We're now halfway through the second season of Murder in the First and the tension is starting to heat up as we get more revelations about the main storylines in this episode. Jamal Thompson's corpse has been stolen from the morgue and Sugar's sister, has gone missing from jail a day before she was meant to be released. However, outside of a few scenes focused on the Sugar storyline, the main attention to detail was elsewhere, split mainly between the Dustin Maker case, which has turned into a media circus, and the manhunt for Navarro, whose brother is wanted by White Supremacists and doesn't have an alibi for Kaleb's murder. Another person who doesn't have an alibi for Kaleb's murder is English, but, Terry's a good guy, so I doubt Murder in the First will pull a twist like that. However, it would be pretty surprising if it revealed that one of the main characters was actually the killer, even if Kaleb may have been a mole for the Nazis inside the SFPD and was the one who sold out the information of Navarro's house to the Nazis, putting his life, and his family's, in danger.
Most of the main cast are now in the know about Navarro being the prime suspect behind the death of Kaleb after Koto did a bit of digging this week. It was an important week for him in particular even if we only spent a short amount of time with the lieutenant as we saw him offered a higher position by his father, who has aspirations of his son one day becoming Mayor. However, Koto is steadfastly loyal to his team, even if Koto's father is so certain that Koto will take the promotion he's already going ahead to congratulate him on his promotion - a promotion that he's asked to take some time to think about. Koto himself is a hero following the bus shootouts, but has also just come to terms that English was keeping the fact that Kaleb's death wasn't actually a suicide, so that may play a role in his decision further down the line, but one thing's for certain, we're not getting an answer just yet with the attention focused onto the case at hand. Koto joins Molt and Junior who increase the amount of people who have been informed about the true circumstances of Kaleb's death, along with of course Hildy and English who were in the know already. Navarro meanwhile, not doing himself any favours, has gone AWOL, leaving the team behind in a desperate race for the Mexican border where he and his brother will escape the Brotherhood due to his dual citizenship. However, Navarro is facing troubles of his own, with the price for the border crossing having just gone up, and the only way he and his brother can afford to pay will be to rob a bank, which is something that Navarro is understandably not too keen on because will put them in a head on collision with the SFPD, as things couldn't be bad enough for him and his brother already. No bank-robbing stuff has happened in this episode yet though, but hopefully there should be some more exciting stuff further down the line.
Dustin Maker's story was the other major part of this week's episode as he seems pretty willing to take the maximum death penalty, putting his life in the Judge's hands, and isn't offering up any defence in return. His psychiatric evaluation showed that he's sane enough to make the judgement himself, but Jamie can't quite shake the feeling that there's more to Dustin's past than there first appears. We soon learn that according to Dustin's parents, he spent a lot of time at the house of his mother's brother, where a terrible injury happened to his arm. However, something that instantly raises red flags with Jamie is that Dustin's parents didn't even go to the Hospital as soon as they knew that he was injured, and it's unlikely that Dustin would have blacked out a memory so simple as an arm injury. At the end of the episode Jamie's off to the Hospital where Dustin was taken, hoping if she's very lucky to score an interview with the family relative, however, that hasn't stopped me from not being that interested in this direction at the moment. We know that Dustin's guilty and It'd be great if the show could get this subplot out of the way as quickly as possible, because at the moment it's taking away time that could be spent on the stuff that I'm more invested in like the hunt for Navarro or the slowly forming potential gang war, which after a few episodes of brewing slowly in the background, may be coming to a tipping point. And given what we've seen at the end of Oh, Mexico, Hopefully next week's episode, State of the Union, can have the same levels of tension and pace that the show did at the start of the season because right now Murder in the First has fallen into, like I've mentioned before, the same trap that it did in the first season, with the middle section not being quite as interesting as the beginning or end.
One of the best things about this show has been Mo McRae as Sugar, and he's been a welcome introduction to the series as the main antagonist. He really plays it cool as the drug lord, making it easy to showcase the difference in his performance to that of the more unhinged Nazis. McRae completely sells us on Sugar's actions and character, as like with the rest of the cast, continues to put in impressive performances week after week. The shock at the start of the episode when he realised that his sister was missing had a pretty big impact, as did the end of the episode when her corpse was delivered to his house as a statement of intent. It was a pretty chilling way to finish the episode and should give us hope that the gang war will happen sooner rather than later in order to speed things up once more.
So on the whole then, Oh, Mexico, despite a few flaws, the general lack of interest in the Dustin Maker storyline among them, was another pretty strong episode of Murder in the First. The cast continues to excel, with one of my favourite moments of the episode being Hildy and English telling Molk about the fact that Navarro is a suspect in Kaleb's murder, with Raphael Sbarage leaving a pretty good impact on the audience in this scene that affected Molk quite heavily especially given the connection that he has with Navarro. It was a great moment that really helped improve this episode, and as a result, it was something that I enjoyed a lot. What about you, then? Did you enjoy this week's episode of Murder in the First? Do you think Navarro killed Kaleb? Are you looking forward to next week's episode? Let me know in the comments below.
Overall Rating: B
Positives:
-Koto and Molk being in the know about Navarro.
-Sugar's storyline.
-The good acting, particularly from Mo McRae and Raphael Sbarge.
Weaknesses:
-The Dustin Maker case.
-Still too uneven.
