Sometimes the premise of a TV show can pull you in and make you start watching, and other times it’s simply an actor involved that gets you on board without even knowing what the show is about. It was the latter for me and Your Honor, as I watched the first season back when it came out in 2020 and devoured it. But with so much content out there I’m not sure I would’ve taken notice to this show had it not been for Bryan Cranston being in the lead role, as Judge Michael Desiato. The idea of it is intriguing enough, but the idea of it with Bryan Cranston involved is something that you just can’t pass up.
This is a review of the complete series, but I’m going to avoid spoilers and separate things a little bit so that if you haven’t watched the show yet you can read up to a certain point here and know if it’s for you or not. So, let’s focus on season one here, and this will be for those who haven’t watched it at all, as it’s a fantastic season of television that stands perfectly fine on its own. In fact, Your Honor was initially ordered as a mini-series, so it was supposed to end after the 10-episode run; however, it was renewed for a season two, which was also 10 episodes in length.
The thing is, what makes the first season so strong is that it knew the story it was trying to tell and it told it extremely well, while season two feels like it was a story that wasn’t initially planned but somewhat thrown together after the possibility of renewal came about. But more on that later, as let’s get into what made the first season so great that it holds up incredibly well even upon a second viewing three years later.
Judge Michael Desiato is a prominent judge in New Orleans, who has immense respect from his peers and is viewed as a truly good man right down to the core. He’s someone who goes above and beyond to make sure those being tried in his courtroom are given a fair case, and a chance to prove their innocence. He’s also fully aware that there are cops who aren’t afraid to lie on the stand in order to help get a conviction, or that a lot of those being prosecuted are seen as less than, or unworthy of opportunity. It’s clear right out of the gate that Michael Desiato is a beacon of light in a murky justice system.
That’s what makes what happens at the start of the first episode so compelling, when his son, Adam (Hunter Doohan) accidentally hits a boy named Rocco, who was riding a motorcycle at the time. Adam is also a good kid, and he was in a rougher part of town visiting the place where his mother had been murdered a year earlier. As he placed down a picture and flowers he was approached by a local gang, and he quickly retreated to his car. Fearing he was being followed Michael begins having a severe asthma attack, and while he’s looking for his inhaler, that’s when he swerves into the other lane and hits the motorcycle.
The collision is a bad one, and Michael is stunned by his airbag, while Rocco goes flying through the air and comes to a stop on the curb. Michael, still having an asthma attack, drags himself over to the boy to see if he’s okay. He picks up Rocco’s broken phone and dials 911, as Rocco is clearly not going to make it, and as the operator tries to ask for the location of the caller, Michael can’t breathe and simply wheezes on the line. He attempts CPR on Rocco, but Rocco coughs up blood, and between the asthma attack and a broken/sprained wrist from the crash, there’s little Adam can do. He gets back to his car, finds his inhaler, takes a few shots, panics and drives off.
So while it’s clear Adam is at fault, we also realize that he’s not a bad person that simply drove off and left this boy to die. What he does afterwards, disposing of the phone and such is questionable, but that’s him trying to figure out what to do since there was no way to save Rocco. What I love about the show’s title, Your Honor, is the double entendre, where the focus of the show is Judge Desiato, a man who is respectfully called your honor in his courtroom, but the theme of the show is also about the honor of everyone involved and how they deal with this tragedy.
What kicks the show into gear is when Adam confesses what he’s done to his father midway through the first episode, as it’s just them so their relationship is incredibly close. As mentioned before, Michael is a good, good man, so even though this is his son, he knows he must go to the police station and turn himself in. Michael knows this, and Adam comes to terms with it incredibly quick, as while he panicked in the moment, he also knows what he did was wrong. It’s not until they’re at the police station that Michael sees that the boy Adam hit was Rocco Baxter, son of Jimmy Baxter (Michael Stuhlbarg), the boss of the most violent crime family in New Orleans. He quickly turns around and tells Adam that he can protect him, but what happened is a secret that must stay between only them, or else Jimmy Baxter will kill both of them if he finds out.
