Bases Loaded – As the opening episode of Presumed Innocent begins, Rusty Sabich (Jake Gyllenhaal) introduces himself to the juror before mentioning the accused, James McDavid. Rusty talks about reasonable doubt and the jury’s responsibilities. At home, Rusty catches for Kyle (Kingston Rumi Southwich) while Jaden (Chase Infiniti) and Barbara (Ruth Negga) watch from nearby. Rusty has to take a call from Raymond. The call leaves him distraught. In private, Rusty tells Barbara that Carolyn Polhemus was murdered. Rusty goes to the scene where Raymond Horgan (Bill Camp) tells him not to go in there because it’s bad. Rusty finds the victim hogtied before leaving. At the office, Tommy Molto (Peter Sarsgaard) and others argue about who should take the case.

Rusty thinks he should have it because he’s better than Tommy. Nico Della Guardia (O-T Fagbenle) suggests otherwise since he believes he’s going to win the election. Raymond says it’s Rusty’s case. Rusty instructs Eugenia (Virginia Kull) to ask Rigo to meet him in his office. In his office, Rigo tells Rusty what they have. Rusty doesn’t know whether it was revenge. He wants to make sure the labs only come to him. Barbara watches a news report about the murder. She checks on Rusty moments later. Next, Rusty catches up with Raymond who asks if he knows anything else. Rusty doesn’t but he has Rigo on the case. Nico runs into them at the memorial and they ask him about his press conference. Nico doesn’t want to talk about it. Inside the church, Raymond and Rusty talk about Carolyn’s alibi. Rusty reminds Raymond that he has an alibi.

Raymond says the kid sitting next to him is her son. At the bar, Raymond and Rusty continue talking about Carolyn’s son. Raymond hopes they have some type of lead on this. Rusty mentions Bunny Davis. Raymond reminds him they convicted Reynolds. Rusty says he and Carolyn worked the case together. Raymond asks if they put an innocent man behind bars only to have the real killer murder one of their prosecutors. Rusty admits they were tied up in the same way. At home, Rusty’s son checks on him and finds out he was at Carolyn’s memorial. Rusty makes him practice his curveball. That night, Rusty looks through the crime scene pictures. He goes to the morgue and says there’s no chemistry, pathology, or toxicology so they weren’t very thorough.

Herbert Kumagai (James Hiroyuki Liao) curses him. Herbert blames Rusty for not reading the full report. In a flashback, Carolyn tells the court that Liam Reynolds (Mark Harelik) has been watching Bunny Davis. She claims Liam knows a $12 bag of heroin can get him anything he wants. Carolyn (Renate Reinsve) says Liam tricked her into his motel room and kept her high for the week. He gave her Narcan on three occasions. Carolyn says Bunny died three times while she was with Reynolds, but he revived her three times. Carolyn accuses Reynolds of hogtying her for three days. She shows the jury pictures of the victim hogtied. Tommy watches the courtroom video. Tommy calls Nico to tell him about it. Nico reminds him it’s not their case. Tommy says it’s not their case yet. Rusty and Alana Rodriguez (Nana Mensah) go to the prison.

Rigo tells him she was killed with a fire poker. Liam says it sounds like something he’d do and something he’d enjoy. He talks about the possibility of being a suspect and returning to court. Liam claims Carolyn was all about notches on her belt and he was one of them. He doesn’t care that she died. Liam says what goes around comes around. He would gladly crater her skull. Rusty tells him now would be the time to share whatever he may know. Liam says Carolyn ruined his life and Rusty helped. Later, Raymond talks about the possibility that someone was trying to get even with Carolyn. Nico does a press conference in which he claims Raymond isn’t doing a good enough job of keeping things safe. Rusty visits Dalton Caldwell (Matthew Alan) who says Carolyn spoke of him.

Dalton says they divorced over nine years and had really kept in touch. He thinks people at her work would know her better because her work was her life. Rusty admits Carolyn was his number two, but he didn’t know that she had a child. Dalton denies killing her before introducing Rusty to his son, Michael. Dalton admits Michael is angry at the world. Rusty returns to the office. He addresses the rest of the team. Rusty tells them that minute fibers of carpeting were found that were not present in the apartment. They’re synthetic and milled domestically. The color is called Scottish malt. Tommy jokes that the color narrows it down. Rusty says Carolyn suffered three blows to the head. There were no signs of a break-in and no struggle. Tommy argues that they’re nowhere.

