The series stars Bryan Cranston as Michael Desiato, a well-meaning, liberal-leaning New Orleans judge, whose son Adam (Hunter Doohan) is involved in a hit-and-run. However, things go From Bad to Worse as it's discovered that the victim of the accident is the son of vicious crime boss Jimmy Baxter (Michael Stuhlbarg), and Michael finds himself compromising his principles in the interest of protecting his son.
The series was initially announced as a miniseries. In August 2021, however, it was renewed for a second and final season, which aired in 2023.
Tropes
- Accidental Murder: The plot is kickstarted by Adam killing Rocco accidentally, whose father turns out to be a mob boss and thus he naturally fears for his life as a result. The end of season 1 shows Eugene accidentally killing Adam when he tried to shoot Carlo.
- All for Nothing: Michael spends the whole first season trying to save his son from getting murdered, only for Adam to get murdered by accident — by a relative of the boy that he framed, no less. In the second season, to hurt Michael, Jimmy Baxter tells him that he never would have tried to kill Adam over an accident anyway, but Baxter immediately tells a subordinate that he's just lied.
- Amoral Attorney: Johnny Zander is the mob lawyer kind.
- Anachronic Order: Season 2 skips between following Michael in the present day and flashbacks to the immediate aftermath of Adam's murder.
- Asthma Peril: Adam has an asthma attack and is looking for his inhaler when he hits Jimmy's son, killing him, and starting the whole plot of the series. The asthma inhaler becomes a Macguffin when Jimmy's henchmen find the asthma pump, linking Adam to the crime.
- Beard of Sorrow: Michael grows a magnificent one in prison between Seasons 1 and 2.
- Bittersweet Ending: Michael returns to prison, but his conscience is clean. He and his mother-in-law will have no more contact with little Rocco, ending their family line. Gina takes control of the Baxter criminal empire after betraying her husband and father. Fia gives Rocco up for adoption and leaves her family, leaving her with nothing, though she's taken the responsible and moral path. Eugene is released from prison. Some corrupt cops have been killed or identified, but the major criminal empires all remain intact.
- Blackmail: Lee blackmails the DA's office to get Eugene a good deal with the threat of revealing that Michael fixed Carlo's trial, as this could cause every other conviction which they got from trials he presided on as a judge getting potentially overturned.
- Book Ends: Season 1 starts and ends with a teenage boy being accidentally killed.
- Broken Pedestal:
- Michael is very protective of the fact that his wife cheated on him before she died so that their son doesn't think less of her.
- Michael himself becomes this to Lee Delamere, when he rebuffs her pleas to turn himself in for covering up Adam's hit-and-run.
- In season 2, Fia still loves the late Adam, not realizing that he killed her brother and then dated her without admitting to it. Once she learns the truth, she calls Adam a liar and separates completely from the Desiato family.
- Cheated Death, Died Anyway: Michael tries to save Adam's life, knowing that he'll be killed in retaliation by Jimmy. Then Eugene accidentally kills him when trying to shoot Carlo.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- Subverted by the bloody rag under the dresser, which we cut back to several times during the early episodes. Michael discovers it in front of a large group of people, but he immediately distracts attention from it, and it never impacts the plot.
- The signed baseball. It eventually gets sold, and the money is used to purchase the gun that kills Adam.
- Chekhov's Skill: Michael spends the whole series jogging everywhere and wears sneakers even when presiding over court. In the final episode, he needs to rush to his son's location, but his car is blocked, so he runs there on foot.
- Consummate Liar: Michael proves to have an amazing knack for spinning webs of deceit and manipulating people. He's apparently become a student of human nature during a career as a judge.
- Corrupt Cop:
- The New Orleans Police Department is depicted this way in general, with Michael's opening scene showing him confronting a cop committing perjury against a black defendant and Kofi being manhandled by patrolmen while driving Adam's car. In Season 2 it's revealed that Michael's wife was killed for attempting to investigate serious corruption in the force-cops who worked as hitmen.
- Lt. Cusack is the Baxters' principal contact in the force. They apparently have a few more who perform a bogus traffic stop.
- Charlie has his own cop on the force whom he's promised to make chief of police upon his ascension to the office of mayor. He's the one who connects Michael with the Desire gang.
- Corrupt Politician: Charlie attempts to justify his questionable morals by saying that once elected, he will clean up the city.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Kofi Jones defiantly squares off with Carlo Baxter. Carlo is bigger, but Kofi is a shredded gangbanger, so you'd think that it'd be a pretty close fight. Instead, Carlo pummels Kofi to death and suffers only a black eye in the process.
- Dead Guy Junior: Adam and Fia's son in Season 2 is named after her brother Rocco, who died before he was born.
- Death by Irony: Michael's attempts to protect Adam (and himself) lead to him ensuring that Carlo is acquitted, which leads Eugene to try and shoot Carlo, but he misses and accidentally kills Adam.
- Death Seeker: Adam's death causes Michael to become this at the start of Season 2.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Awful as Jimmy is he does make an effort with his wife and children.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Jimmy is a ruthless gangster who's very willing to murder. However, he refuses to deal drugs, saying it isn't the business he's in.
