mark and I'm like, oh, this is the exact sort of sentiment

that makes me want to know so much more about this relationship and these characters. And ultimately, Barberus, I think, painted as a woman of pretty extraordinary grace who's just been pushed to her absolute limit. And Ruth Nega is going to carry that as well as any actor working right now basically can. I think also they cut back and forth

between the rough sex and then the slow dance. Slow dancing, the sweet romantic sort of like slow dance. And you can tell, like, you know, I don't think Rusty deserves serves a ton of my sympathy necessarily. But, like, I think what feels true about this performance and this character in general is that, like, he does love his wife and he does love his children. And it's not that he's tolerating her or, you know, like, he was fanatically obsessed with this woman that he worked with.

But it doesn't mean that he didn't, like, doesn't love or care about his home life. Like, he, that is also true. He contains these multitudes. So let's talk about Jake. I was telling some people last and I was like, when they were asking about the show, I was like, yeah, well, it's, it's, you know, I love Jake in, like, little sicko mode. Like, that's my favorite mode. And they were like, does he have any other mode? And I was like, I was like, well, I feel like there was a time.

Like, Donnie Darko obviously is his, like, little sicko introduction. But, like, there was a time when he was trying to be like a more straightforward leading man. And I mentioned, like, Prince of Persia era, Jake. Prince of Persia is exactly what I mentioned. Prince of Persia. I was like, that existed where Jake was just like, what if I'm just a guy? And then he's like, nope, I'm a little sicko.

And so, like, night crawler Jake is my favorite Jake of all time. Like, I think he should have won the Oscar that year. I just love him in that movie. But this is where we come to, like, my biggest question mark around this series. Because I think it is a very different proposition to put Jake Gillenol, who has showed us a million times that he could be a little sicko in this role,

then to put Harrison Ford peak of, his like, I'm the president. You know, like, I'm Hans Solo, I'm Indiana Jones. I'm the president. This is the most, I think this is the edgiest. I can't think of another one role that Harrison Ford ever played. And so it just adds a little something different. So when you peel back the layers and you find like, you find out that like, oh, he was having

an affair. Oh, he wasn't just having an affair. He was like obsessed with her. And when he makes that, when Jake Gillenha has Rusty says, like, I was obsessed with her, I was basically stalking her. We're like, yep, classic sicko-jick behavior. Like, that makes sense to me. If Harrison Ford in his like president dad era says that in a movie, it's a different proposition. And he's like, when he like sort of admits it to himself and to like the world, it's like this unraveling of a family man in a different sort of vein.

So that was my big, I love Jake. I would watch him read the phone book. I'm a big fan. But that was my one casting question where I was like, would someone who we've never seen do something in this vein have been a better fit? I don't not want Jake in this.

I want to watch Jake in this show. I want to watch Jake in anything. But like, do you know what I mean? What do you think? I think it just depends on how you want to play it. And if you want it to be more kind of, you know, you're fully on board with this character trying to clear his name and then occasionally pull the rug out from under the audience

and hit him with some reveal of some seediness or some detail that we didn't know about that changes your opinion of that character. Then, yeah, Harrison Ford type makes sense. I think what works for Jake is you just start looking for that nightcrawler Jake in little scenes. You see him looking at crime scene photos and I'm like, is there a little night crawler Jake in there? Is there at least a little zodiac Jake in there? You know, like the excessive, like, could lose yourself in this kind of moment and this violence and just kind of a disconnect from reality. I think there's so many gradations to what he brings that knowing he has that in him makes me looking for it in all the edges of his performance.

And in a way, makes me look at some of his more charismatic moments differently. It makes you think, like, is this something he's putting on? Because he clearly, he knows how to turn it on to get through Carolyn's ex's front door. Right? He just like, he drops the pretense. He gets a little folksy. And then all of a sudden he's in there and he's asking hard questions and getting to the bottom of things. And is that the real Rusty or is that the performance Rusty that he's having to do to obscure, you know, the real sicko who's been stalking this woman and gathering all this stuff and texting her furiously and calling her all hours?

Like, I love that we get to go through this whole process, wondering that at every turn. But it does result in a different kind of story than a Harrison Ford type. I think what it adds, like, having that, like, sicko behavior much close to the surface, I think adds to a character like Tommy Moldo who, like, doesn't have that charisma, can't put on that charm. And so it has to watch someone like Rusty, like, move all the way up the ladder. When he says, like, did you have a sexual relationship with Carolyn? It's like, is there envy in there?