That’s only the first part of episode one, but it’s sets up the premise of season one, where the lies Michael begins to tell to keep his son safe turn into a house of cards. It’s a show that is realistic on some level, but also has a lot of coincidences happen in order to end each episode on a cliffhanger, and constantly up the stakes of what’s happening and ways that could foil Michael’s plans of protection at every turn. There are unforeseen consequences, twists and turns, and as a whole it’s just a really engaging season that has a clear direction as to where it wants to go, even if it does have one or two eyeroll moments along the way to pad things out. It’s a fairly tight story, but in order to get from point A to point B and point D to point E, the show does ask its viewers for a certain suspension of disbelief when allowing for some of the ways it gets there.
The acting is fantastic, especially from Cranston and Doohan, who are the two central characters throughout. Cranston is just superb, as Michael must go against everything he’s always believed in in order to keep his son safe, and it’s just magnificent to watch him work his magic with this role. Doohan has to play Adam with this huge level of guilt weighing down on him, which is easy for viewers to get frustrated with, as you sometimes want to scream “Your dad is trying to save you, man! What’s wrong with you?!” But then you have to realize that this is a 17-year-old kid, in his final year of high school, already traumatized by his mother’s murder, and now has to live with having taken a life himself. It’s not an easy rope to walk, but Doohan does a great job balancing what he’s given.
The supporting cast is also just a joy to watch, each of whom pull the viewer into this world with ease. It never feels as though you’re watching these actors act, but instead watching this reality play out, which is exactly how great TV should be. Stuhlbarg adds an awesome mob boss level to the story, not playing it cliché, but also not breaking away from the mould too much. Hope Davis plays Jimmy’s wife, Gina Baxter, who is that Shakesperean type of femme fatale, who is both ambitious and manipulative and pushes Jimmy to make drastic decisions for the honor of their family name.
We’ve also got Michael’s best friend Charlie (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), who is running for mayor and looking to clean up the town. He’s got connections on both sides of the law and will do anything to help his best friend when in need – even if he doesn’t have all the details. Whitlock Jr. plays it great and is a great character throughout season one. We’ve also got Lilli Kay who plays Fia Baxter, the daughter of Jimmy and Gina, as well as Jimi Stanton, who plays their son and Fia’s brother, Carlo. Amy Landecker plays Det. Nancy Costello, who investigated the death of Michael’s wife and beats herself up for never being able to close it.
Margo Martindale plays Michael’s mother-in-law Elizabeth, and Carmen Ejogo plays Lee Delamere, Michael’s former protégé who gets involved by taking on the case of Kofi Jones (Lamar Johnson), a gang member from the Desire gang who gets mixed up in the lies. We’ve also got Benjamin Flores Jr. who plays Kofi’s brother Eugene, and another character who is touched by this house of cards being built. Then there’s also Big Mo (Andrene Ward-Hammond), who is the leader of Desire and wants to avoid a war with the Baxter family, but also isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. That’s not even everyone, but I do have to stop at some point, and it’s most of the major players, and all of them handle their roles at the highest level they can.
So now that I’ve made it more than clear that season one – the original would-be mini-series – is definitely worth watching, this is where I’d leave this review if you’ve yet to watch anything and go pick up season one and dive in. For those curious though, what about season two? Does it reach the same levels? In short, no, as it’s kind of a take it, or leave it season, I feel. It came out of nowhere for me, as I hadn’t heard about it and always viewed the first season as a well-done 10-episode arc that worked on its own, so when ads started popping up that season two was set to premiere, I was kind of surprised. Where would the story go from there?
Well, it’s sold as a story where Michael is dealing with the fallout of everything that happened in the first season, and the FBI wants to use him to bring down the Baxter family. It’s an okay season with plenty of returning characters, but it also feels directionless at times, and as mentioned prior, lacks the urgency that propelled the first season forward and made it so addictive. There are a lot more moments this time out where they’re reaching to tie things together, and with the stakes just not being as clear or as enticing, the suspension of disbelief doesn’t work as well as it did the first time around.
I think the worst part of the second season is just how incomplete it feels overall, as it starts off okay, but really begins to flounder at about the midway point and never recovers. As we enter the final episode I began to realize that certain storylines wouldn’t be touched on again and never found any true, gratifying resolutions. If the showrunner wanted the audience to fill in some blanks, or for it to come off that this is just how it is down in New Orleans then that was the wrong way to go, as there’s no satisfactory conclusion to the series as a whole. Everything feels rushed in the final episode, and after it’s all over it left me feeling like, “What was the point of this season?”
