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The Night Of - new crime limited series - HBO Sundays - 90 on Metacritic

The scene with the hearse driver was pretty good.

Also, so many suspects/red herrings. We might never know if Naz did it for sure, but in the end it probably won't matter because he's already been corrupted. Heck, he'll probably be in deep shit (unrelated to the murder) by the end of next episode.

RIP Eczema. We hardly knew you. Just kidding, we knew you maybe a little too much (what are the chances it comes back?)
 
I'm a guy who has no problem with tattoos at all and even i'm not buying the knuckle tatt's. I can see maybe getting something on your arm or shoulder as a sign of camaraderie with your fellow inmates where at least you can cover it up. Most people, even those with tattoos, are extra hesitant to get any hand tattoos because of all the negative baggage the public automatically associates with them. It's gotten better for most areas but the hand/neck area is still looked at harshly by the general public. No way am I buying that this clean cut kid who had no tattoos at all would 1) start getting them now and pretty much begin on his knuckles, and 2) do it while he is on trial for MURDER! I can't suspend disbelief to the point where I can't imagine any sane person not thinking for at least a second "hmmm... maybe sitting there with SIN freshly inked on my knuckles isn't the best way to get the Jury to lean away from thinking i'm a crazy murderer." Why SIN Nasir? Was KILL too on the nose?
 
Stevetopsy said:
I'm a guy who has no problem with tattoos at all and even i'm not buying the knuckle tatt's. I can see maybe getting something on your arm or shoulder as a sign of camaraderie with your fellow inmates where at least you can cover it up. Most people, even those with tattoos, are extra hesitant to get any hand tattoos because of all the negative baggage the public automatically associates with them. It's gotten better for most areas but the hand/neck area is still looked at harshly by the general public. No way am I buying that this clean cut kid who had no tattoos at all would 1) start getting them now and pretty much begin on his knuckles, and 2) do it while he is on trial for MURDER! I can't suspend disbelief to the point where I can't imagine any sane person not thinking for at least a second "hmmm... maybe sitting there with SIN freshly inked on my knuckles isn't the best way to get the Jury to lean away from thinking i'm a crazy murderer." Why SIN Nasir? Was KILL too on the nose?
Click to expand...
It wasn't just SIN in the biblical sense

He got SIN on his right hand and BAD on his left hand for Sinbad, calling back to that conversation between Freddie and Naz.
 
StoopKid said:
Naz is gonna fuck himself over right?
Click to expand...

I'm thinking he will fuck himself over so badly that the jury that just see him as fuck criminal who clearly killed her but his lawyers will find a piece of evidence that shows he didn't do it.
 
Naz's physical changes (shaving head, knuckle tats) are self-compromising to the point of feeling unrealistic, and the prison scenes are moving too fast to remain believable in general. Then again, maybe Naz is just a dumbass considering the decisions that got him to where he is.
 
Net_Wrecker said:
Naz's physical changes (shaving head, knuckle tats) are self-compromising to the point of feeling unrealistic, and the prison scenes are moving too fast to remain believable in general. Then again, maybe Naz is just a dumbass considering the decisions that got him to where he is.
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the pilot set this up already. this kid's whole life is bad choices. couple that with the fact that he's in a scary ass environment and freddie was working him...it's a wrap. it does feel absurdly quick though for sure but i think naz just being a moron is pretty sufficient set up for the show.
 
Discotheque said:
the pilot set this up already. this kid's whole life is bad choices. couple that with the fact that he's in a scary ass environment and freddie was working him...it's a wrap.
Click to expand...

Yeah but man I dunno. The drugs I get since they already set that up with him taking a concoction of "All of the above" from a mystery dream woman, but the head shaving and knuckle tats, breh. What kind of person wouldn't pause for a second and think about how that comes off while you're on trial. I'm sure he's feeling hopeless, but physical changes reek of handing yourself over to the system. The final step. He just proclaimed his innocence a few eps ago, feels weird that he's already at this stage.
 
it would have worked better if we got a better sense of time in this show. it feels like he went straight to trial like a week later lol but it's probably been quite a few months actually.
 
This episode made me think that he maybe did do it. I don't know why exactly but that's the first time I've gotten that impression while watching this show.

