The Trial (2019– )
4/10
No empathy possible for main character
23 July 2020
Warning: Spoilers
The angst that drives characters to take certain actions frequently helps entertain we viewers of television. It would certainly be difficult to maintain a viewing audience while depicting people going about a typical normal day doing everyday unexciting activities. Even "reality shows" do not do that. Main characters can and do exist in popular fiction without being good, right, noble, perfect, etc., but at some point, they must be worthy of empathy. There does come a time on occasion when the main character exceeds a certain level of questionable behavior and becomes another antagonist. That happened to me in this series called "The Trial" on Netflix. At some point, I turned against the main character who was the prosecutor. At that point, I started to hope she would lose her case. I started feeling empathy for the accused murderer to the point of hoping for her acquittal. (Please excuse any use of improper legal terms as I am not a lawyer in the USA or Italy.) Even near the end of season one where it was shown that the accused had actually pushed the victim to the ground and stomped her in the face with her high heeled shoe penetrating her eye and brain killing her, I still felt more for the killer than the prosecutor. It didn't help that the 17-year-old victim had accomplished her own lack of empathy by that time for her prostitution, pregnancy, attempted and accomplished destruction of a person and their marriage. The only two people I cared for at all in this show were the accused murderer and the husband of the main character and I was not that fond of them. For one thing, he was a bit too forgiving of his wife.

The main character is a terrible person. She lied through omission to her good and devoted husband of several years. She never told him of her youthful relationship that produced a daughter that was given up for adoption. She "ghosted" her husband when they had an amicable decision to move to New York and start a new life together. She just didn't show up and left him "looking at an empty seat" per the husband. She offered no excuse to him as to why she couldn't leave (when the victim turned out to be the daughter she had given away 17 years ago.) Again she lied through omission. She took the case which was stupid for something that would most likely be brought up eventually in the course of a trial (and it did.) A year later when her husband returned, he wanted to salvage their marriage which she agrees to do with a seldom seen smile. They then disappeared into his room to consummate their new-found relationship and start to work on having that child. Within a day she was in the bed of her old lover trashing that agreement and muddying the gene pool of any child that might be (and would be) conceived. She had to realize the importance of fidelity to her husband when trying to make a bay but apparently did not care. Within a day he had read the news coverage and seen pictures of her tryst. (Her opposition had her followed.) As he is leaving her, she for the very 1st time tells him of the daughter and the man she was photographed with being the father of that child, but it was much too late for him to hear that news. He left her of course. Good for him.

Much later during their official visit with lawyers to divorce, he noticed her hyperventilating. He had kind words for her in an effort to help. She offered no apology, accounting or explanation of her total disrespect for him for the previous year. She only said that she "had been having panic attacks since he left" placing blame on him for her current state. I again have no empathy for this awful person.

In the last episode of season 1 when she is dining with her father, she is so flippant about not knowing who is the father of her child. Her assessment of the despicable behavior of the last year is that it is not the ideal situation and she has no plans to tell the men.

The plot holes do not help. Anyone who has spent a few years of their life in front of television identified the murder weapon during the 1st episode. It is so obvious that I thought for the longest time that it must be a "Red Herring." If two women are outside of a very public gathering and it is believed that one of them murdered the other by crushing something through her eye and into the brain of the other, what weapon did she have on her person at a party that would accomplish this goal? In an early scene, the assumed murderer is on-screen and the 1st thing she is asking her lawyer is the location of her "lucky shoes" that she was wearing. Why on Earth would the writer of this series spend the eternity of an entire minute of a TV show talking about the defendant's high heeled shoes if they were not important? Why would it not occur to this supposedly brilliant prosecutor or anyone else on her staff to not consider the shoes? Maybe Italian law schools should consider making the Perry Mason TV series a part of their curriculum. Check the shoes for blood sometime prior to her being acquitted! It is not rocket science.

A timestamped receipt found by the prosecutor got the murderer acquitted. Timestamps are only as accurate as the people running the equipment. Why would she or anyone she gave the receipt to assume the timestamp on a receipt is accurate? Particularly since it was a year old! Anyone would assume this information needed to be verified. Could you even trust it from a year ago! This was so ridiculous.

Lastly, in the final minutes of the final episode, she has found new evidence that could make a successful appeal for a new trial. She takes this evidence to the defense attorney rather than to her superiors. Instead of proper channels, she goes to the guy who got the defendant acquitted. This guy has been sleeping with his client since the acquittal. He is the guy who had her followed and had pictures taken and then published which ruined her marriage. He is the guy who illegally tested her DNA to see if she was the victim's mother. She may lose her license to practice on that issue alone. Now she is basically hiding evidence. Why would she do this? Why would she seek out this guy? The only reason I can think of is that since her husband left her and she broke up with the other guy, she must just be looking for Mr. Right. She was getting a bit flirty with him as the credits rolled. The poor guy doesn't know she is pregnant.

I hope there is no season two. As of the end of season one, she has lost the case, lost her husband, is suspended from her job, and may lose her license. A perfect ending to me!
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