The final episode of “Defending Jacob”, one of the latest TV+ shows, was released a few weeks ago. If you’re unfamiliar with the premise, Apple describes it as follows:
[The] series unfolds around a shocking crime that rocks a small Massachusetts town and one family in particular, forcing an assistant district attorney to choose between his sworn duty to uphold justice and his unconditional love for his son.
I really enjoyed the show. I found it very engaging, and each week I found myself looking forward to the next episode being released. The story itself was well written, and the show was very well produced.
The cast was terrific. There’s absolutely nothing not to love about Chris Evans. I thought Jaeden Martell’s performance was particularly strong, and he really nailed portraying a likable but reserved character with depth and conviction (poor choice of words). Michelle Dockery’s character felt a little too scripted in the first episode, but her performance soon felt every bit as genuine as her co-stars. And Cherry Jones was brilliant, as usual.
If you haven’t seen it yet, I would definitely recommend you check it out.
Spoiler Warning ⚠️
I’m not a huge fan of ambiguous endings, but speculation can be fun. There are two characters who can be reasonably suspected of being the murderer. Jacob sort of confessed but he was clearly scared and arguably under duress, so who’s to say if he was telling the truth? Leonard Patz absolutely confessed, but he was absolutely under duress, so again, who’s to say he was telling the truth?
There’s plenty incriminating evidence to suggest that Jacob is guilty, most of all the story he posted on “The Cut Up Room”. But as Joanna points out, the story he wrote didn’t have any details that weren’t already public knowledge: you wouldn’t have to have been the murderer to write the story, just a bit twisted in the head, maybe as a result of having been bullied by the kid who was killed. I didn’t find the whole knife debacle incriminating — plenty of teenage boys have knives, in the south at least — but Jacob’s fingerprint on Ben’s sweater was a different story. It isn’t proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but it certainly doesn’t look good. There’s not too much left to discuss in Jacob’s case, because they devoted eight episodes to it.
However, there’s a lot of room for further speculation in the case of Leonard Patz. There is evidence to suggest that he killed Ben, and the fact that he himself was murdered doesn’t exculpate him. There’s no explanation of why he had photos of Ben on his phone. His proximity to the scene of the crime on the morning of Ben’s murder is also difficult to write off. Not to mention that there’s a record of Patz being attracted to adolescent guys who fit the same physical profile as Ben Rifkin. Of course, it could’ve been a coincidence that Ben was killed in the park where Leonard walks in the mornings, and there’s no record of Leonard being aggressive or dangerous towards Matt McGrath (Leonard’s only “victim”*). It’s also worth pointing out that the photos Leonard had of Ben weren’t crime scene photos — as with the story Jacob wrote, while it doesn’t look good, you wouldn’t have to have been the murderer to have those photos — they easily could’ve been images Ben had posted on social media. In all honesty, I felt bad for Leonard pretty much the entire time because I truly don’t think he killed Ben, and if that’s the case, then he was harassed, scapegoated, defamed, and brutally murdered because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, his only crime having been copping a feel of a consenting fifteen year old’s package through his shorts.
All in all, the story was certainly thought provoking. I don’t really see how there could be a second season, unless they want to pull Jacob out of his coma (yes, it literally ends with him in a coma; very soap opera-y) and do the whole thing again with a different murder victim (which they very nearly repeated in this season).
*I use quotes around the word “victim” in this sentence not because I question the legitimacy of Matt McGrath’s accusation against Leonard Patz, but because I don’t consider him a victim, and I don’t think he considers himself a victim, either. Matt was clearly sexually active and knew what was going on, and he solicited a transaction with Leonard. That doesn’t make it legal — the age of consent in Massachusetts is 16 and Matt was 15 at the time — but still, it’s hard for me to see Matt as a victim when he had the agency to make Leonard an offer in the first place.
