TV: The Lincoln Lawyer, Season 2 (2023)
The unconventional L.A. defense attorney is again caught in the city's bruising contradictions
Mickey Haller (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) is dazzled by prosecutor Andrea Freeman (Yaya DaCosta)
The Lincoln Lawyer, Season 2 (2023)
Streaming on Netflix – Episodes 1-5 (the final Episodes 6-10 arrive August 3)
Lawyers gonna lawyer. That’s the sine qua non for any legal procedural series, and since we have no trouble believing prosecutors and defense attorneys twist the rule of law to their advantage, we settle in to watch courtroom foes jockey to outsmart one another.
In Season 1, this series departed from the 2011 movie The Lincoln Lawyer, starring Matthew McConaughey. There, drawn from a Michael Connelly novel, Los Angeles defense attorney Mickey Haller was so off his game he operated out of a classic, beat-up Lincoln Town Car. No tony office suite for him.
But with the odds against him he won in court. Which ended up making the plucky Mickey, no golden boy in L.A.’s starchy legal community, a hit with critics and audiences.
The new TV series was created by David E. Kelley and, like the movie, is adapted from Connelly’s work. Season 1 left Mickey (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) victorious in court as well as a media celebrity for winning a sensational murder case.
Season 2, based on Connelly's novel The Fifth Wheel, finds Mickey basking in his newfound public notoriety and growing client list. Does this call for a snazzy office refurbishing? Done.
He still keeps his confreres, including his loyal office staff, hanging on, if not fully believing, his every word.
Back for more are Mickey’s two ex-wives. Maggie (Neve Campbell), listed as First Wife in Mickey’s phone directory, is a gifted criminal prosecutor, and since the couple’s divorce she’s no longer under Mickey’s spell. But as parents they stay civil for the sake of their daughter Hayley (Krista Warner).
Second Wife (so rendered in the phone directory) is Lorna (Becky Newton), who works as Haller’s paralegal and is romantically linked to Mickey’s best friend and investigator Cisco (Angus Sampson).
What kept me engaged throughout was the stunning, even rapturous, cinematography. This is one of those fine instances where L.A. as dramatic backdrop is subtly deployed to signal that all may not be quite so well in the sun-kissed landscape.
The camera’s smooth pivots and long, slow sweeps make a lustrous L.A. seem to breathe uneasily, like an anxious witness to deception.
Also on hand is Izzy (Jazz Raycole), who chauffeurs Mickey in his Lincoln SUV while in the back seat he parses dense legal documents and works his phone. She’s also been brought in to help manage the law firm’s endless filing and fact checking.
For their first case this season, the office team works to clear Jesús Menendez (Sal Huezo), a client whose conviction, due to Mickey’s skill, was vacated months ago but who’s now being recharged. With the help of his crew, Mickey clears the grateful Jesús all over again.
Matters don’t go nearly as smoothly when Lisa (Lana Parrilla), a pretty restaurateur, lures Mickey into her bed the first night they meet. In the blink of a bedroom lamp, they both start Getting Serious.
With their heads still in the clouds, suddenly Lisa is charged with the murder of a real estate developer who’s gentrifying properties surrounding her restaurant and driving out her local clientele.
Lincoln Lawyer Mickey Haller cruising L.A. seeking answers and landing in trouble
Is that a sufficient motive for murder? At first it seems unlikely, but when it’s reported that Lisa was seen exiting the office building where the developer was headquartered only minutes after his murder, she becomes the prime suspect.
Of course, she says she’s innocent, and Mickey, despite a clear conflict of interest, takes her case. Then Lisa’s story grows shakier.
An eyewitness is prepared to testify the angry restaurant owner was close to the scene minutes after the murder went down. And a trace of the developer’s blood is found on one of Lisa's gardening gloves.
There’s a lot to keep track of across five episodes. In the complex Menendez case Mickey is relentlessly tracked and sometimes flummoxed by cagey detective Raymond Griggs (Ntare Mwine), a friend who long ago has gotten wise to the ambitious attorney’s tricks. Luckily for us, Griggs, in Mwine’s crisp performance, keeps the cops v. attorney maneuvers in sharp focus.
In defending Lisa, Haller is confronted by wily prosecutor Andrea Freeman (Yaya DaCosta). The gorgeous DaCosta plays the people’s counsel like an avenging angel, cutting Mickey no slack. It’s a lawyerly ice princess performance and DaCosta holds the screen with sleek finesse.
Finally, there’s Elliott Gould as seasoned Attorney Siegal, a lawyer friend of Mickey’s father who offers his old pal’s son expert, no nonsense legal advice.
We only wonder if Mickey could be foolish enough to ignore such burnished insight. Gould, tough and tender, makes a small role feel vital.
Toss in a subplot where Cisco is trying to cut ties with his old motorcycle gang baddies, who are squeezing one more favor out of him. Sampson deploys his deep gravelly voice to pry facts from reluctant witnesses and to “urge” them to tell what they know in order to help Mickey.
He also relies on the same vocal tic to face down the menacing motorcycle gang’s threats. Cisco somehow always feels a tad shady, which adds a frisson of tension to all his legal and extra-legal poking around.
With charm and a commanding physical presence, on the streets and in court, Garcia-Rulfo keeps the script’s plot twists clear in Mickey’s mind, so we don’t completely lose any threads, though we’re given a lot of careful listening to do. He brings a nicely considered, lightly Spanish-accented bravura to the role.
Garcia-Rulfo neatly balances the devoted father, ill-starred lover and dogged defense attorney
What kept me engaged throughout was the stunning, even rapturous, cinematography. This is one of those fine instances where L.A. as dramatic backdrop is subtly deployed to signal that all may not be quite so well in the sun-kissed landscape.
The camera’s smooth pivots and long, slow sweeps make a lustrous L.A. seem to breathe uneasily, like an anxious witness to deception.
Could a place this pretty eventually be able to thrive without malice? The landscape we get soaked in here actually gets you pondering that absurd question.
L.A. can feel deceptively “democratic”, a piece of paradise for everyone, but half-Mexican Mickey is still an outsider in the city’s ingrown legal community, which means both prosecutors and judges obsessively lean in to see if he’ll muck it up.
Whenever he does, he sweats, strategizes and before long regains his footing. A hero? A nice guy? No, not always. But a scrapper for sure.
And we’re only up to Episode 5. Coming episodes might reveal just how much of Mickey is flair, how much is true grit.
At the very end of the episode, in a parking garage we see Mickey viciously attacked by three men, who don’t stop kicking and beating him until blood is spewing from between his broken teeth. It looks like they came dangerously close to killing him.
Is his spirit also broken? We’ll learn in the final five episodes, all to be dropped on August 3.