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The Night Of

Say what you will about what happens in this week’s The Night Of: At least you can see it, for a change. Titled “The Art of War,” this episode was directed by The Theory of Everything and Man on Wire’s James Marsh — the only episode in the series not helmed by co-creator and, as of next week’s installment, co-writer Steven Zaillian. Marsh eschews the ostentatious, obfuscatory camerawork that has marked Zaillian’s contributions: no characters talking while out of focus, no shots of the back of people’s heads, no endless series of close-ups of inanimate objects, no random portraiture of brick walls or puddles. When he does isolate elements of the setting — a dripping hot-water faucet, cigarette smoke wafting up to the ceiling, the harsh overhead lights of the cellblock — these shots have meaning to the characters. You can, and probably should, complain that that meaning is getting doled out with a trowel (the episode ends with a shot of smoke right after Naz makes a deal with the devil! Get it???), but it sure beats spending multiple minutes of screentime zoomed in on the corners of tables just to prove that this is a gritty environment, or whatever.

Unfortunately, Marsh’s handling of human beings is less sure-footed. In the case of the prostitute whom John successfully represents at court, only to avail himself of her services later that night, it’s outright creepy. The camera leeringly pans up her body as she stands before the judge. Later, it follows her as she walks away, adjusting her skintight dress as John looks on admiringly and Chandra observes warily. (As we all know, there’s nothing worse for a woman to be than a sex worker.) Finally, it captures her naked body during and after her sex scene with John, in the most lopsided male-to-female nudity ratio in recent memory. (The excuse is that he can’t bear to remove his clothes due to his skin condition, but still.) Considering how little fuss is made out of what is essentially extortion on John’s part — sure, he’ll handle her case, but there’s gotta be a little something extra in it for him — this objectifying framing is extra icky.

The other women hardly fare better. Chandra has yet to have an idea about herself or her job that isn’t first suggested to her by a man. Her boss, Alison Cole, is exactly the careerist creep her camera-hogging introduction last week heavily implied she’d be; she’s condescending to Naz’s parents, dishonest to Naz about the deal she brokered for him (she makes it sound like a tough get in order to cajole him into accepting), and apoplectic when he turns the deal down in court. (As a side note, you needn’t be an admirer of Hillary Clinton to note some resemblance and interpret that as a slightly sexist sign that we’re meant to dislike this character.)

And a pair of nameless young women attending Andrea’s burial actually stop to listen to John quote the Bible at them — you know, as all New Yorkers, especially women walking away from the grave of their friend who they believe was raped and murdered by a strange man, are wont to do when some weirdo starts spouting scripture.

As for Naz, he spends most of the episode receiving lessons about life on the inside from his new best friend, whose name I didn’t catch but which really doesn’t matter since pretty much every black man on the show is interchangeably terrifying. (One such man’s bullshit excuse for stabbing his barber drives John back into the arms of his former client, in fact, setting off a whole John Stone, Private Investigator storyline centered entirely on striking gold with his very first clue.) For a long time this new friend’s interest in Naz is so total and time-consuming it seemed he might be romantically interested in the kid, but…actually, I have no idea why he gave him all that advice, nearly all of it good, but then turns on him and douses him with a burning-hot oil-and-water cocktail the moment he hears him say he turned down the deal because he didn’t do it. Attacking Naz at all, after they had multiple conversations about jailhouse overlord Freddy Knight’s offer of protection, makes even less sense. For a down-and-dirty prestige procedural purporting to show how the justice system works, The Night Of needs to get a handle on how human beings work first.