Summer sleuthing: The Firm season 1, episode 3 rewatch

The Firm was NBC’s imperfect crime drama, but the John Grisham adaptation starring Josh Lucas is worth a summer watch. Return to The Firm episode 3.

With TV crime dramas winding down their seasons, what should genre fans watch over the summer? In our Summer Sleuthing series we’re going back to old favorites, starting with one you probably missed the first time: NBC‘s The Firm.

The Firm was largely ignored when it premiered in 2012. It was a follow-up to the John Grisham movie of the same name, with Josh Lucas assuming the role of lawyer Mitch McDeere. But it was not a lawyer show; it was a crime thriller with strong performances and a few plot twists.

Every week we’ll revisit an episode from The Firm‘s first (and only) season. You can rewatch the entire series on Hulu. This week, we open the book on Episode 3.

The Firm season 1, episode 3: “Chapter Three” (originally aired Jan. 12, 2012)

Episode 3 of The Firm has Mitch McDeere (Josh Lucas) firmly in the belly of the beast. Having signed up with his new—and equally sketchy—law firm Kinross & Clark, this episode focuses more on the conspiracy side of the series, as opposed to the morality drama that audiences were treated to with the Donnell Haywood case. Now it’s all about skeletons in the closet, or boardroom as it were.

The audience learned at the end of Episode 2 why Kinross & Clark suddenly wanted to hire Mitch McDeere: they want to control the Sarah Holt case. Mitch was assigned to defend Sarah (recurring guest star Alex Paxton-Beesley, Pure) on a murder charge in the pilot.

And it’s a lot more than just the death of an elderly woman, because there’s another twist: the person that Kinross & Clark are trying to protect is the mystery man whom Mitch was meeting in a hotel room in the flash-forwards—before the guy jumped to his death, that is. So there’s a lot in play during this episode, even though Mitch knows absolutely none of it.

That makes Episode 3 a little frustrating, because The Firm throws all these pieces at the viewers, expecting that they’re going to remember something from each episode, and from different time periods, and be able to put them together. There’s always an element of mystery in every great TV crime drama, but The Firm starts out feeling more chaotic than mysterious.

However, it also establishes immediately that Mitch has been dropped into the shark tank, and as everyone already stated before, he doesn’t fit in here. Right after joining the “team” he’s expected to defend a partner’s son suspected of foul play, and he chafes at carrying someone else’s water. Mitch is not here for this, no matter how nice his new office is.

Credit is due to Noah Reid (Schitt’s Creek, Rookie Blue) for playing Kevin Strickland as something other than another entitled rich kid, though. That keeps the story from feeling cliched; the viewer doesn’t write Kevin off, and is willing to believe that he might be innocent—even if our hero is skeptical.

Meanwhile, the Sarah Holt case plods on at its leisurely pace, and Mitch ends up with another possible murder case with Brian Markinson (the American version of Touching Evil) playing the suitably creepy defendant. That’s a lot for any TV episode to balance and a lot for our characters to keep up with, and they don’t do so well. But by throwing all that out there, The Firm shows that it isn’t afraid to let its hero fail, and to force him to learn some hard lessons.

“Chapter Three” plants enough red flags that the audience continues to question Mitch’s choice to get involved with another law firm. The economic reasons were laid out before, but it still feels like watching a car accident that’s about to happen. Especially watching Mitch make certain mistakes, which we’ll not reveal in case you’re a first-time viewer, you want to shake him at the same time that you’re rooting for him. You leave this one wondering if he’s got what it takes.

Because of all the information coming out, it’s almost more of a plot-filler episode, but even the more expository episodes of this show are never cut and dried. “Chapter Two” was a heartbreaker, and “Chapter Three” proved that The Firm almost had too many ideas. If it could only have sorted itself out a little better, it could have been a real winner.

The Firm is available on Hulu, iTunes and Amazon Video.