Like, you know, like, you get everything. You have this beautiful home. You've got these lovely children, a wonderful wife, and you were like fucking this woman for our office, and you've got like the second in command job. And I know that you're like not the golden boy that you're sort of posing to be. And so Tommy Moldo then becomes a bit more like a Salieri

an Amadeus kind of character, which, again, I would say, not to be too many comps of the movie, but in the movie, this is going to most serve characters like Nico and Tommy who are just like mustache twirling bad guys in the movie because there's no room to like

dig into what makes them tick and so this idea that like Rusty who is our protagonist who we are by nature rooting for just because we're in his point of view. Right. I mean really firmly anchored in his point of view. Like a Tommy Maltz, similar to

a Salieri. Like I don't like the Salieri. I don't like Tommy Maltow, but I'm like, but I think we've all been there where we're like, you, you get everything by you, you know? So, yeah. Also, I mean, he makes some good points, right? Like, everything, everything that they are saying, the Deliguardia and Maltor are saying about, like, rest the obstruction, obstructing the investigation, concealing evidence that clearly puts him at

the crime scene. These are all fireable offenses, even before they're chargeable offenses. Yes. So everything they're saying in the perspective that they're. coming from is not wrong. It's just that by anchoring us in the opposing point of view, and by putting someone as charismatic as Jake Gyllenall in that spot, you naturally, like, I kind of want to see where he goes. I kind of want to see him try to clear his name and what evidence he's able to cobble together. And the difference in that is it just changes the way,

you know, like from basically the very beginning when he's given this case to investigate Carolyn's murder, the first thing he goes to is this other murder case of Bunny Davis. Yes, yes. And at first, that seems like someone who doesn't have evidence who's desperate and grasping for something to put in front of bosses and colleagues to say like, look, we're progressing with the investigation. The deeper you get into these two episodes

and the whole idea presumed innocence, is he just looking for a competitive theory to create reasonable doubt? Is the only thing that matters to him from the very first second we meet him in these episodes getting another suspect on the board because he knows that it's just a matter of time before he's pulled into it.

There's also that like desperate of like, again, we're only two episodes in, and already we've got competing, like, visitations to the jail scene, where it's like he's there as an officer of the court, he's in full possession of his, like, power and presumption that no one's going to find out about his personal involvement with Carolyn,

and he could just throw his weight around. And then when he comes the second time, and, like, you know, is scrambling. He's almost like a, he's almost like bashful to even be trying what he's trying. Yeah. And it's just like, the way that he has fallen in like his therapist estimation, you know, anyone, anyone who is inclined to be helpful to him, but is so resentful of, you know, the misinformation, the downright lies, all of that, like the way in which he has fallen from the top of, you know, the mountain and, like, loss of election, like, all these things in rapid succession. I think is a fascinating thing to watch any actor, you know,

scramble through. But Jake, you know, the way that his kids are going to look at him differently. Like all, you know, all of these titles, father, you know, like all these titles are just sort of like on the wobble right now. Because who actually are you, Rusty? Like, what are you capable of? And he seems in some of those scenes like a genuinely good dad. Oh, yeah.

He's someone who can lose his temper, but he, like, immediately corrects and is, like, compassionate and spends time with them. and tries to go back into dad mode. And it's one of those things where the more you learn about him, it's like, is that just someone who's about to pop off trying to very carefully conceal what's going on just under the surface? But I love those two visitations to the jail. I love the desperation we see from him,

especially in the second visit to see Reynolds, who, this is the one bit of casting that took me out. And it's no disrespect to Mark Harleck's performance, which I think is genuinely good. and seeing him get to invert the power dynamic between the first and second visits is very rich stuff. But as someone who is perpetually in a Seinfeld rewatch, Mark Harleck, who Seinfeld fans will immediately recognize as Milosh,

the tennis player who can't play tennis, who has to convince Jerry to throw matches so he can impress his wife so she won't leave him. It's literally the only way I can see him. And so to also see him as a potentially convicted murderer, who, again, may or may not be guilty, depending on exactly what Carolyn cooked up. It takes you a second to adjust,

but I think once you do, there's a lot to love about this performance. He gets to deliver some of the absolute bars about Carolyn ruining his life, among other things, but also one I'm going to take to my grave, which is there are two things I never forget, Joe, faces and being fucked over. Put that on the merch for the Rob Mahoney fans.

This character type reminds me of there's so many similar versions of this character, it's Hannibal Lecter Light that shows up in a DVD-D. Kelly show or on The Good Wife, you know, I can, and like, the actor selection

for this kind of character is always interesting. Yes, I can see how the Seinfeld, he's just, I've seen him in so many things he just feels like a that guy to me. He's absolutely a that guy. But if I were in a perpetual Seinfeld

rewatch, I might also have this issue. Snoring. Gaspian during sleep, feeling fatigued, ask your doctor about Zepbound, terseptite. The first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and adults with obesity. Zepound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet

and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5. or 15 milligram injection. Zepound contains terseptitide and should not be used with other terseptitide containing products or any GLP1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pins or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer,

or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. If you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be,

or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulfoniluria or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsened kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-9-9 or visit Zepbound.lily.com. You mentioned this idea of like rusty digging into the Bunny Davis evidence as a way to just present a competing theory.

I just wanted to share that my journey through like the idea of like legal drama starts super young when my mom used to like in the weekday mornings, early in the morning, maybe six. I don't know what time. Perry Mason would be on and I would like go to her room and she would be in bed and I would sit in bed and we would watch Perry Mason at like 6 in the morning and that's like a very odd American

family experience but that was one of my before school Perry Mason and like that is how I thought the legal system worked which is I don't know if you've never seen the original Perry Mason every single time Perry Mason

will just like figure out who really did the crime and like accuse them in the courtroom, like, turn around and point to someone sitting in the audience. Like, they did it. Or get them to confess on the stand or something like that. And it's like, oh, that's how you win a case. You find out who really did it. And then you get them to confess inside the courtroom.

That's how Perry did it. Standard practice. As far as I can tell from anatomy of a fall, by the way, that's also the way it works in French courtrooms. That's how you do it. It's Perry Mason and the French. That's how they do it. But then, like, but then came the David E. Kelly era of my life when I watched

Alam McPhiel and the practice and all of that. and then the good wife, et cetera. And again, that's probably not exactly how genuine courtrooms go. But the Davy-D. Kelly approach, David-E. Kelly, who was Scott Turrell, who wrote the book, presumed innocent, and David E. Kelly, who made a career starting with LA law and TV and film, those guys started as lawyers. So they come from the legal world. It is their preoccupation.

and they know that it can make for very, like, juicy drama. But the only thing I'm worried about with an eight-episode season of expanding on a story that did work quite well inside of a two-hour movie is like, and especially since the later episodes are called, like, the witness, the verdict, you know, the burden, the elements, you know? Like, I, the only reticence I have is that Big Little Lies Season 2, sort of wound up being sort of, I think,

bogged a little bit in David E. Kelly's fascination with courtroom that I'm hoping, you know, this is a legal drama. Like, this is the world we're playing in. But I'm like, I hope that, and again, I haven't seen, but I hope that, you know, the back and forth inside the courtroom is enough to, of one case is enough to sustain, you know,

the next, I guess, six episodes of television. Do you have any, like, first of all, what is your experience on the legal drama and doesn't involve 6 a.m. Perry Mason and like, do you have any sort of like

sky high hopes or uneasy reticence about how much this is going to you know, become the show for the next six episodes? This is an important origin story,

I feel like, for all American citizens. Like, you got to get started relatively early on some very false impression of what the legal system looks like. Yeah.

Yours is Perry Mason. Mine as a, you know, as a son of like a Grisham-loving dad. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's obviously an entry point, but also my dad was deep into JA, deep into JAG core. Oh, amazing. I've seen a frankly irresponsible number of episodes of JAG.

What does Jack stand for again? What does Jack stand for again? Come on, Judge Advocate General, please, Joe. Don't be disrespectful to the fine men and women serving our internal legal system of our armed forces, specifically the Navy. Sir, yes, sir. Okay, yeah. Look, the outlet from there to mainlining a few good men over and over and over is pretty direct.

So that's kind of how I come to this stuff. I agree with you that that is sort of the trade-off of stretching out this story. And in particular, what makes legal thrillers so good is that often the actual case is reserved for the back half or the back third of the movie. And initially, we're just getting used to the characters, we're getting the pieces of the case, we're getting the evidence, and then you get it all displayed. you kid, as the judge lays out, the kind of speechifying that cases like this tend to engender in the attorneys who participate in them. But because this case is being accelerated, not just

in episode count, but by plot. That's the mechanism by which they are hoping to prove us these innocents is giving the prosecution less time to repair, rushing these two attorneys who, at least one of which is not really a trial attorney at all, into the courtroom. Maybe there's some competitive advantage to be gained there. And the result of that is we're going to be spending an awful lot of time in and out of this courtroom in ways that I do worry could diffuse the natural tension of it. Like I want to stay in. Once I get in the courtroom, I want to stay in it. Give or take one or two scenes of Daniel Caffee with a baseball bat trying to figure out how to get the code red. Like that's, you know, you want some brainstorming to try to figure out how to crack a

witness or something like that. Yeah. But the fact that there's still so much left to uncover, not just within the case, but within our characters, before we even are starting a potentially like multi-episode courtroom arc is pretty daunting. I can't lie about that. I agree. I think that's a great point. All right, what else do you want to say about what we saw in these first two episodes?

