A little more than halfway through the season, it’s here: Presumed Innocent’s supporting-character episode. We’re on the eve of Rusty’s murder trial, and it’s about time we get to the bottom of the inexhaustible well of hatred that fuels Tommy Molto. The “supporting-character episode” has been a staple of the television series since TV has been TV; some of my favorites in the genre include Marnie and Charlie’s Central Park episode in Lena Dunham’s Girls and the Seinfeld episode when Kramer goes to L.A. to become an actor.
The cold open in “Pregame” picks up where the last episode left off: Rusty going ballistic on Brian Ratzer and then having to explain himself to Barbara once again. But it’s not long after the title credit rolls up that we find Tommy looking through Michael’s pictures and videos from the night of Carolyn’s murder and ominously jotting down “BIKE” on his notebook before creepily zooming in on Carolyn’s bare legs. When Eugenia storms into his office to protest that she will be one of the first witnesses called to the stand, Tommy insults her in three different ways. First, he asks if she has ever kissed Rusty, which strikes me as an oddly fifth-grade way of posing a question about potential romantic involvement. Then, he has the gall to bring up the need for “professional objectivity,” and last, he threatens her job: “There’s been a lot of restructuring going on around here,” he says. “I want you to know that Nico and I value loyalty above all else.” The whole interaction lasts only slightly more than one minute.
Tommy has stayed half in the shadows so far, figuratively and in more straightforward ways: The closest we have come to approaching his inner self was in episode three, when Nico tore him apart in a bar booth. Framing him from behind Nico’s shoulders, the camera ambled across two-thirds of Tommy’s face, keeping him mostly obstructed from complete view. The choice to film him like this signaled to me that it was less important that we understood how Tommy was receiving Nico’s criticism than that he withstood it at all. For a prosecutor with a short temper, Tommy takes a lot of shit from Nico. In the novel, Turrow frames Rusty’s relationship with Raymond as a “fading romance” — in the aftermath of divorce, and after losing an election he’d hung on to against his better judgment, Raymond becomes “insular,” and Rusty feels budding resentment toward him. It seems the writers for Presumed Innocent have reversed this dynamic: Tommy is repeatedly undermined and scolded by Nico, who treats him pretty unabashedly as a pawn. Am I starting to feel bad for him?
When we pick back up with Tommy at the office, he’s remembering Carolyn. This is the first we’ve seen of their relationship — and it looks as though Carolyn treated him with the gloved condescension powerful women use with men they regard as pathetic. In the memory, Tommy confronts Carolyn: He’s heard she doesn’t want to work with him, and he wants to know why. He conducts the conversation almost as if he were examining a witness. Carolyn retorts that she’d prefer to work with Rusty because he was chief deputy, which made more sense for her “career-wise.” But Tommy is obviously wounded and won’t let go. As he remembers the interaction, he wears the kind of expression we might take on the morning after a drunk night at the bar, when we remember all the details we overshared and the jokes that didn’t land. It’s painfully embarrassing.
His reminiscence is interrupted by Nico, who takes Tommy at his word when he says Reynolds is a dead end. But Nico’s willingness to concede to Tommy’s best judgment doesn’t last very long. Tommy makes an impassioned speech to the press in which he condemns the “grotesque and systematic lack of accountability” plaguing the city and the country, name-checking everyone, from Rusty to Big Pharma and Wall Street, who thinks they have the right to get away with murder because of their relative power. It’s the first sensible thing Tommy has ever said, but Nico doesn’t like it. He tells Tommy he’s been unhelpful and impulsive as he paces in front of him; Tommy sits dutifully on the couch as if he’s gotten in trouble with the principal. Even the way he delivers the criticism is infantilizing: “Tommy, do you think that was helpful to us?”
Finally, Tommy stands up for himself. He says to Nico that he won’t tolerate “low-grade distrust,” but he stammers as he tries to articulate why so many people in the office have it out for him. He pins it on Nico: How can anyone else trust or respect him if the district attorney doesn’t? Harping on this point with the eagerness of a child who is just learning how to put words to feelings, Tommy is on the verge of tears: “I’m the good guy in all this,” he pleads. In order to get a conviction, he argues, he needs to convince the jury pool that “something is so because Tommy Molto says it’s so.”
