Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | July 24, 2024
There are spoilers below for both the novel and the TV series.
Apple TV+’s Presumed Innocent wrapped its first season finale this week (it has already been renewed), and the most-watched drama in the streamer’s history delivered a wild twist ending.
I didn’t care for it. But we’ll get there.
First, here’s how the book ended, for contrast: The judge dismissed the case against Rusty Sabich. The details aren’t that important for the purposes of providing contrast. Basically, there was evidence that Tommy Molto and the forensics expert were overzealous and artificially tilted the evidence against Rusty. Rusty’s lawyer — who was not Raymond Horgan here — had also insinuated in a way that only the judge could detect that he had details about corruption that the judge had engaged in with Carolyn Polhemus earlier in their careers. The judge tossed the case owing to both prosecutorial misconduct and because he didn’t want his past indiscretions exposed.
The crucial thing is that the case never went to jury. There were no closing arguments which, for me, was the biggest letdown of the novel. This is a legal drama from the best legal novelist this side of Grisham, and for the trial to go on for as long as it did only to be tossed on what was something of a technicality owing to the judge’s past corruption was anticlimactic.
This is where David E. Kelley’s Apple TV+ series improves significantly upon the novel. Jake Gyllenhaal — as Rusty — and his real-life brother-in-law, Peter Sarsgaard — as Tommy Molto — both essentially provide their Emmy submission clips with their respective closing arguments. And they will probably win nominations out of them.
The closing arguments and the jury verdict are the reasons why we watch legal dramas, and David E. Kelley knows that. He also writes closing arguments better than anyone in television, and has been doing so since in L.A. Law days. This is no exception. Rusty delivers a powerful, emotional closing argument, and if I were a jury member, there’s no way I’d have convicted … at least, that’s what I would have thought before Tommy Molto delivered his closing argument, which was equally effective. When the closing arguments are that good, it creates a tremendous amount of suspense around the verdict. Knowing Kelley and his history, a not-guilty verdict was far from assured for his protagonist. That is, however, what the jury returns with, and it feels like both a huge relief and an unsettling outcome.
In the novel, after the case is dismissed against Rusty, Barbara confesses to what Rusty had already known by this point: That she had killed Carolyn. She was jealous, she had an out-of-body experience, etc., and she decided to move out with their one child and take a job in another state. Rusty was OK with this because, even though he knew Barbara had killed Carolyn, he knew that she’d never kill again and did not worry about the welfare of their child. He felt as much blame for Carolyn’s death as Barbara.
The Apple TV+ series makes a nod toward this, when Barbara (Ruth Negga) mentions that she has a suitcase ready in case Rusty ever decides to destroy their family again. This is where, in the TV series, Rusty accuses Barbara of everything the book’s Barbara confessed to. In the TV series, however, Barbara denies it, even as Rusty details how he secretly altered the crime scene to shift blame away from Barbara.
If Barbara had fessed up and the series had ended there, I think I’d have been 95 percent satisfied, even if it was virtually the same ending as the novel. I didn’t necessarily expect it to have the same ending, so for Barbara to confess again in the series felt surprising.
Unfortunately, the series took a weird left turn. Rusty told Barbara that he knew she had killed Carolyn because he had been tracking her car and knew that she’d planted evidence — the murder weapon — in Tommy’s apartment. Barbara started to deny it, but then their daughter, Jaden (Chase Infiniti) — who is not even a character that exists in the novel — confessed that she had planted the murder weapon. She had been the one who killed Carolyn after visiting her house to confront her about sleeping with her dad. When Carolyn revealed to Jaden that Rusty was obsessed with her, and that she was also pregnant, Jaden lost her temper and hit her with the fire poker with enough force to kill her.
Jaden — who was really not on anyone’s radar as a realistic suspect — was the killer all along. I hated it. I don’t buy a daughter being so angry about her father’s affair that she kills his lover, although I had a hunch she might be the killer after she gave her dad a lingering hug the night before the closing argument. Still, the ending was too far-fetched. Kelley was wise to include closing arguments and a jury verdict in the television show, but he should have stuck with the original ending.
I still can’t wait for season two, and I have not yet read the sequel to Scott Turow’s novel, The Burden of Proof, so I have that to look forward to, as well.