What Rusty knows versus what he is presenting that he knows, in particular, as we've talked about, he openly confess this to the fact that he was obsessed with Carolyn. He couldn't stop thinking about her. He has all of this evidence of basically stalking her. And so when he says that he doesn't know that she had a kid, what does that mean? Because I think it could mean, one, that he didn't really know Carolyn in the way he thought he did. Two, it could mean he did, but maybe he's pretending not to for the sake of projecting some kind of innocence or some kind of distance or just like some lack of familiarity that might, you know, exonerate him in some way.

Yeah. Or I guess three, would it be like as her exigrant. suggests that she was such an absent mother, that even someone stalking her wouldn't ever know that she had a kid. Sometimes what you don't know can tell you everything school of discovery here. And this revelation of like, okay, so let's, what do we know about Carolyn that she maybe hid evidence to win cases sometimes that, you know, she was someone completely disinterested in her child, which I think is a bad look on both men and women. And like someone who potentially was having an affair with a superior, you know, was it because of actual desire? Was it because of a

combination of desire and like career moves? So what we're, the portrait we're getting of her and something that I think is great in every iteration of the story is someone who is like quite complex. And like, I don't know. It's hard to know because like there's moments like when he wipes down his steering wheel where you like, what's that? What's what's going on there? And I think it's going to be really interesting to parse, like, his public performance versus his private. Like, what is, how is he reacting to things when he's by himself? Yes. So Carolyn is this, like, quite complex figure who, you know, there's so many versions of this story where, like, we never know anything about the dead woman, right?

Like, we just see this hog-tied corpse and we're like, okay, you know, or we hear people talk about. her, but to meet her in flashback, as objective as that is through Rusty's POV. But I think the breakup scene where she's like, we need to stop doing this. They have sex anyway. But then there's this shot after of her sort of like leaning against the office wall. And she just looks like, I don't know, like trapped or, you know, she's not angry, but she's just sort of like, I don't know, this might be muddled in me thinking about the worst person in the world. but just sort of like a who am I? How did I find myself here sort of reaction?

I don't know. That I really like. I like how complicated they're making this character. There's also some sequencing there in that sort of breakup scene where it's like, are these things happening in order? Right. Or did it happen that way at all? Because there's also the moment, the swimming pool thing,

which seems like didn't actually happen. I would hope he didn't drown her in the swimming pool, but if we get to the end of it, this story. We do learn, and we should maybe run through for the sake of our ongoing investigation, like what we actually know about Carolyn's death. One of the things that we do know

is that there's evidence to suggest she was brought from a previous location that had some kind of carpet fibers to this secondary location where her hog-tied body was found. And so, I guess in theory, it's possible that she could have been drowned in that pool, but we

also do have evidence to suggest that she was at least hit several times over the head with potentially a fireplace poker. Fireplace poker. But if you're a district attorney, maybe you would do that to kind of change the trajectory of the investigation and hide the fact that she was drowned in the first place. But this is what makes these sorts of stories interesting

when they involve law enforcement type officials is because they know so much about how to cover up their tracks. And in some cases, in terms of the development of these first two episodes, you see Rusty almost being caught off guard by being on the other side of it, by the emotions of, I have to sit here with my family while the police raid my home. Like that, he was not anticipating, but maybe some of the murdery stuff he could anticipate. Speaking murdery stuff, I feel like I've said this on a podcast before, and probably should never, like, have ever put this on the record.

But I did have a really good friend whose dad is a police officer who told us how to get away with the murder. Wow. And for a small, small fee, I too can tell you how to get away with a murder. Come to one of the ringer live shows, and Joe will tell you how to commit the perfect murder. The arrogance of Rusty to think that, like, nobody would dust for his fingerprints inside of her bedroom. Like, you know, all the sort of stuff like that is pretty interesting in terms of the larger story. Then just like whatever the state of his innocence or guilt, but his presumption that he could just sort of like take control of this case. Yeah.

