Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Lincoln Lawyer’ Season 2 Part 2 on Netflix, Where Mickey Haller Is Trying To Win His Latest Splashy Murder Case

As The Lincoln Lawyer Season 2 began, Los Angeles defense attorney Mickey Haller (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) was riding a wave of success inside the courtroom to a higher profile outside of it. But then Mickey got involved with a local chef and restaurateur – in more ways than one – and his decision to defend her in a thorny murder case has resulted in his new notoriety taking a few dings. He’s up against a tough prosecutor, he’s overworking his staff, and part one of season two concluded with him getting jumped and beaten up in a parking structure. Mickey’s already licking new wounds, and the trial hasn’t even officially started. In addition to Garcia-Rulfo as the savvy vehicle-adjacent lawyer originally created by author Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer features Neve Campbell, Becki Newton, Angus Sampson, Jazz Raycole, and Lana Parrilla.

THE LINCOLN LAWYER – SEASON 2 PART 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: In a flashback, we return to the scene of the crime. It was his associate and driver Izzy Letts (Raycole) who found Mickey, bloody and unconscious and lying in a heap next to his Lincoln Navigator. And after shots of his stretcher crashing through ER doors and the resulting surgery, Mickey awakens in a recovery room to concerned looks from first ex-wife Maggie McPherson (Campbell) and his teenage daughter Hayley (Krista Warner).   

The Gist: A broken arm, some busted ribs, and a liver that’s beat to shit – other than that, MIckey’s attackers left him alone. And he has a pretty good idea why that is. These guys weren’t out to rob or kill him. No, they just wanted to put a very professional scare into him. Which in Mickey’s line of work means somebody was sending a message. In the murder case against her, Lisa Trammell (Parrilla) has maintained her innocence even through mounting and often quite damning evidence. But Mickey thinks her link to a smarmy podcaster named Henry Dahl (Matt Angel) doesn’t end with his blatant attempts to benefit financially from her true crime-ready story. He suspects that whoever’s bankrolling Dahl is connected to Alex Grant (Michael A. Goorjian), a powerful property owner with ties to the Armenian mafia. And he asks Cisco (Angus Sampson), his lead investigator, to prove it.

It was Izzy’s on again-off again girlfriend Ray (Shelby Lee Parks) who Dahl paid to gain access to the Navigator and a contract stored there, one that signed Lisa’s life rights over to Mickey. But Mickey says Izzy has nothing to be sorry for. After all, he’s after whoever put Ray up to it. And to that end, Lorna and Cisco hatch a plan to catch insulated rich guy Alex Grant out in the open, where they can deliver him a subpoena. Mickey wants him on the stand and in front of a jury, where Grant’s business ties to deceased developer Mitchell Bondurant can be teased out. It’s a play to decrease the pressure on his client, but Lorna wonders if Mickey’s insane for gambling his entire case on Grant talking instead of taking the fifth.

Mickey’s personal life is still full of ups and downs, especially romantically. Lisa keeps giving him longing looks – yes, they were once an item, but now he’s her official legal counsel. Instead, with the attack comes renewed concern for Mickey’s well-being from Maggie. “You think you’re invincible,” she tells him over a quiet dinner at his home, “but you’re not.” And though Maggie has big professional news of her own, she decides to wait on telling her ex-husband. There are deeper matters of the heart to contend with.  

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? When it recently dropped on Netflix, the caddish legal drama Suits seemed to suddenly become an overnight phenomenon, even though its nine season run concluded at USA back in 2019. And since David E. Kelley originally created The Lincoln Lawyer for television, you can connect it to Kelley’s thick case file of lawyering on TV, from LA Law and Ally McBeal to Boston Legal and the upcoming Presumed Innocent miniseries with Jake Gyllenhaal.  

Our Take: The knock on this version of The Lincoln Lawyer has never been its casting. Manuel Garcia-Rulfo is very charming, he certainly looks the part in a series of gray or blue wool/cashmere blend suits – the fabric is hand-milled in England, because for a lawyer, “a good suit is like a coat of armor” – and he plays to the traumas in Mickey’s past with a subtlety that fits his interpretation of the character. No, Garcia-Rulfo is sturdy. The issue with Lincoln Lawyer is that its title character can be a kind of blank, a sieve to take in whatever prompts occur around him, from his staff calling Mickey with news that another one of his cases has started on fire, to the trials of his personal life, where he’s often in reaction mode to ex-wife Maggie and the whims of his teenage daughter. (Or sleeping with women who then become his clients.) Not only that, but Mickey’s staff – in particular the dynamic between Lorna and Cisco, who are engaged to be married – often bring a verve to Lincoln Lawyer that isn’t as apparent in all of the time we spend with him. This wavering balance has steadied a bit in season two, especially when the series illustrates how Mickey applies his unconventional but whip-smart legal mind to the kind of courtroom big swings that lawyer shows love. But is it wrong that we keep wanting a Lorna and Cisco-centered spinoff set in The Lincoln Lawyer universe?

Sex and Skin: Lisa keeps clasping Mickey’s hand like they’re still a romantic item, even though he’s her defense counsel in a very public murder case. And it’s not Lisa who ends up spending an unexpectedly intimate evening with Mickey at his modernist Baldwin Hills home, blocked and sanitized in the style of network television.

Parting Shot: “Sometimes it’s good to feel the sun on your face.” Mickey’s out of the hospital, the cast on his arm is off, and he’s taking his immaculate cornflower blue 1964 Lincoln Continental convertible out for a rejuvenating spin. With the kind of good mood he’s in, Mickey’s not even mad when he sees how somebody scrawled a bunch of dicks next to his face on a bus bench advertisement. 

Sleeper Star: Lorna Crane is almost the entire reason that everything and everyone stays on time and on task around the hectic law offices of Mickey Haller. And Becki Newton continues to be the most indispensable component of the Lincoln Lawyer cast as Lorna, adding in layers of humor and insight and giving us a rooting interest in all of this working out as a positive for the good guys.  

Most Pilot-y Line: “This isn’t about some podcast. It’s about making sure that Lisa takes the fall for Mitchell Bondurant’s murder.” Mickey’s powers of deduction have revealed part of Henry Dahl’s angle on Lisa’s case. What remains to be seen is who truly stands to benefit from her being framed for murder.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Part legal drama, part relationship drama, and easily consumable in its network television-style format and tone, The Lincoln Lawyer has style and wit in addition to great chemistry between its core cast. 

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges