Summary
Mark is in more than professional danger in “Bounceback”, and Lola has to decide whether to put justice over her own career.
This recap of All Rise season 2, episode 6, “Bounceback”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
Back for the New Year after a few weeks off, All Rise returns with “Bounceback” and impresses with a few ethical dilemmas and a rather sharp – all pun intended – turn in Mark’s crusade against the sheriff’s department. But this episode also managed to recapture some of that upbeat character patter that defined the first season and has been sadly missing thus far from this one. Perhaps it’s just because the show has been off the air for a while and I’ve missed it more than I thought, but this stood out to me as one of the better outings of the sophomore season.
It was also divided more or less neatly between two cases, both continuations from the previous episodes. In the first, Ness, having discovered the verdict form that confirmed the jury were planning to exonerate Leon Parsons, presented this information first to Sherri and then to Lola. With her having convinced Leon to take a plea deal in fear that the jury would make the wrong decision, Lola now has to grapple with the fact that she has made an innocent man a felon when the justice system would have done its job without her interference.
In the second, Mark is the victim of a rather conveniently-timed carjacking and stabbing, which raises all kinds of concerns given it happened right before he was about to present evidence proving that a sheriff attempted to shoot and kill an unarmed man.
Lola’s predicament is the more interesting one, ethically-speaking. She took the law into her own hands out of fear that the system wouldn’t do its job, and despite her well-meaning intentions, her interference cost a man his freedom and reputation. The knock-on effects of that aren’t just limited to her, but the entire legal system, including Benner and her bosses. Woke Twitter would drag Lola across the social media coals, and faith in the court’s ability to carry out its function would be further eroded. This is to say nothing of the personal sense of guilt Lola has to shoulder for making the decision she did.
From Leon himself to the jury’s spokesman to Lola’s mother, Roxy, and eventually even Emily, plenty of people in “Bounceback” had an issue with what Lola did, even if they understood why she did it. It’s an interesting theoretical exercise. Would you be able to adhere to the letter of the law after having spent a career seeing juries so frequently and damagingly get things wrong? And if your own wrongdoing was exposed, would you be able to risk your own personal and professional reputation to ensure that justice was done regardless?
Ultimately, things turned out okay for Lola – Leon’s plea was dismissed and the DDA chose not to retry his case. He was free to go. But lessons were learned in the process, and relationships were tested, and everyone emerged knowing a little bit more about themselves. Lola’s teary-eyed speech to Leon was powerful because it was frank and true. The best of intentions don’t always amount to the best of outcomes.
This is something that Mark can attest to. It’s far too much of a coincidence that he was physically assaulted right before bringing damning evidence to trial, and he knows that in continuing to do so – which he does, obviously, decide to do – he’s risking not just his own personal wellbeing but that of his loved ones and other people involved in the case. But the price of justice is sometimes high. Mark might just be trying to assuage his personal guilt, but it’s more likely that he, like Lola, is putting justice first. How many of us can say we’d do the same?
In all this, there were personal relationships to attend to also. Emily, who got comparatively little to do this week besides take aim at Lola and get chewed out by Sherri, was able to make amends with Sara, who nonetheless assured her that she was going to be honest about what she felt going forwards, whether Emily liked it or not. I think that’s fair enough. Elsewhere, Lola and Roxy finally made some progress in a scene that put a real lump in my throat. Roxy told Lola how proud she was of her; Lola told Roxy that she can’t just turn up at the courtroom whenever she feels like it. Also fair. “Bounceback”, an episode in which it seemed as if everything was going to end rather swimmingly, nonetheless threw a last-minute curveball – Lola’s baby is coming.
