The Undoing Review: Trial by Fury (Season 1 Episode 5)
As tense as it gets, The Undoing Season 1 Episode 5, “Trial by Fury,” finds its most poignant moments in the quiet, and in the fiery eyes of Grace as she realizes that everyone has been keeping secrets from her.
Grace’s journey throughout the episode is one of revelations, not entirely of facts, but of emotions.
There’s one particular moment that is perhaps the episode’s best, where Haley asks Grace to take Jonathan’s hand. It’s a test, and Nicole Kidman plays the scene so perfectly, as Grace looks up at the man she’s loved for so long, looking up as though trying to find that love again.
But once Jonathan looks down at her, there’s a distance that comes over her, and she looks away. It’s this moment of revelation for her, as though she’s realizing that those days are over.
This comes into conflict with the fact that she does turn to Jonathan later that evening, though that feels like it’s a moment of tenderness and wanting to give things another shot, a chance to feel like those old days.
It’s taken away, though, once Henry tells her about seeing Jonathan and Elena together.
The back and forth that happens throughout “Trial by Fury” is one of its best attributes. Haley’s job as defense attorney is to make mess, as she calls it, and she certainly does that, beyond the periphery of mess that Grace tries to sift through herself.
The trial scenes are snappy and to the point, where the highlights become poking holes and through reminding us why this trial is happening: the gruesome murder of Elena.
But there’s a shift near the halfway mark of the episode, when Haley is parsing suspicion onto both Fernando and Grace, where there’s this definitive feeling of unease. Grace mentions later she knows Haley would mention her as a potential suspect, but during the moment, there’s this sense of dread.
You can’t help but feel like this is only causing more damage rather than effectively helping Jonathan. It’s the definition of mess, but at what cost? Pointing the finger at anyone may be helpful in saving Jonathan, but what happens if he’s exonerated?
The way she cracks Fernando on the stand just feels wrong. There’s not malice in what she’s doing, as she’s defending her client and doing her job, but it’s hurting potentially innocent people in the process. Will Grace be a potential target, even though Mendoza mentions on the stand that she keeps walking?
It’s the realization that mucking up the process isn’t exactly about digging to the truth, but getting your client off. That’s not to look down on what she’s doing in the courtroom, but the unease it causes to watch this play out is tough, especially as we reach that ending.
That ending is certainly a surprise to cap off the episode. It becomes a question of either Henry being capable of this, which doesn’t feel realistic, or that he’s covering for Jonathan and has been hiding the sculpting hammer this whole time.
Henry’s distress and difficulty sleeping, on top of devouring all of the coverage and wanting them to be a family again, speaks to something eating away at him, and perhaps the story of seeing Jonathan and Elena together is his way of shifting his guilty conscience away when Grace won’t let him off.
Or there’s the other option, where Henry is the killer, and has done this to protect his parents. That’s a little far-fetched, as Henry has been mostly locked into his emotions and not acting in any particularly suspicious manner. Maybe it’s just hiding the evidence his father has given him, and confirms Jonathan as the killer.
His look of absolute terror as Grace finds the murder weapon is one that speaks to knowing he’s caught, but we just don’t know what he’s been caught in yet. Based on this episode, he sounds fairly confident that his father will win, after all, so it’s probably not a surprise that the hammer is in there in the first place.
But it goes down the path mentioned before, that everyone in Grace’s life is hiding something from her.
So much of the episode’s best bits come from reading the performers as the methodical beat of the trial hammers them all. This is an actors’ episode, through and through, and there’s not a weak link among them.
The issue with Jonathan’s sister Kate, though, is a late game shift that is out of left field. It confirms that he’s avoiding something from his past, but a sharp neglect to face the guilt and potential blame of his sister’s death changes everything we know about him.
Is he really a sociopath? This new wrinkle speaks to that, and hurts the many times he confesses his love in attempts to convince those around him of how caring he is. He even does so to Grace in the restaurant, playing to her emotions when he says that every cancer patient is another form of Katie for him to save.
Jonathan plays with your emotions, something he has certainly done over the course of this series. Has he done the same with Henry, when asking him to hide the sculpting hammer? Or has this passed down to his son, and this will lead in an entirely different direction?
The fact that Grace tells her friend Sylvia, who is friends with the prosecutor, gives the impression that maybe Jonathan will be questioned about his sister on the stand. Maybe Sylvia will feed this information so that when he testifies, this will blow him up.
At episode’s end, what we think we know is either confirmed or murkier than ever. It’s a great place to be going into the final episode, and gives Grace a moral dilemma that may be her true undoing.
What did you think of this episode of The Undoing? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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The Undoing airs Sundays at 9/8c on HBO.
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Kevin Lever
Kevin Lever has been following television closely for most of his life, but in starting to cover it, he has grown a further appreciation. He strives to give the blockbusters their due, and give the lesser known shows a spotlight to find more fans.