Burden of Truth Review: The Milk of Human Kindness (Season 2 Episode 3)
It’s an hour of escalation and shocking turn of events on Burden of Truth Season 2 Episode 3, “The Milk of Human Kindness,” in another solid entry.
Things continue to get worse for Noah as his social media is weaponized against him in a moment that feels oddly grounded in terms of stakes of being associated with the people he was connected with.
The tension is palpable throughout the hour, and you can’t help but be worried for Noah’s mental well-being after being put through the wringer, learning about his past from his girlfriend, and considering what Jared did to himself when he was backed into a metaphorical corner.
I love how this case has developed over the first 3 episodes. There’s an intensity to it that feels different than the Steel Mill case of season 1 while incorporating the human aspect to something as large-scale as a defense contractor’s desire to destroy a software developers life for the sake of profits.
There’s one thing that the Millwood case has in common with the Lovand case, though. That one thing: the ability to tap into an aspect of Joanna’s life that we wouldn’t see otherwise.
Noah’s demo of the facial surveillance software hits a little too close to home for Joanna, as it somehow manages to gain insight into her issues stemming from her upbringing.
Joanna reacting to the software’s readings is a moment of insight into her character. Joanna would never open herself up like that in front of a client, but it continues to make me curious about whether we’ll be seeing Joanna take a moment to come to terms with the trauma as opposed to holding it all back.
The dam has got to break at some point, right? Considering the final moments of the episode as she gets the news about her father’s passing, will she inch closer or bury those feelings and issues even deeper?
Meanwhile, the Crawford siblings seem to have a significant breakthrough when it comes to their father, which for some reason makes Shane slightly more tolerable. We’re slowly getting more context to the entire family dynamic, especially with Billy sharing that their father left them when he was 8, forcing him to grow up fast.
I like that we continue to gain insight into what shaped his upbringing slowly.
The question now is, will we be getting more about Billy’s father or more about the time after he left?
Elsewhere, Luna and Taylor are dealing with their parental heartbreaks and real-world lessons differently.
It’s tough to see Taylor willing to give her father a chance only to be disappointed by him. Will there be a point in time when he’ll realize what he’s been doing wrong or is that chapter permanently closed now?
Luna has her own set of father-related disappointments to deal with, as David pops back to Millwood to try to settle things with Gerrilyn. Things are tense and charged throughout the hour, with a sense of something coming.
It’s when Luna confronts David at the motel that the sinking feeling ratchets up. The fact that we see an angry Luna can’t account for that missing bit of time on her part after that confrontation, and then David turns up dead, it’s clear we’re meant to infer that she’s the one who did it.
But it can’t be as cut and dry as that, can it?
Random Thoughts
- The Lovand mole reveal at Steadman Lavery feels like a bit of a blow to the case, with Sunil being revealed as the traitor to his boss. But with Joanna catching on effectively ending his time there and then the 11th-hour Lovand face off, is this the end of Lovand’s scare tactics or is this just the beginning?
- The Bear Clan story is fascinating, both for Luna and in the sense that it looks at a different set of stories that you don’t often see on TV.
What did you think of this episode of Burden of Truth? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Burden of Truth airs Sundays at 8/7c on The CW.
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Brianna Martinez
Brianna spends her time away from briefs, legal research, and pleadings, watching TV and writing about it. She generally has a lot of feelings about TV, which you can read about here and on Twitter.