Trial & Error Episode Review: Trial & Error Leads us Further Down a Very Strange Path
Before I get into the nit and the grit of the most recent editions of this bizarre comedy, I must offer my apology for a slight inaccuracy in my previous report. After the opening night, in which we got the show’s pilot, as well as its next episode, I was “mizeled,” as my Dear Aunt Betty would say in lieu of misled (or maybe I just mizeled myself) into thinking that, from then on, NBC would give us a single episode at a time. As it turns out, we got another double-header, which, while it may have provided me with a momentary bit of deep and abiding chagrin, turned out to be a good thing. A show like this, if it were on a paid site instead of network TV, would cry out, “Binge me! Binge me!”
The first of the two episodes, and the third of the series, was very funny in its own right, but served mainly to set us up for the one to follow. From Dwayne (sadly, still the lead investigator for the defense) we learn more about a sinister character, Rutger Hiss, the detective who broke the case. Prior to Dwayne’s machinations in that area, he quickly re-establishes the status of his Mensa eligibility after a DNA specialist announces he found semen in the Hendersons’ bed. Not satisfied with such a vague answer, Dwayne presses the specialist for more detail. “Male semen?” he inquires.
For some reason, the specimen itself does not serve to identify the late Mrs. Henderson’s bedfellow. The real tell-tale sign turns out to be a footprint, left on the wall closest to the bed. Another comedic note is that, while Dwayne and the differently-disabled Anne attempt to show how the print could come to be there, they try to stage a reenactment, but not with Anne playing the role of Mrs. Henderson and Dwayne her lover. That’s right, the other way around. Short story long, it turns out Detective Hiss was the mystery lover.
There is another interesting question that gets resolved in this episode. Throughout the first two, we were meant to take the show’s word for it that chief suspect Larry Henderson was a local poet. Nothing was ever said about the quality or nature of his poetry. One, which is to say, one with too much time on his hands, might be led to speculate, what sort of a poet was Larry Henderson? Was he another T.S. Eliot; another Robert Frost; another Billy Collins or (Dare I compare?) another Thomas Cleveland Lane? Ixnay, if you’ll pardon my Latin. Apparently, he is not only horrendous to the point of being incomprehensible, where he is comprehensible, he is self-incriminating in the extreme. Having said all that, we will learn in the next episode that Larry has a follower, who turns out to be more of a stalker. That could get interesting.
There is one slight disconnect in this episode. In the first two, prosecutor Carol Anne Keane, ends her first two meetings with Henderson’s lawyer, Josh Segal, by propositioning him. In fact, the first time out, where Meat Loaf passionately sings that he would do anything for love, then adds, “But I won’t do that,” Ms. Keane offers Josh that. Where the disconnect comes in is that, in the next episodes, Josh finds he will have to work at it if he wants to get her stirred up. If nothing else, since the prosecutor’s shenanigans happened twice, and only twice, last week, the show’s writers seem to have violated the sacred comedic rule of three: if you have to do a joke more than once, do it three times, not just twice. Speaking of things amorous, if there is to be a long-term love story between Josh and the suspect’s daughter Summer, it got no further traction last night, in either episode. Still, your narrator is prepared to be patient. I think the show’s writers would be missing a bet if it never came about.
By far, the most important way that the third episode sets up the fourth is the way it ends: with Dwayne breaking into the home of his nemesis, only to find Rutger Hiss comatose on the bathroom floor. As a result, most of the fourth episode will be taken up with an amusing merry-go-round in which practically all parties in the defense, including the guy in charge, end up in the clink, then practically all parties in the defense end up getting their teammates out of said clink. The only person who does not get to participate in the farce is Anne, who feels she has somehow let the team down. To make up for what she considers a glaring omission, she goes out to find the person who will break this case wide open…or so Anne imagines. No bean-spillage here. You will have to get caught up to see how Anne’s contribution brings yet another questionable character into the plot.
Stay tuned.
Trial & Error, NBC, March 21, 2017
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Thomas Cleveland Lane
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