What I’m Watching: Defending Jacob

Defending Jacob: Season 1, Episode 6 “Wishful Thinking” (B)

It’s continuously troubling to see how Jacob behaves, thinking for some reason that photo-shopping his face onto a picture of Christian Bale from “American Psycho” wouldn’t be the absolute worst idea. It’s very true that the way justice should be carried out is to make sure that the person on trial is indeed guilty of a crime rather than just asserting the horrific nature of a crime should on its own implicate the suspect (see: “When They See Us”). Neal’s refusal to even consider that Patz should be looked at, even calling Matt a liar to his face with his mother right next to him, is deeply troubling, and it seems obvious from the snippets we’ve seen of Andy responding angrily on the stand that things don’t go particularly well over the course of the trial. Matt really did offer up a logical story implicating someone else, but that may not be enough to exonerate him. The lowdown that Andy and Laurie got from Dr. Vogel wasn’t exactly comforting, and there’s really so much in the way of statistics and allegedly inherited genes that can be used against people in court. Jacob’s birthday celebration was appropriately muted, and hearing him say that his one wish should be relatively obvious was the first truly appropriate reaction he’s displayed in all of this. Billy calling Andy from prison felt like an olive branch in a way, but he still threw in just enough nastiness to make it clear that he had his own best interests in mind.