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queer_scribblingNotes from watching on 5 January 2024.
S1E4: Marie
After talking to Aaron at the end of the last episode, Marie goes out to her car in the prison parking lot, there's a flashback, and the episode ends with her sitting in her car outside her home.
A year before Aaron's arrest, he opened up a club with his friends Angelo and Michael. Marie helps out at a hospital and she considers going to nursing school, but she doesn't decide to do so until after Aaron's arrest. We see the Wallace family in a larger and nicer home during Jasmine's birthday party, since the club brought in a fair bit of money, which is contrasted with a smaller party the next year during the trial. (Marie sells that house, and Aaron's parents both contribute to his legal fees.)
We see Marie visiting with Aaron herself on the day after his arrest and the first time she takes Jasmine to see Aaron after his conviction. (She does visit him during a meeting with his lawyer, who informs him that Angelo and Michael have both agreed to plea deals in exchange for testifying against him. Aaron insists that he's innocent and ignores a plea deal of 20 years. The one drug kingpin charge carries a life without parole sentence, which is what he gets.)
It's really not a surprise that the trial scenes don't go well. Aaron can't really prove that he didn't know the full extent of his friends selling cocaine at the club, especially in the quantity found, when it's revealed that he helped drive a young woman who overdosed to the hospital a few months before he was arrested. Due to the premise of the show, we know that Aaron didn't know or lead in the procurement and sales of drugs within the club, but him having to admit on the stand that he thought his friend was just selling a 'nickel and dime' amount to his extended friends doesn't exactly look good.
Marie doesn't seem to think Aaron was a scheming drug kingpin mastermind or anything, but she's pretty understandably upset that Aaron's friends were such a risk in this whole club endeavor. We see the hassle and struggle of taking Jasmine to see Aaron throughout the years, and he's finally taken the bar exam, like, seven years into his sentence. Even though she doesn't really stop caring about Aaron, she serves him with divorce papers, and the audience isn't surprised that Darius has been there for her and Jasmine through all of this.
S1E5: Witness.
Warden Masry has made progress in figuring out who's bringing drugs in, and while Aaron is helping provide some information, Safiya also concedes to some steps that relieve some of the pressure on him [regarding other inmates thinking he's snitching]. She does find a guard named Smitty, who held onto drugs that inmates didn't feel comfortable keeping in their cells, but she hasn't made it higher above him in the network of guards.
(The dude who showed up at the Italian restaurant and [in the prison parking lot] was warned not to bring the steaks in, that's one of the higher ups. He made a point of removing the drug bags, but he was still going to take the steaks in. I'm not entirely sure what his name is, right now.)
Aaron takes a case relating to unreliable identification in a lineup - Rafi was shown in a lineup twice within one week, and the familiarity from the lineup itself might have been why the witness identified him the second time. It's a procedural defense moreso than a testament to Rafi's innocence - Aaron finds out that Rafi did a nearly identical crime before and supposedly confessed to this one to another inmate. (Aaron admits to Marie that he's torn on potentially helping a guilty man go free.)
However, this case isn't really about Aaron believing or not believing that Rafi is innocent. He finds a case note about the first lineup where Rafi wasn't identified, but the actual photographs and evidence that a lineup happened before the second one isn't with the case file (supposedly any photographs were destroyed). Assistant DA Adam Yamada is put in the unenviable position of taking the fall for all of this, but Glen Maskins assures him that after he wins his election, Adam will have a new position.
Also in this episode: Aaron gets his hands on a burner cell phone, so he can talk with Marie outside of using official prison phones. Her and Jasmine are helping him track down additional witnesses mentioned in his case file but not called during the trial. (Jasmine also visits the prison unexpectedly and gets to talk to Aaron outside of Ronnie trying to convince her to stop visiting him. He apologizes for the issue with the letter that Marie was hassled at work over, and he explains just enough more than what Marie and Darius told her that she doesn't feel like everyone's hiding something from her.)
