The first season of Reasonable Doubt seemed to have everything, wrapped up in a sexy package. But at the end of the finale, Jax Stewart gets a call from her friend Chanelle that will set her on a course to get sucked back into her world as a defense attorney, despite her fragile marriage and mental health.
Opening Shot: Jax Stewart (Emayatzy Corinealdi) is in bed, and as a Jill Scott tune plays, the camera pans back to show that her husband Lewis (McKinley Freeman) is in bed with her.
The Gist: Jax has taken a leave of absence from the high-powered law firm where she’s a partner, after being kidnapped and watching a former client/flame kill himself. She’s also been trying to piece her marriage back together; Lewis hasn’t moved back in yet, but does stay over in order to bring back some intimacy. Jax tells the psychiatrist that will approve her return to work that she’s doing a lot better, but hesitates a bit when the doctor tells her she can clear her to return.
But Jax goes back into defense attorney mode when she gets a panicked call from her friend Shanelle Tucker (Shannon Kane), who says she killed her husband, football star Jamarion “JT” Tucker (Christopher Mychael Watson) in self-defense.
Given the bruises on her throat, face and elsewhere, it does seem that Shanelle’s self-defense argument is valid; in fact, in Jax’s discussions with Mike Ortiz (Victor Rasuk), her friend in the DA’s office, she’s under the impression that Shanelle won’t face charges.
But when Ortiz is replaced on the case by a new ADA, the by-the-book Lucy Wargo (Melissa Ponzio), the heat is turned up on Chanelle, especially given some of the inconsistencies between what she told police and the evidence picked up from the crime scene. It also turns out that she waited over two hours to call 911 and she called Jax before the authorities.
Of course, diving headlong into Chanelle’s case puts a strain on her reconciliation with Lewis, who initiated the separation when he felt she devoted more time to work than to their relationship. After a contentious couples’ counselling session, paired with the panic attack she suffered after coming back from the crime scene a few days earlier, Jax starts to wonder if she’s making the same mistakes again. She seeks out someone else to do most of the work defending Chanelle: Corey Cash (Morris Chestnut), an attorney she’s very familiar with.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created and written by Raamla Mohamed, Reasonable Doubt has a similar vibe to Scandal, a show Mohamed worked on. Kerry Washington (along with Larry Wilmore!) are among the show’s executive producers.
Our Take: During the first season of Reasonable Doubt, it seemed that whatever Mohamed and her writers could throw at Jax, they did. Murders, kidnapping, affairs, marriage troubles… it was all there. In Season 2, though, Jax is dealing with keeping Chanelle from a life sentence while keeping her marriage intact. That feels like more than enough for one season, given how complex the Chanelle’s case is.
Of course, the show is going to have its eye-rolling moments, mainly with regards to how Jax keeps saying she’s going to work on herself and her marriage even though you know that no such thing will happen. Given its name, Reasonable Doubt is a legal drama more than anything else, so it’s not a huge stretch to think that the legal side will be as dominant as the relationship/sexy side of Jax’s story.
But it does seem that Mohamed and company have toned down some of the more outlandish plot points, at least at first, given the serious nature of Chanelle’s case. Are some of the characters, like Wargo’s hard-ass DA, somewhat one-note? Yep. But given that the always-riveting Corinealdi is in most of the show’s scenes, some of those one-note side characters don’t grate on us as much as they should.
Chestnut’s presence should make for some interesting storylines. Can Jax let someone else take charge of a case she’s working on, especially one so close to her? And will the two of them start sleeping together? Given the nature of the show, we get the feeling the answer to the second question will be “damn straight.”
Sex and Skin: Less sex than you might expect, given the history of this show. But there is some, though somehow there are a lot of clothes on during the episode’s one sex scene.
Parting Shot: Corey Cash takes the call from Jax, hears the news about Chanelle, and says, “Fuck.”
Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Tim Jo as Daniel, Jax’s investigator, and Angela Grovey as Krystal, Jax’s assistant. They’re great together and gives Jax a “Scooby gang” to bounce off of during the investigative scenes.
Most Pilot-y Line: When Jax and Lewis’ daughter Naima (Angela Grovey) tells Lewis that she doesn’t call him “Daddy” anymore, she says, “Only babies say ‘Daddy.’” As the parent of a 9-year-old, we so felt Lewis’ pain when he muttered, “Right. And so it begins.”
Our Call: STREAM IT. Reasonable Doubt might not be as crazy as it was during its first season, but Emayatzy Corinealdi’s lead performance as Jax is as strong as ever.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