Rusty pulls Tommy to the side to scold him for being insubordinate. He asks Tommy if he thinks it’d be a good idea to take him on. Rusty defends himself and Raymond during an interview with members of the media outside. Raymond likes what he hears. Nico is upset at being called a delayer. Barbara talks to Rusty about it later that night. Rusty tells her that Raymond asked him to personally handle Carolyn’s case. If he doesn’t take it, Tommy will get it and it’ll go nowhere. Barbara worries it’ll get out that they were involved. Rusty says he needs two weeks because Raymond needs there to be a case. Barbara is concerned their marriage won’t survive this because Rusty will disappear into the case. Rusty goes swimming and thinks about his relationship with Carolyn. Rusty tells Dr. Liz Rush (Lily Rabe) that his father cheated on his mother.

He swore to himself that he’d never do that. Rusty doesn’t know why it happened, but insists it wasn’t about the sex. It was pure with Carolyn who just woke him up. Rusty says they were physical and Carolyn was very aggressive. Carolyn would ask whether Barbara did this stuff for him. Rusty admits to Dr. Rush that he can’t stop thinking about her. Later, Nico addresses his supporters after defeating Raymond Horgan. Rusty tells Barbara he still has a job but he’s not chief deputy prosecutor. That’ll be Tommy. He doesn’t know what’ll happen to the case. Barbara asks about his session with Dr. Rush and says she’s sorry about the election. Rusty claims he’s almost relieved. Barbara tells him she could’ve left and still could, but she hasn’t because she wants to preserve the family. She tells Rusty that he needs to stop loving her.

Raymond decides to step down immediately before the general election. Rusty briefly speaks to Rigo on his way to see Raymond who is busy packing his stuff. Then, they meet Nico and Tommy. Nico confirms Tommy will take over as Chief Deputy Prosecutor. He wants to know where they are on Carolyn’s face. Rusty says he gave Tommy the full report. Tommy admits he has been tampering. He reveals several sets of fingerprints were found in Carolyn’s apartment. Rusty’s fingerprints were found in her bedroom. Tommy wants to know when Rusty was last in her apartment. He also looked at her call logs. Tommy knows they called each other a lot. He eventually asks if they were romantically involved. Rusty argues that’s not relevant to the investigation. Raymond doesn’t like hearing that.

Rusty calls Tommy a hack. Tommy says the full path report came back and Carolyn was pregnant. Rusty claims he didn’t know. He’s asked if he might know who the father is.

 

Presumed Innocent Review

The opening episode slowly introduced the characters and established the story around Carolyn’s death. In the past, Rusty and Carolyn had worked on the murder of Bunny Davis which led to Liam Reynolds being imprisoned. While Reynolds is imprisoned, Carolyn ends up dead in the same fashion leading some to believe Reynolds could be innocent.

It is slowly revealed that Rusty and Carolyn were romantically involved and she was pregnant at the time of her death. Rusty has been telling his wife that their relationship was over a long time ago while the show suggests he could be lying. Tommy takes over the case and points his finger at Rusty.

The opening episode of Presumed Innocent left a lot to be desired with the episode dragging until the conclusion that may be enough to hook viewers. The story has potential although it’s far from original. Every show being released follows a similar formula and contains similar elements.

The camerawork could be a lot better with the shaking being more annoying than anything. Not to mention, the camera is often zoomed in too much to the point that we can see the boogers in the performers’ noses or they’re partly obscured behind walls. The scenes are void of color. The performances range from just okay to horrible with many landing in the latter group.

There’s a lot of script reading in many scenes with little to no emotions. Nico is easily the biggest culprit here, but no one comes out of this episode looking great. When Rusty finally unleashes emotion, it sounds like a whiny child rather than a prosecutor being accused of murder. The whole family dynamic is not strong with more than half of the episode focusing on scenes at Rusty’s home that really go nowhere.

Really, this is a two-hour story that’s been stretched and stretched to reach the eight-episode count. In all likelihood, it’ll be a long, drawn-out mess with an ending that feels like a nothing burger. The episode scores a 5 out of 10. Recaps of Presumed Innocent can be found on Reel Mockery here. Find out how to support our independent site at this link.

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