Your Honor 2.2-2.3: Who Knows What?

The second (and final) season of Your Honor continues to be as riveting and wrenching as the first.

[Spoilers follow ... ]

Adam and Fia's baby continues to be a moving, beautiful star attraction.  The scene of Desiato and Baxter standing over his crib at the end of the third episode was letter perfect.  The two grandpas, no love lost between them, standing over the one person in the world they both so deeply loved.  Night and day meeting over a young dawn.

But the true nature of Baxter is still not completely clear.  In episode 2.2, he almost seems weak, especially in comparison to his wife's implacable expression of power and thirst for revenge.  In contrast, in 2.3, we see him assuring his consigliere Frankie that he would have killed Adam on the spot had he known that it was Adam not Michael driving the car that killed Rocco.  Indeed, the only thing that stopped Baxter from killing Adam last season was Eugene accidentally doing that, first.  And although Gina leaves her nasty argument with her husband still defiant, he made it clear in that room that he was boss, at least in his own head.  I had a feeling, watching that scene, that Jimmy might kill her, or try to kill her, before this season is over.

Meanwhile, it seems we still don't for a fact whether Fia knows or doesn't know that Adam killed her brother.  I'd say she doesn't know.  Adam was close to telling her last season.  But his getting killed got in the way of that confession.  Jimmy, however, did know, which raises the question of why, then, didn't he tell his daughter?  He certainly can't be happy that Adam's name comes right after Rocco's in Jimmy's grandson.

Or perhaps Fia does know, but her love for Adam, and the fact that Rocco's death was an accident, allows her to live with it, and draw Michael in to be his grandson.  This is a story of Shakespearean proportions.  That was already clear in the first season, and the family ties and conflicts are even more trenchant and inscrutable now in the second season.

See also Your Honor 2.1: Scorching

And see also Your Honor 1.1: Taut Set-Up ... Your Honor 1.2: "Today Is Yesterday" ... Your Honor 1.3: The Weak Link ... Your Honor 1.4: The Dinner ... Your Honor 1.5: The Vice Tightens ... Your Honor 1.6: Exquisite Chess Game ...Your Honor 1.7: Cranston and Stuhlbarg Approaching Pacino and De Niro ... Your Honor 1.8: Nothing More Important ... Your Honor 1.9: Screeching Up to the Last Stop Before Next Week's Finale ... Your Honor 1.10: Final Irony