Bull Season 2 Episode 2 Review: Already Gone
Christine Orlando
at
.
What kind of god do you pray to?
Is it one that believes that taking any life for any reason is murder, or that ending one’s suffering can also be an act of mercy.
That was the question Dr. Jason Bull posed on Bull Season 2 Episode 2.
Not only didn’t everyone agree with Jason Bull’s point of view on this particular topic, they were offended at the way he posed the question, not that Bull seemed to care.
Bull: I am not asking you to go out and kill somebody, I'm asking you to go into a courtroom. As a matter of fact, I'm paying you to go into a court of law and save a boy's life. What kind of god do you pray to?
Marissa: Bull, you can't say that.
Bull: I just did.
As much as this installment felt like the tried and true formula we’d seen in Bull Season 1, it still managed to show Dr. Jason Bull in a bit of a different light.
Bull isn’t as perfect as he once appeared. He can be whiny, which is new. He loses his temper at times, as when he was arguing with Benny and Marissa over this case.
He also laments over financial worries, and he apparently wishes he could have a drink at work, even if he was only asking for ice.
Something that Marissa enjoyed poking fun at in this Bull quote...
Bull: I want ice.
Marissa: Ice? As in drink at 4:25 in the afternoon? I knew I never should have gotten you that box set of Mad Men for Christmas.
Part of the fun of the TAC team is that they can argue like this and still remain respectful colleagues and friends.
But in the end, Dr. Jason Bull is their boss, and if he wants to take on a case, even pro bono, then that’s what the TAC team will do.
One of the things we got back to in “Already Gone” that I most enjoyed was choosing the jury. Experiencing voir dire through the eyes of Dr. Jason Bull is fascinating and something I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of.
Bull was right. If a person views their world through the lens of what’s right and what’s wrong, if they live by a set of strict rules, then Adam Harris was guilty. Not only didn’t he stop Emily from dying, he helped her with the plunger on the needle.
What the TAC team needed was a jury stacked with people who need to know the story behind the facts. They needed jurors who could see that Adam was a teenaged boy who loved his dying girlfriend and was put in an impossible situation.
When Danny tracked down Emily’s online friend from the cancer group, I had already jumped to the conclusion that Ava was the one who had gotten her the fentanyl.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
As Ava’s mother walked up those stair to her room, it was obvious that something was very wrong, but I couldn’t figure it out until I saw Ava, unmoving, unable to speak, and staring blankly at the fish tank in her room.
If Emily saw that as her future, it must have looked worse than a death sentence. It must have looked like hell on earth.
I have a point of view and I am concerned that it doesn't dovetail with our client’s. I’ve been a practicing Catholic my whole life, and suicide…suicide is a mortal sin. Sanctity of life. No one can take a person's life, even their own, except for God. Sorry, but that's just what I believe.
Benny
As much as I respected Benny, both for his beliefs and for his desire to be up front about them with Bull, it did make me wonder how this had never come up before in his career.
Benny has been both a prosecutor and a defense attorney; it seems like he would have found a way for his religious beliefs and his obligations as an attorney to coexist before now.
There were a couple of smaller moments that left me with some other questions.
First, if I remember correctly, Danny had a boyfriend for part of last season, which left me wondering about the nature of this current relationship because it appears to be something that’s been going on for a while.
Second, was Bull joking about changing his name?
Bull is certainly a strong surname that someone in a position of power might choose, but when Bull visited his hometown in Bull Season 1 Episode 9, didn’t everyone refer to him as Jason Bull? That leads me to believe that this was nothing but an amusing tangent Bull embarked on while sparring with Adam.
As fascinating as I found this case, it also felt as though Bull has gone back to its comfort zone after the edgy premiere of Bull Season 2 Episode 1.
The banter has been toned down, but is that because Diana wasn't in town? If that's the case, then I hope they bring her back soon, because I think I enjoy my Jason Bull more with a little more edge.
Check back next week for my review of Bull Season 2 Episode 3, and feel free to watch Bull online to compare the first two episodes of the season and see which you prefer.
C. Orlando was a TV Fanatic Staff Writer. Follow her on Twitter.