- Establishing Character Moment: The court scene in the first episode establishes Michael's jogging, his rigorous attention to detail and firm belief in justice.
- Family-Values Villain: Jimmy Baxter is a ruthless mob boss, but also genuinely believes providing a good life for his family is paramount (indeed, he justifies his crimes using this rationale).
- For Want Of A Nail: Besides the original incident, all of the subsequent tragedies of the series can be traced back to when, needing an excuse for having called Detective Costello, Michael mentioned that his car had been stolen.
- From Bad to Worse: A number of unfortunate coincidences and coverups make this kind of the theme of the series.
- Gayngster: Big Mo is a female crime boss who it turns out has a girlfriend.
- Hero Antagonist: Nancy and Lee are a lawyer and detective, respectively, who insist on getting involved in the case, unwittingly unraveling Michael's lies.
- Hollywood Atheist: Practically inverted with Fia Baxter, who's an atheist (thus resistant to having her son baptized), but easily the nicest of her family (who are mostly criminals) and admits she hopes Heaven exists but doesn't believe there's an afterlife. Her mother doesn't like this view one bit, and insists that she's not an atheist no matter what Fia says. She and Fia's dad are Catholic, but also totally fine with committing crimes, including murder. Michael also turns out to be irreligious, and though he does bad things is far better than them as well.
- Hypocrite: Officer Beckwith, a cop who's also a hitman, has the audacity to rebuke Michael over, in his mind, letting guilty criminals walk free.
- Internal Reveal: Fia doesn't learn until the end of the series that Adam is the one who had killed her brother Rocca. She's quite upset by this, chewing both her family and Adam's father Michael out for the fact they never told her, particularly since she'd dated Adam while in the dark on this, giving birth to a son by him too whom she'd named after her brother.
- Irony: The plot starts as a result of Michael's son Adam accidentally killing Jimmy's son Rocco. Michael stops Jimmy killing Adam by saving Carlo, Jimmy's other son, from a life sentence, but Adam's killed by someone else. In Season 2, it turns out Adam fathered a son with Fia, Jimmy's daughter, so now their families are linked by blood that way too.
- Just in Time: Detective Costello saves Michael literally one second before the Killer Cop who'd abducted him was all set to shoot him.
- Karma Houdini: Carlo and Gina Baxter and Big Mo all end the series on top in spite of their crimes.
- Kick the Dog: Just when we were beginning to wonder whether Baxter was all that bad, he orders the bombing of a house containing a mother and kids.
- Killer Cop: It turns out Michael's wife Robin was murdered for investigating gangland killings which were actually committed by cops. One of the cops involved did it to cover this up. It turns out some moonlighted in murder for hire while a Gang War went on. The one who'd murdered his wife tries to murder Michael while making it look like a suicide. Eugene gets shot by the other one, surviving both this and a later attempt to finish him off when he's in the hospital.
- Lady Macbeth: Jimmy is a cautious and sensible crimelord, while his wife Gina is the one pushing him to be more aggressive and violent.
- The Mafia: In spite of their name, the Baxter family is the American wing of the Conti family through Gina Baxter nee Conti.
- Miscarriage of Justice: Kofi Jones is forced to plead guilty to a crime he didn't commit.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Carmine tells off Jimmy over thinking he's better as a gangster than him, maintaining that ultimately both of them are just thugs.
- Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Michael really has to keep it together while his best friend offers a toast to his impeccable honor and good character.
- An Offer You Can't Refuse: Kofi's family are threatened unless he pleads guilty to the hit-and-run incident.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Jimmy and Gina Baxter suffer the lose of their younger son Rocco, his death sparking the plot. Michael's son Adam is also killed later.
- The Queenpin:
- Big Mo is a female crime boss and rival to Jimmy Baxter in New Orleans.
- Gina is the Lady Macbeth to Jimmy and constantly accuses him of being too weak. By Season 2, she's openly suggesting that she should be running the family instead of him, but her father nixes that idea due to the patriarchal Mafia system. By the end of the series, she's usurped both her husband and father, taking control of the family business.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: More than halfway through the series, COVID suddenly hits. The show makes occasional, fleeting references to "social distancing" and has Michael clear the audience chamber during the trial. Despite that, life seems to be going about pretty normally in every other scene.
- Shown Their Work: In Season 2, the only known US case where an acquittal had been ruled invalid gets mentioned, when a Chicago gangster was found to have bribed the judge who'd acquitted him. Michael notes this to Carlo, since he did much the same thing in having fixed Carlo's trial. Few people even know of this exception to double jeopardy.
- Someone to Remember Him By: In Season 2, after Adam was accidentally shot and killed, it turns out that Fia gave birth to their son.
- Suicide by Cop: Detective Cunningham, one of the cop hitmen, makes Costello shoot him by drawing on her when she's got him at gunpoint rather than going to prison.
- The Syndicate: Desire, an African-American gang, and the Italian-American Baxter family control New Orleans' organized crime, vying for dominance.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Adam is in a relationship with his teacher Frannie when the first season starts.
- Token Good Teammate: Fia is the most good-natured person in the Baxter family, and by Season 2 becomes more outwardly critical of Gina and Carlo's actions.