And none of his connections to the case would come to light is a fascinating element of his character. See, do you think that he believed that? Because for me, this was one of the areas where I felt the politics kind of heighten my accessibility into this story and my willingness to suspend disbelief or just kind of buy that Rusty might operate in this way, where I interpreted it less as he doesn't think he'll ever be discovered and more that there is this limited time window until the election. And if he can either accelerate the case in a different direction based on other evidence to get somebody on trial who's not him, or he can. at least stall it through the election in the hopes that they actually win, then maybe he can retain some control over the situation. But as he's kind of explaining his point of view and his own motivations, and you can take those at face value or not, it does sound like there is at least some political pressure for him to, one, take this case so that Malto doesn't, and then kind of try to work it,

at least in a way that points a direction at somebody, I think that's where I got caught trying to decipher his exact motivations. And that's where they want you, which is. which is unclear. But I think it'll be interesting for everyone concerned, for Tommy, for like, genuinely everyone to look at their public performances and then their private performances. And again, this is what like more time in a show can give us is like more home time, more private time with these various, you know, members of the cast. I think that's really interesting.

Anything else you want to mention before we go? You know, for a show that is a legal thriller, that is a, political drama in some ways. That is a workplace drama in some ways. I'm happy to hear from your contrast of the movie that the stuff at home is more of an expansion because I've actually found myself really enjoying the unraveling of that story so far. And I think two pretty good kid performances in areas where we don't usually get kid performances from Chase Infinity and Kingston Rumi Southwick. Both of those relationships, like there's something that feels pretty real and lived in there. And I think the moments in which you maybe see Rusty at his

most emotionally naked are in the pain and disregard of his children. And when they start turning away from him and pulling away from him, he kind of loses it in a way that's different than any other version of him we see in this story. And so if the result of stretching this out into a season or mini series of television is that we get to spend more time on the family side of things, I think we're off to a good start. And this is a good launch pad that could lead to some pretty meaty material as we're rounding out and padding out a multi-episode legal arc. I am interested to see how modern audiences digest this story with 30 years of kinds of courtroom drama stories since presumed innocent came out. Yeah.

Or we've seen just like every single possible twist in turn the story can take through the works of David D. Kelly, right? So I am curious to see sort of like if people are in the mood to, you know, theorize and guess without Googling. And I told Rob not to Google anything and he has not done so. You're a saint on that front, Joe.

The extent to which you have crystallized me in Amber, you know, our audience may never fully appreciate, but I do. You're, you know, you're the piece of mosquito DNA that we need to see in the world, Rob, but like, do you have a theory? Do you want to guess? And when you,

When you do that, I'm just going to pivot. Me pivoting is going to have nothing to do with what you say. I'm just going to do it no matter what. I like that we're given a pretty diverse group of people to look at and think about as potential suspects. This doesn't feel like the kind of thing where there's only three possibilities, and therefore, if it's not A or B, it must be C. So I feel really open from a storytelling standpoint in terms of where this could go and who the actual murderer might be. I am compelled, based on the circumstantial evidence, of Juan Harrison Ford being in the original movie

and the general parameters of this story that I don't think Rusty did it. And maybe that is me being played in the way that the story wants me to exactly be played. But based on all of the factors around the existence of this show, I believe that at least the original text is that Rusty didn't do it.

What I'm fascinated to find out is what if in this version he did? I'm just as interested to find out what happens in this show as to contrast it with what happened in the movie if there is a contrast to be found there. Yeah, and we've talked about Rob maybe watching the movie sort of like when he's when we've watched the finale of the show then like watching the movie and maybe when we come back we can at the end of the season sort of compare and contrast pivot to before we started recording you mentioned you might have an idea for again we're we don't plan to go week to week in this but we like to hear for you guys anyway so rob what was your what was your idea for an email to associate with this particular show we're locked in joe we got it scottish malt carpet at gmail.com

Wonderful. Love that for us. Love that for Tommy Moldo. If you want to make the subject line, tiny little suckfucks, I will not disagree with you. Let us know if you're watching. Again, as I mentioned,

we will at least be back for the finale, possibly mid-season. And as Rob is saying, like, maybe more. We get a little snippet of Mr. Smith goes to Washington. You know, so if you want to send in your baskets of letters, we will read them in the courtroom.

or on the Senate floor and see if we can get more presumed innocent coverage. Thank you so much to Rob Mahoney. So delightful to be back with you again here on the prestige feed. Thank you to the absolute genius Kai Grady for this work on this episode. And thanks to Justin

Stales for his additional production work on this feed in general. And we will be back. Scottish malt carpet at gmail.com for your theories. It's very intuitive, Joe. It makes complete sense. even worry about it. We all know exactly where Scottish malt carpet will lead us in this case. Great. We'll see you soon. Bye.