It depends how they do it, but it would be kinda cool if after all this time we're thinking the show is saying "look how flawed the system is for this reason" when it's actually saying "look how flawed the system is for this reason, it's so flawed we could trick you in the confines of this show about tricking you".
 
Weird episode this week. Did I miss something or was there no follow up or mention of the events at the end of the previous episode at all. So Stone tracks the guy down, follows him into a dark underground place, gets freaked out, and... nothing? It feels like a lot of what happened this week is just treading the same ground as the previous episode too. With Naz getting more "hardened" in prison, more red herrings and false leads for his lawyers, reminding audiences of stuff that we wondered about in the first episode, etc. For a short series which had a tight few opening episodes, it does feel like they're trying to buy time now. Maybe it should have been a 6 episode series? :P
 
Watching this now, it's good... but very imperfect. I have a lot of criticisms despite the fact that I'm still intrigued by the central mystery.

  • The eczema side story is focused on FAR too much. Is it supposed to be funny? I really don't get where they are taking this and why it's been the focus of 40+ minutes of footage.
  • There is no levity, no humor. None of the characters have much to redeem them - most are just assholes. I'm comparing it to something like The Wire here - The Night Of lacks those little "slice of life" moments where you see the humanity of the cast. No one is likable, the whole tone is exhausting and bureaucratic. Maybe that's the intention? But at some point you need to give a little life and a little levity to these situations.
  • Too slow. I mean, I watched Bloodline, I watched a lot of slow shows. But shit like him riding the bus to Riker's, etc - it takes too fucking long. No two ways about it.
  • The prison story feels very shallow. The whole point of prison dramas is that they thrive on the dynamics between different groups and characters, but so far we have.... one character in the prison. Freddy. There's no tension, no interesting choices - basically just "take this offer or you're dead." It's not particularly interesting just watching a character who has no agency in anything be forced through a bunch of situations.
  • What about the investigation? The body? The house? Anything about Andrea? It feels like that whole side of things has been completely abandoned in favor of some half-cocked prison drama that I kind of never expected or wanted here. It feels like she had so many secrets, so much going on that we never knew about, and I was intrigued by that. Did she know someone was going to kill her? Why did she not want to be alone? They need to get back to those questions for a little while.
  • THE BIG ONE: I don't care about Naz. Who is he? There is nothing there, we know nothing. He's a college student? OK. What else? I understand that he's not really in a position to be chatting about his life and his personality to everyone he meets, but give us something, some reason to care a little. Maybe the show is trying to make me, the viewer, feel like the jury or something? Having to make a decision based off of little information? I don't know, it just feels weird to have a character we should ostensibly be rooting for be so shallow and underdeveloped.
At this point, I'm feeling that the best plot twist of all would be having Naz be guilty. It would almost function as a lesson to viewers to be careful rooting for characters who they know virtually nothing about. But I don't think that will be the resolution, and frankly I don't think they have the chops to go there.
 
When Stone said "young urban women", and she replied "well phrased', is it the implication he is meaning young black women?
 
Einchy said:
I'm thinking he will fuck himself over so badly that the jury that just see him as fuck criminal who clearly killed her but his lawyers will find a piece of evidence that shows he didn't do it.
Click to expand...

This is what I think is going to happen. They keep saying apperence matters. They will bring up bad in his past and his apperance will make you believe he did it all.
 
Discotheque said:
Also holy shit the DA is a garbage person. Lol two instances now of asking the expert witnesses to say what she wants.
Click to expand...

That's how a trial works, the state pays those expert witnesses to take the stand and give the information that they want the jury to hear, from a credible source.

Stevetopsy said:
I'm a guy who has no problem with tattoos at all and even i'm not buying the knuckle tatt's. I can see maybe getting something on your arm or shoulder as a sign of camaraderie with your fellow inmates where at least you can cover it up. Most people, even those with tattoos, are extra hesitant to get any hand tattoos because of all the negative baggage the public automatically associates with them. It's gotten better for most areas but the hand/neck area is still looked at harshly by the general public. No way am I buying that this clean cut kid who had no tattoos at all would 1) start getting them now and pretty much begin on his knuckles, and 2) do it while he is on trial for MURDER! I can't suspend disbelief to the point where I can't imagine any sane person not thinking for at least a second "hmmm... maybe sitting there with SIN freshly inked on my knuckles isn't the best way to get the Jury to lean away from thinking i'm a crazy murderer." Why SIN Nasir? Was KILL too on the nose?
Click to expand...

