Maybe someone in the comments can let me know, but what is the appeal of skydiving? Sure, there’s the thrill of doing something daring, but there seem to be way too many variables. Faulty parachutes, for one. That’s the problem that strikes when Connecticut Governor Whitfield’s parachute fails to open and he dies.
The show throws in a little twist early. The second we see Liberty representing the Governor’s widow, Addison Whitfield, in a wrongful death lawsuit against the skydiving company, it seems like TAC will be assisting the prosecution.
They aren’t. Bull and the team are going up against their friend and helping the skydiving company. Whitfield wasn’t the only one who died in the accident. The owner of the skydiving company, Walt, died trying to save his client and his brother and daughter are left with bills, bad press, and grief.
The daughter, Dylan, and the brother, Max, both refuse Bull’s help at first. Max is a lawyer and will be representing the company at trial. The insurance company wants them to admit liability, which they won’t do. Dylan talks about how meticulous her father was. He wouldn’t have let the Governor jump with a parachute with a faulty cord.
The Governor did sign a liability waiver, but the team knows Liberty well enough to know that she would find a way around it. All she needs to do is prove gross negligence or willful misconduct. Bull does think that there was willful misconduct, but not on the part of the company. Politicians aren’t the most popular people in the world. Maybe someone on the plane saw a very effective way of silencing the Governor forever.
Bull sends Danny to investigate everyone with access to the governor’s parachute. The former lieutenant governor, former chief of staff, and former treasurer are all suspects. Bull assures Max that it isn’t simply about defending the company. It’s about finding justice for Whitfield and Walt.
Marissa and Bull decide that they need to keep all risk-takers off of the jury. People who don’t take risks will blame the people that do, like the skydivers.
Liberty takes Bull’s new allegiance very well. She does worry a bit that Bull is getting inside her head, but she knows exactly how the team operates. She starts weeding out the risk-averse jurors and then just starts asking the exact opposite questions as Bull’s team. When Liberty second-guesses herself, the team does get a win with Jacob, a cautious juror who thinks that even a raise at work carries too much risk. Bull tells the team that Jacob is so calculating that he won’t take any action until he knows the outcome. The team tells Bull that it sounds like he picked himself. They suggest he wear the biometric watch as Jacob’s mirror juror.
Chunk goes through the go-pro footage and hears mention of someone named Ronnie. Danny connects the nickname to Whitfield’s press secretary, Veronica. From her, Danny hears rumors about an FBI investigation for corruption. Through her charming contact at the FBI, she discovers that the federal grand jury was about to indict Whitfield on 28 counts of corruption.
The team decides to retrace Whitfield’s steps and takes Dylan’s skydiving class. Danny, Cable, and Marissa are all excited to jump. Benny wasn’t even comfortable in a smart-car, so he clearly wasn’t going to take the plunge. Bull also shares my healthy respect for gravity, even if he is a pilot.
Despite Marissa’s reservations about Max, he does well in court. He confronts both the former chief-of-staff and former treasurer about the corruption investigations, but both seem innocent of tampering with the parachute. It leaves only one suspect – the sitting governor of Connecticut, Aiken.
Aiken had already tried to halt the investigation by throwing out a cease and desist. When TAC finally gets Aiken into court, he manages to charm the entire jury. Before the jury can elect Aiken as President, Bull figures out that Whitfield was having an affair with Aiken’s wife. Max brings it up and lucks out in getting a judge who pretty much allows everything.
Liberty blows up at Bull for the courtroom theatrics. She accuses him of only taking the case because he felt slighted by her. Liberty calls Dylan as a rebuttal witness. Bull showed her that there is no pulling punches in open court. She accuses Dylan’s father of murdering Whitfield and even shows footage of their deaths. Most of the jury is convinced.
Bull’s mirror juror remains the holdout. He mirrors Bull own thoughts on the matter. There was only one person with the motives and means to kill the Governor. Max. Bull gives Max a choice. He can besmirch his brother’s name to win the case, or he can confess to what he did. Governor Whitfield’s new legislation would have ruined the company and Max wanted revenge.
Max makes the right decision after a series of wrong ones. He turns himself in and Bull appeals to the grieving widow’s sense of mercy. Dylan is the only one left at the company and she doesn’t deserve to have everything taken away from her.
The widow takes Bull to task for dragging her husband’s name through the mud, but agrees. He and Liberty part on good terms.
The rest of the team has both wins and losses. The information about the corruption investigation may have helped TAC, but it doesn’t help Danny personally. It blindsides her contact at the FBI, Rick, who liked her as more than just a former coworker. He feels betrayed that she used their private conversation in open court. Danny makes it up to him with an iced latte and gets a date out of it.
The storyline from last episode also rears its ugly head with Benny’s worry about his upcoming corruption case. Only Chunk knows at first that Benny’s been thinking about the case of Hayden Watkins. All Benny will tell him is that Hayden was a bad guy. Chunk picks up on Benny’s nervousness and Benny finally confesses that new DNA evidence may exonerate Hayden. He put the man away for nine years and now it turns out he may be innocent.
Bull delivers another solid, but not spectacular episode that moves some plotlines forward and shows us that TAC doesn’t always back the winning horse. What did you think of this week’s episode? Let me know in the comments!
Juror of the Week: Jacob, the Man in the Mirror