It’s a tour-de-force moment from Sarsgaard, my favorite performance sequence in the show so far. His humiliation cuts deep — his problem becomes clear to us, if not to him. Tommy just wants to be respected. He is highly immature and can’t help it; it’s the first thing people around him pick up on and use to justify their dislike of him. His name is, after all, Tommy, rather than the more dignified Tom or Tommasio. Not that it’s impossible to be a formidable Tommy: It’d work for a mobster, for example, but only because it’s ironic — a kid’s name for a figure who could hurt you. But Tommy is never quite able to scare anyone (or to telegraph irony) convincingly. When he tries to, he just comes off as bratty and creepy: the kind of pathetic, slimy behavior that would lead someone like Carolyn to make sure she doesn’t have to interact with him any more than strictly necessary.
And speaking of respect, mistresses, and formidable figures, the outlines of Barbara’s character also sharpen in “Pregame.” She finds herself in the bar again, hoping to see Hot Bartender, whom I should maybe start calling by his real name, Clifton. She calls him when he doesn’t come in, though memories of Rusty briefly impair her bad-good judgment. But Clifton reminds her that “you only regret [the choices] you don’t make,” and the next thing we know, Barbara is getting ready to meet him. Red light bathes her as she wanders through Clifton’s projection art. They flirt cutely — she tells him the work makes her feel “safe.” Clifton is sweet and respectful as he asks Barbara to make the first move if she so wishes, as he doesn’t want to put her in an uncomfortable situation, and they share a kiss. It’s no wonder he is irresistible to Barbara; so rare a species is a considerate man in the Presumed Innocent universe.
When Barbara tells Dr. Rush about the kiss, she is reprimanded for not mentioning it sooner. What is it with that woman? Barbara tries to shrug off Dr. Rush’s attempts to get to the bottom of her omission at first, but eventually, it pours out of her: she’s not ashamed that, feeling desired, she was relieved. More than that, she thinks Jaden would be proud of her for meeting with Clifton; she feels judged by her daughter for staying in her marriage. This one really broke my heart. Ruth Negga delivers the line masterfully: Her voice is steady until she says the word judgment, and then it breaks all at once. I feel closer to Barbara at this moment than I have so far; though I’ve always been on her side, seeing as she is unfortunately married to a cheating, lying scoundrel, it’s been easier to understand her fury intellectually than emotionally. Her anger and resentment were legible in a general way; any woman in her situation would be angry and resentful. But now she’s filling in as a real character with her own motives, desires, and emotions, and it’s only good for the show.
For his part, Rusty is nice and wholesome for exactly one minute in this episode, when he tries to impose the illusion of normalcy on the family’s breakfast table. Still, other than that, he makes several bad choices (at least he’s consistent). He nearly breaks into Ratzer’s house before he is caught by the man himself, whom he convinces to speak with his defense team. Raymond and Mya do not buy Rusty’s theory that Reynolds should be a prime suspect, and the fact that he followed Ratzer into his house is not helping. When Ratzer comes to speak to them, though, he’s adamant that he doesn’t know Reynolds or have anything to do with him. The interview leads nowhere. Beyond that, Rusty finds Kyle’s bicycle in the trash and puts it in the trunk of his car, which seems like an awful decision. Why wouldn’t he tell Raymond or Mya? They know that the prosecution has the pictures of Kyle! If he’s going to hide potential evidence, maybe he should let his team know …
Raymond is not confident about the approaching trial, but he’s not not confident either. He wants Barbara to testify in Rusty’s favor, and he’ll ask her regardless of Rusty’s protest. No one can sleep the night before the first trial day. It’s pouring rain again, and in the car, on the way to the courtroom, the Sabiches hold hands. They’re going to need all the strength they can afford each other: Tommy’s opening statement is stirring. (He does address his nickname and chalks it up to being from Chicago, but I’m not convinced.) His stronger points lie in his rhetoric: His pathos game is strong. He makes a case for the prosecutor’s humanity and appeals to the jury’s responsibility to justice and civil duty. “If we can’t find the truth,” he asks, “what is the hope of justice?”
Addendum
• Raymond’s nightmares continue to disturb his sleep. In this episode, he dreams of his head exploding and his brain splattering everywhere. Lorraine, meanwhile, is completely convinced that Rusty is guilty.
• Rusty switched up swimming to running at home on his treadmill, which Barbara told Jaden she had suggested as a way to “let out steam.” We’re not really given a proper explanation for the switch, but I imagine it has to do with spending less time outside under the watchful eyes of the press and potential enemies in the days leading up to the trial.
• Though Kyle is the kid more directly implicated in the trial’s events, Jaden gets a lot more screen time. She is worried that Rusty might be guilty but is ultimately willing to give him the benefit of the doubt; I’ve been finding her struggle to come to terms with what’s happening to her father quite moving.
