Reasonable Doubt is the first series produced by Disney’s Onyx Collective, a new content brand that produces shows and movies from people of color and other voices that have been underrepresented by Hollywood. With Kerry Washington on board as an EP and director, it certainly has some name recognition behind it, and it certainly has a lot of the DNA of her best known series, Scandal. Will fans of that show latch onto this one?
REASONABLE DOUBT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A woman prays to herself as she’s being tied up.
The Gist: That woman is Jax Stewart (Emayatzy Corinealdi), a crack Los Angeles defense attorney and a partner at one of the city’s top firms. She’s being held by someone we don’t see, then all of a sudden a shot rings out.
Six months earlier, Jax wakes up, goes on a run, and “services herself” in the shower. She comes down ready for church, going with her husband Lewis (McKinley Freeman) and their kids. It seems like the two of them are together; they give each other loving looks and gossip in church. At church, she gets a call from a lawyer who is representing a woman threatening to sue her basketball star client for exposing himself to her. She immediately thinks that, since she’s not pressing criminal charges, the woman is looking for a payday.
Jax, who used to be a public defender, often finds herself in this position, defending “asshole” male clients who have been subjected to sexual assault or harassment claims. She has to find a way to take the side of the client, even if it betrays her own personal feelings. For instance, the other partners in the firm — all white — want her to sit in with a potential blockbuster client, Brayden Miller (Sean Patrick Thomas). She jokes it’s because she’s Black, but there’s some truth in that. He has a sticky personal issue he has to deal with before selling a company that can make him a billionaire: A former executive of that company is accusing him of sexual assault, and he needs her to sign an NDA.
She knows about complicated personal lives: Lewis has left their home for a trial separation, citing the fact that she constantly picks her career over her family. He’s installed security cameras and hired a security company in his absence; Jax immediately finds herself attracted to the overnight guard Will (Toby Onwumere), and Lewis knows it. Elsewhere, Damon (Michael Ealy), a client she had as a PD who is in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, is ready to confess in order to get parole. When she goes to visit him and convince him not to do it, he reminds her that their relationship goes deeper than lawyer and client, and reminds her that she’s said “I love criminals” more than one.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Reasonable Doubt definitely fits in the sexy soap genre that got a revival in the 2010s with Scandal. It’s not a coincidence that Kerry Washington is an EP of this series; she also directed the first episode.
Our Take: Raamla Mohamed, who was a writer on Scandal and the Washington-produced Little Fires Everywhere, is the creator and showrunner of Reasonable Doubt, and you can see the DNA of those other shows all over this one.
There is absolutely some over-the-top ridiculousness in the first episode, stuff that may make your roll your eyes. To say that Jax’s personal life is complicated is a massive understatement, as she seems to have an attraction to anyone who has or had a criminal record, and it seems that’s part of what made Lewis attracted and angry with her. As much as she seems to be in control during her meeting with her old client Damon, for instance, we can see her get more uncomfortable when he starts talking about what we’d imagine was a massive breech of ethics that likely occurred while she was defending him.
We also know that her back and forth with Lewis isn’t the stuff of a typical married couple. She goes to visit him at his temporary home, and they go in his car to talk. He fingers her, gets her off, then basically says, “bye, Felicia” to her. He initially looks like the one who is the aggrieved one in the marriage, citing her immaturity and devotion to her job. But that scene, and one or two others, tell us that their marriage is a whole lot more complicated than that.
It’s these layers that make the show watchable, despite all of the ridiculousness. While Jax is confident in her abilities as a defense attorney, she’s continually being questioned, by everyone from her own assistant Crystal (Angela Grovey) to the women who are accusing her clients of sexual misconduct. She puts out a vibe that she’s not bothered by these ethical dilemmas, but they do trouble her, and it sometimes comes out in her dealings with clients like Miller.
Miller’s case is going to be a through-line for the season, and it should test her ability to compartmentalize. If we get some more of that along with all the sexy stuff, then the series should be able to fill the soapy hole that Scandal left four years ago.
Sex and Skin: There’s no nudity, but certainly a lot of sex, in the first episode, as we mention above.
Parting Shot: Jax gets a call from Rich (Christopher Cassarino), the partner who was working with Miller, to tell her that the woman that was accusing Miller of sexual assault has turned up dead.
Sleeper Star: Tim Jo displays his usual awkward charm as Daniel, Jax’s private investigator. We love that he’s a top P.I. but is completely scared of Crystal every time he comes to Jax’s office.
Most Pilot-y Line: As she has brunch with a group of friends, she asks, “What’re y’all eating?” and one of her friends says, “Well, my husband has been eating another woman’s pussy, so…” Can’t you just say he’s cheating on you? That line would certainly put us off our eggs benedict.
Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re going to give Reasonable Doubt a chance because Emayatzy Corinealdi is a sexy force to be reckoned with as Jax, and her cloudy ethics and taste in men is what gives some of the silliness in the series some depth.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.