GOLIATH: SEASON 2
CREATED BY David E. Kelley, Jonathan Shapiro CAST Billy Bob Thornton, Ana de la Reguera, Mark Duplass, Morris Chestnut, Tania Raymonde
Alcoholic lawyer Billy Mcbride (Thornton) is reluctantly pulled into defending the innocent son of a local barman in a murder trial. As the case develops, it begins to encompass an unconventional real estate developer (Duplass) and the insurgent mayoral candidate he backs (de la Reguera).
SECOND SEASONS ARE when good TV shows start to show their cards: The Wire made clear its mind was on more things than cops ’n’ gangs, and Sex And The City ditched its fourth wall-breaking gimmick. What does Goliath’s second season tell us about what it wants to be?
Not much, sadly. The first season successfully blended a good, old-fashioned David-against-goliath (hey!) legal drama with an even more old-fashioned boozer-finds-redemption narrative, anchored by a subtle performance by Billy Bob Thornton. After Thornton’s unexpected Golden Globe win (he was up against the male leads of The Americans, Mr. Robot and Better Call Saul, all-timers all), a second season that may not have been top of everybody’s to-do list was hurriedly commissioned.
Where do you go once your wrong’un has found his redemption? It’s not surprising that Goliath’s writers have struggled to find an answer, and given the show was clearly conceived as a vehicle for Thornton, this is a problem.
Paradoxically, he’s also the show’s biggest asset. Mcbride allows him to synthesise his two biggest strengths: portraying disappointed intelligence and playing a hardcore boozer. The effect is not far off seeing Thornton’s character in Bad Santa turn things round and get into lawyering, although he’s a TV alcoholic so he’s immune to the less “heroic” aspects of the condition. There’s no erectile dysfunction here.
For the supposed troubled anti-hero, a stock figure at the centre of dozens of golden-age TV shows, he’s very passive: this season’s case drops into his lap, and most of the actual investigative work is done by a contact of Mcbride’s who, in another era, would have been a shoeshine boy. But Thornton makes this watchable by force of sheer charisma.
The case Mcbride sleepily investigates is frustratingly generic too, especially after the first season’s evil tech company that did everything but tie a damsel to a railway track. A boy is charged for a murder he likely didn’t do, then is revealed to be one of the people featured on a campaign poster for mayoral candidate Marisol Silva (de la Reguera). It’s a coincidence, but the dodgy property types and their cartel bosses who fund her regard this as a mortal threat, meaning everybody but Thornton is invested in the case. Although he still finds time to sleep with Silva.
Stories about crooked LA property deals are hardly uncommon, and this has little to set it apart. It’s only when the gothic flourishes arrive — Duplass’ ’50s wank dungeon, or the cartel boss’ taste for amputation — that Goliath mark two reaches the heights of Season 1. Otherwise, it’s a perfunctory slog saved only by Thornton’s class act.
VERDICT A solid cast isn’t given much to work with in a second season that feels unconfident: there are strong cards on the table, but the right hand isn’t there.