The idea of taking down the Baxter family and Michael sort of righting the wrongs that he could does make sense for a second season, but it’s just not handled that well at all. Instead of comeuppance for certain characters, arcs are just left hanging, seemingly given up on, or simply continued like nobody has learned anything, so again, what was the point? I think the biggest thing missing was the urgency though, as the constant rising stakes and things Michael had to juggle in season one just aren’t there in the second season. While it’s still acted well enough by all (and I say well enough because what they’re given to work with isn’t as strong as it was the first time around), there’s less intrigue and more points where the season drags, which is never a good sign.
Again, the idea for season two was there, and I think there was a way to do it that could’ve kept tension, and while it’d be hard to reach the same levels, it still could’ve had things escalating throughout like they did in the first season; but in order to do that they would’ve had to kind of just let go of reality a little bit and go more for a story that’d be things the audience would want to see over trying to be somewhat diplomatic and going the route they did. This is a season where I feel that audiences would want to see the bad guys get theirs one way or another, and have viewers come out feeling like justice for all has been served. Sadly, that’s not the case, and the aimless nature of the season leaves characters feeling underserved, and the story for most feeling more unfinished than it did before the season even began.
In short, season one of Your Honor is worth checking out and well worth your time, while the second season is lacking in the areas where the first excelled and feels like it probably shouldn’t have been made when they realized they weren’t matching the same pace. That’s not to say a second season of a show can’t have a different feel and pacing to it, but to do so without giving that same level of satisfaction to the viewer when the final credits role just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. When you’re quickly tying bows on the majority of the storylines during a montage while a song is playing in the final few minutes of the series, well, you’ve missed the mark somewhere along the line.
Season One Overall Score: 4/5
Season Two Overall Score: 2.5/5
Video and Audio Review
Your Honor: The Complete Series lands at home in DVD format, and it looks as good as we can expect for DVDs at this point. The picture is clean enough, the scenes and characters are clear and bright during the day, and at night there’s limited muddying or crushed blacks. It’s an overall satisfying picture, and while I’d expect most would like Blu-rays at this point, we’re not quite at that point where show’s that aren’t hugely successful get releases in all formats. Heck, sometimes shows that are successful don’t find a way off of DVD. Still, it looks good and it’s a format everyone can play, so it’s a check in the right box there.
On the audio side of things we’ve got a clean and clear audio track, where dialogue takes center stage and shines through nicely. We’ve also got a great score and solid sound effects, and while this drama isn’t made to put your sound system to the test, everything sounds good, which works well enough for a release such as this. It gets the job done nicely, and again, that’s a check on the plus side.
Special Features:
Season One:
Deleted Scenes – The first season has some deleted scenes to check out and that’s it. TV shows don’t always have a lot of features, but it would’ve been nice to hear more from the cast from this initial run.
Season Two:
Behind the Episode: The Prison Rodeo – Here we’ve got a quick featurette that touches on this episode, how it was filmed, and things behind it. Nothing too deep, but a quick watch if you have the disc.
After the Episode – These are quick Zoom calls that Cranston has with various cast members after certain episodes. They’re roughly about two-and-a-half minutes in length and just see Cranston and whoever his guest is at the time talking briefly about the episode in question and what their characters may have been doing or thinking throughout.
Bryan Cranston’s Day On Set – This one was surprisingly just over two minutes in length, so they really don’t aim to get in his way. They film part of a scene during the day and then have to wait until after midnight to film the rest of it, so that’s always fun to see just how much goes into a day sometimes. But again, it’s an incredibly brief piece, albeit still fun to see.
Rosie Perez as Olivia – Another two-minute featurette where the character is talked about, even though I feel she was underutilized in the second season, more or less just popping up here and there instead of being a character viewers get invested in.
Deleted Scenes – Finally, we’ve also got some deleted scenes from this season as well.
Paramount Pictures Presents Your Honor: The Complete Series. Created by: Peter Moffat. Starring: Bryan Cranston, Hunter Doohan, Hope Davis, Michael Stuhlbarg, Lilli Kay, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Benjamin Flores Jr., Rosie Perez, Jimi Stanton, Keith Machekanyanga, Andrene Ward-Hammond, Amy Landecker, Carmen Ejogo, Margo Martindale. Running time: 1,104 Minutes. Rating: 14A. Released on DVD: July 18, 2023.
