The second episode of Bull opens with the titular woman in 8D, who looks to be in the midst of a drunken breakdown while on a flight to Albany. Will she be Bull's client of the week? Or maybe the secret villain? Surprise! She's neither and the plane immediately crashes and all souls (save one) are lost.
Tonight's episode has gotten past the flashiness of the pilot and shows the audience what the show will look like going forward. Bull's firm gets a client, they toggle back and forth between mirror jury trials and the real thing, the team discovers new facts about the case, and Bull decides what the client needs to do to get the jury to vote for an acquittal. There are lots of people looking at screens.
I thought this episode was a lot stronger than last week's. The entire plot moves along nicely and balances the trial with smaller character moments for Bull and Benny.
Bull offers something different than the standard whodunnit employed by most procedurals (which shows a lot of confidence for its second episode ever). There's no mystery about who sabotaged the plane; it was simply a case of bad weather and bad luck. What is the mystery is whether or not the sole survivor and captain of the flight, Taylor Matheson, was responsible for the tragedy.
By not giving us a complicated, twisty mystery, the writers allow us more time to get to know the client of the week. Taylor confounds Marissa's many mirror juries by daring to be a woman pilot (the correct term is aviatrix and I'm disappointed they didn't use it) and the team realizes that the jury is penalizing her for her gender. It is only when they substitute Bull in for Taylor that the mirror jury is willing to consider her side of the story.
I'm already wondering how Bull has endless, perfect mirror jurors at his beck and call. Maybe if this show reaches twenty seasons as CBS surely hopes, we'll eventually see an episode focusing on a day in the life of a mirror juror.
But back to the plot - admittedly, Taylor's side of the story is pretty sketchy. The black box recorded her co-pilot questioning her reaction to a gigantic storm, she claims to remember absolutely nothing about the crash and the co-pilot's wife suspects her of having an affair with him. Still, despite the evidence stacked against her, Bull takes an instant liking to her and a disliking to her horrible, scummy lawyer (who managed to out-do the pompous lawyer from last week in terms of sleaziness). As the team addresses the gender bias conundrum, Bull helps Taylor come to terms with what happened. The team finds out that the co-pilot may have been distracted from breaking up with his mistress (the woman in 8D!) right before the flight, but Taylor refuses to rat out her friend in a court of law. The crash was completely her responsibility.
Bull respects her decision (I like that they're writing Bull as confident and snarky, but not too pushy) and takes her to a flight simulator to re-enact the crash. Taylor realizes that she actually saved lives by veering the plane into an open field instead of a residential area and Bull wants to show the jury that she is a hero, not a woman pilot in over her head.
Bull helps Taylor get rid of her horrible lawyer by revealing that the lawyer is being bribed by the airline into throwing her under the bus and settling as quickly as possible. Taylor instead hires Benny, who hasn't been in front of a real jury in a while.
That's where Bull veers from mystery to character study. Benny once worked for the D.A., was fired under mysterious circumstances, and now spends his time trying cases in front of the mirror jury. It takes Bull's encouragement and a pep-talk from Chunk to find the perfect, convincing closing argument and get his confidence back.
The closing involves using a logic puzzle to show to the two holdout jurors (a storm-chaser and a military man) that they bring gender bias into the courtroom whether or not they realize it. It seems strange, but it works.
I think that Benny being hired as the client's lawyer will be the norm going forward. Writers like having a reliable main cast member deliver the dramatic closing arguments instead of a guest star.
Bull used it's second episode very effectively. It assured the audience about what it will be going forward, had a compelling and sympathetic client of the week, and had an interesting and surprising plot. I think that with a focus on Benny and Taylor, however, that other team members did get lost in the shuffle. We've only known them for one episode and they need to be making a bigger impression on the audience. Chunk gets to deliver a pep-talk, Marissa provides a ton of exposition on gender bias, and Cable sabotages the sleazebag lawyer's drink, but other than that no one gets to do much. Hopefully, that will be rectified in the coming weeks. I'll still be watching and I look forward to the next case!
Bull will be off next week for the vice-presidential debate, so join me here again in two weeks to discuss the show! And let me know what you thought of tonight's episode!