My wife was more upset that Naz took a shower so quickly after getting his tattoo on his arm. Proper tattoo after-care is important people!

KahooTs said:
When Stone said "young urban women", and she replied "well phrased', is it the implication he is meaning young black women?
Click to expand...

Yes.
 
KahooTs said:
When Stone said "young urban women", and she replied "well phrased', is it the implication he is meaning young black women?
Click to expand...

Yes. Because ideally Stone wants a couple of brown people in the jury, preferably young. But he knows the prosecution will eliminate them from their list.
Young black women is a great choice because the demographic is on the nose.
 
The things that stood out to me as weird:

Nas has been in prison a few weeks and he's already tatting up his limbs and looking like a skinhead. Kind of ridiculous.

The prosecutor was straight up manhandling all of the evidence. Don't they keep that shit in bags? Why is she wielding the "murder weapon"?

Stone and Chandra are doing so much "off the books" that anything they find will be inadmissible anyway.

What are the odds that in one of the most populated cities on earth, Nas's father delivers food to his son's lawyer.
 
animlboogy said:
It felt like this episode's primary goal was to set up several distinct suspects that all feel likely, including Naz.

We never really KNEW Naz. Now we do a bit more, and he's a pretty different character than we assumed he was. The discovery of the stair pushing incident drives that home. As did the undisclosed amphetamine use last episode.

He isn't just some clean cut kid at his core. He's the type to take things too far, who seems to enjoy chaos, who only says "no" to dangerous things maybe once before his curiosity gets to him.
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Pretty much. He isn't even being heaviky pressured to do much of anything.

Even Freddy giving him the shirt, him saying no, then letting Stone change it in court.

His brother isn't really the sharpest tool either.
 
Seems a lot of fixation on eyes. The police swabbed blood from the eye of the deer's head in the victim's home that kept getting focussed on. Is the blood possibly just the animal's? If not, then the killer's? Naz's? He covers the eyes because it looks to him like it's judging him, like his mother, like Chandra?

There's a hat on the back of the deer's head that has moved in the cut to it before and after the murder, but the cuts are shot from different angles and I think they've just moved it to make it show in both shots. I thought the step father wore a hat like it but it seems that was just a BWE memory.
 
Nas turning into douche nozzle is expected and the show wants you to feel that way. But I want to believe that him seeing the kid sucking that guy will be the turning point. I have a feeling he's going to brood over his choices some more. But there's no outcome that will be good for him. Freddy doesn't like snitches or traitors. In fact he wont even have a problem shanking Nas.

He needs to GTFO of rikers.

Also, Chandra is hot af.
 
CHC said:
Watching this now, it's good... but very imperfect. I have a lot of criticisms despite the fact that I'm still intrigued by the central mystery.

  • The eczema side story is focused on FAR too much. Is it supposed to be funny? I really don't get where they are taking this and why it's been the focus of 40+ minutes of footage.
  • There is no levity, no humor. None of the characters have much to redeem them - most are just assholes. I'm comparing it to something like The Wire here - The Night Of lacks those little "slice of life" moments where you see the humanity of the cast. No one is likable, the whole tone is exhausting and bureaucratic. Maybe that's the intention? But at some point you need to give a little life and a little levity to these situations.
  • Too slow. I mean, I watched Bloodline, I watched a lot of slow shows. But shit like him riding the bus to Riker's, etc - it takes too fucking long. No two ways about it.
  • The prison story feels very shallow. The whole point of prison dramas is that they thrive on the dynamics between different groups and characters, but so far we have.... one character in the prison. Freddy. There's no tension, no interesting choices - basically just "take this offer or you're dead." It's not particularly interesting just watching a character who has no agency in anything be forced through a bunch of situations.
  • What about the investigation? The body? The house? Anything about Andrea? It feels like that whole side of things has been completely abandoned in favor of some half-cocked prison drama that I kind of never expected or wanted here. It feels like she had so many secrets, so much going on that we never knew about, and I was intrigued by that. Did she know someone was going to kill her? Why did she not want to be alone? They need to get back to those questions for a little while.
  • THE BIG ONE: I don't care about Naz. Who is he? There is nothing there, we know nothing. He's a college student? OK. What else? I understand that he's not really in a position to be chatting about his life and his personality to everyone he meets, but give us something, some reason to care a little. Maybe the show is trying to make me, the viewer, feel like the jury or something? Having to make a decision based off of little information? I don't know, it just feels weird to have a character we should ostensibly be rooting for be so shallow and underdeveloped.
At this point, I'm feeling that the best plot twist of all would be having Naz be guilty. It would almost function as a lesson to viewers to be careful rooting for characters who they know virtually nothing about. But I don't think that will be the resolution, and frankly I don't think they have the chops to go there.
Click to expand...