S1E4: Marie
After talking to Aaron at the end of the last episode, Marie goes out to her car in the prison parking lot, there's a flashback, and the episode ends with her sitting in her car outside her home.
A year before Aaron's arrest, he opened up a club with his friends Angelo and Michael. Marie helps out at a hospital and she considers going to nursing school, but she doesn't decide to do so until after Aaron's arrest. We see the Wallace family in a larger and nicer home during Jasmine's birthday party, since the club brought in a fair bit of money, which is contrasted with a smaller party the next year during the trial. (Marie sells that house, and Aaron's parents both contribute to his legal fees.)
We see Marie visiting with Aaron herself on the day after his arrest and the first time she takes Jasmine to see Aaron after his conviction. (She does visit him during a meeting with his lawyer, who informs him that Angelo and Michael have both agreed to plea deals in exchange for testifying against him. Aaron insists that he's innocent and ignores a plea deal of 20 years. The one drug kingpin charge carries a life without parole sentence, which is what he gets.)
It's really not a surprise that the trial scenes don't go well. Aaron can't really prove that he didn't know the full extent of his friends selling cocaine at the club, especially in the quantity found, when it's revealed that he helped drive a young woman who overdosed to the hospital a few months before he was arrested. Due to the premise of the show, we know that Aaron didn't know or lead in the procurement and sales of drugs within the club, but him having to admit on the stand that he thought his friend was just selling a 'nickel and dime' amount to his extended friends doesn't exactly look good.
Marie doesn't seem to think Aaron was a scheming drug kingpin mastermind or anything, but she's pretty understandably upset that Aaron's friends were such a risk in this whole club endeavor. We see the hassle and struggle of taking Jasmine to see Aaron throughout the years, and he's finally taken the bar exam, like, seven years into his sentence. Even though she doesn't really stop caring about Aaron, she serves him with divorce papers, and the audience isn't surprised that Darius has been there for her and Jasmine through all of this.
S1E5: Witness.
Warden Masry has made progress in figuring out who's bringing drugs in, and while Aaron is helping provide some information, Safiya also concedes to some steps that relieve some of the pressure on him [regarding other inmates thinking he's snitching]. She does find a guard named Smitty, who held onto drugs that inmates didn't feel comfortable keeping in their cells, but she hasn't made it higher above him in the network of guards.
(The dude who showed up at the Italian restaurant and [in the prison parking lot] was warned not to bring the steaks in, that's one of the higher ups. He made a point of removing the drug bags, but he was still going to take the steaks in. I'm not entirely sure what his name is, right now.)
Aaron takes a case relating to unreliable identification in a lineup - Rafi was shown in a lineup twice within one week, and the familiarity from the lineup itself might have been why the witness identified him the second time. It's a procedural defense moreso than a testament to Rafi's innocence - Aaron finds out that Rafi did a nearly identical crime before and supposedly confessed to this one to another inmate. (Aaron admits to Marie that he's torn on potentially helping a guilty man go free.)
However, this case isn't really about Aaron believing or not believing that Rafi is innocent. He finds a case note about the first lineup where Rafi wasn't identified, but the actual photographs and evidence that a lineup happened before the second one isn't with the case file (supposedly any photographs were destroyed). Assistant DA Adam Yamada is put in the unenviable position of taking the fall for all of this, but Glen Maskins assures him that after he wins his election, Adam will have a new position.
Also in this episode: Aaron gets his hands on a burner cell phone, so he can talk with Marie outside of using official prison phones. Her and Jasmine are helping him track down additional witnesses mentioned in his case file but not called during the trial. (Jasmine also visits the prison unexpectedly and gets to talk to Aaron outside of Ronnie trying to convince her to stop visiting him. He apologizes for the issue with the letter that Marie was hassled at work over, and he explains just enough more than what Marie and Darius told her that she doesn't feel like everyone's hiding something from her.)