I fully agree with this.

Except I'd even say it's not even good, but rather mediocre with some very apparent flaws (the ones you've listed, among others).
 
Good episode. I was happy to see his foot problem go away and hope it stays that way, haha.
I do feel like this should have been at least 10 episodes though. Kind of a similar issue I had with True Detective season 1.
 
Isn't the point of poking in to Naz's history, and showing him to have been a 'douche-nozzle' before, mean he hasn't changed all that much since being in prison? - he has been shown, nigh on every episode since the pilot, to have hidden rage within him, that perhaps he is just struggling more to subdue, considering his new surroundings.

It's a pretty staggering performance from Riz Ahmed I think. Not only has he physically transformed himself, but his actions have shown subtle shifts too and you really don't know now whether he is innocent or not, whereas after the pilot we were 99% convinced he was.
 
I've been wondering where I saw Chandra before and I finally realized she was in a good episode of Doctor Who "The God Complex"

images_620x220_D_DoctorWho_Series6_god%20complex%20rita.jpg
 
CHC said:
  • The eczema side story is focused on FAR too much. Is it supposed to be funny? I really don't get where they are taking this and why it's been the focus of 40+ minutes of footage.
Click to expand...


  • The eczema demonstrates just how far Stone is willing to go when something isn't right. He will leave no stone unturned, will seek out any possibility no matter how remote. Pretty obvious metaphor for Khan's case.

    Now that the ancient Chinese secret seemed to "work," I'm wondering if it's foreshadowing that he'll back the wrong piece of evidence or go down the wrong track, bypassing something integral in the process. Correlation doesn't imply causation and all that.
 
This episode gave more credence that my theory is correct
the feet
are the killer, they went into hiding as soon as the trial started.
 
holygeesus said:
It's a pretty staggering performance from Riz Ahmed I think. Not only has he physically transformed himself, but his actions have shown subtle shifts too and you really don't know now whether he is innocent or not, whereas after the pilot we were 99% convinced he was.
Click to expand...
Yup. He's one of the reasons I gave the show a shot (he was awesome in Nightcrawler), and he didn't disappoint (or at least not yet.)
 
Discotheque said:
it would have worked better if we got a better sense of time in this show. it feels like he went straight to trial like a week later lol but it's probably been quite a few months actually.
Click to expand...

Episode 5 (last weeks episode) was exactly one month after the night of the crime. If you look closely during the scene where box is looking at the different security cameras, one of them says 11/24/2014, one month after the crime.
 
I like this show but its starting to tread into the Killing season one red herring of the week territory here. Also no mention of last weeks cliffhanger was annoying.
 
Discotheque said:
the pilot set this up already. this kid's whole life is bad choices. couple that with the fact that he's in a scary ass environment and freddie was working him...it's a wrap. it does feel absurdly quick though for sure but i think naz just being a moron is pretty sufficient set up for the show.
Click to expand...

It feels different to me.
In the pilot all of his bad decisions were either in a state of naive ignorance (following the girl, playing with the knife, stealing the cab) as he couldn't have known shit would've gone down THAT badly, and no normal person would; or in a moment of sheer panic, with split second decisions (taking the knife, forgetting the keys, running away, etc).

Stuff like the tattoos are just weird in the context of only a couple of weeks (at best) having gone by, because even in the prison climate, and even under pressure from Freddy, ha has to know how having a tattoo on your knuckles will reflect, it's not like he doesn't understand the concept, since the idea of looking presentable was introduced (with the clothing in court) and he still has the balls to refuse the clothing/gift from Freddy.

So to me that whole transformation is just way too accelerated, and especially if it serves the purpose of making him look guilty even when he's not, it's outright sloppy writing.
And one of the reasons i liked the pilot, was that it felt, overall, pretty damn natural in its unfolding.

I also didn't love too much the funerary home scene, i get what they were doing, giving you that Zodiac basement vibe, but it came off as somewhat comical to me, because it was so upfront and relentless.
Especially the line "That was no man, just a yarnball!", c'mon now.
 
Gray Matter said:
Episode 5 (last weeks episode) was exactly one month after the night of the crime. If you look closely during the scene where box is looking at the different security cameras, one of them says 11/24/2014, one month after the crime.
Click to expand...

Okay. Then naz's transformation is way less forgiving then. One month going from scared boy to head shaved and prison tats? God damn

Contrivances aside though I'm still really enjoying the show. The cast is doing great work. Especially riz, omar and the two defendants
 
Even if its months I dont think Nas is believably transformed from a meek college boy to a prison alpha dog. I think more is at play here. Without sounding corny, maybe Nas always had that edge about him and Freddie simply moved the curtains. He's not being forced to transformed, but he feels more at ease in this new life.
 
So did anybody else recognise the financial advisor that Stone spoke to at the end?

It's none other than Paulo Costanzo, one of the guys out of the original Road Trip film all those years ago!

Bit of a blast from the past there :)
 
the last two episodes feel very meh. Last week started with some of this unbelievable stuff about how quickly nas is transforming. I've lost most of my empathy and interest in his story at this point. :(

Also, stop with the cat shit. we get it.
 
Nothus said:
So did anybody else recognise the financial advisor that Stone spoke to at the end?

It's none other than Paulo Costanzo, one of the guys out of the original Road Trip film all those years ago!

Bit of a blast from the past there :)
Click to expand...

Ha, I thought that guy looked familiar. Was thinking of American Pie last night but yeah, that's him!
 
^^^Again, i'm not saying the change itself is impossible, it was always implied since the first ep (him responding to the two guys shit talking him) that there was more to him, but it's the timing of the transformation that makes it come off as cheap.

RustyNails said:
Even if its months I dont think Nas is believably transformed from a meek college boy to a prison alpha dog. I think more is at play here. Without sounding corny, maybe Nas always had that edge about him and Freddie simply moved the curtains. He's not being forced to transformed, but he feels more at ease in this new life.
Click to expand...

The is being obviously implied, but even then, it'd be just common sense to avoid getting prison tats, when you have to still appear in front of a jury deciding whether or not you're doing life in prison.
And to break that level of common sense, it should take a while, especially or someone well educated, like Naz is.
 
UrbanRats said:
The is being obviously implied, but even then, it'd be just common sense to avoid getting prison tats, when you have to still appear in front of a jury deciding whether or not you're doing life in prison.
And to break that level of common sense, it should take a while, especially or someone well educated, like Naz is.
Click to expand...

Yup, the show is botching Naz's transformation.
 
I thought this episode was the weakest so far, didn't feel the continuity from the previous scene, the hearse man and the house guy at the end both felt contrived and acted poorly, Nas is acting far too braindead to be believable, and I felt as if the defense had no case when the trial came up.
They seem to just be throwing random suspects out at us (the stepfather also looking poor acting wise and contrived if you ask me) and using that to supplement the mystery rather than actual details that happened on the night of (keep in mind I'm much more interested in the character but I don't think this is working as is, hell I was fully satisfied with how True Detective went and barely cared about the mystery compared to the relationship between Woody and Cole).
I hope the show can turn it around in these last two episodes.
 
I'd been PVRing this show since it began, but didn't start watching it until the other night. Now, I've blown through several episodes and am just two (I believe) behind.

It's really good and very interesting. John Turturro is the man.
 
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