Seven Seconds: S1E9/S1E10

Previously on Seven Seconds

A show like Seven Seconds is always going to have a hard time coming to a satisfying ending. While audiences may like their anti-heroes and villains with tragic backstories, as people, we also have an innate sense of justice and a show that spends so much time showing you how shitty the police can be is going to have a hard time because cops rarely get punished for the bad things they do.

That’s the conundrum Seven Seconds finds itself in. After Nadine’s death, KJ’s case against the officers is shaky at best. Nadine connected DiAngelo and the rest of his crew to Jablonski so now they are off the hook. KJ can prove that a car matching the one Jablonski owned hit Brenton but without the car, she can’t definitively link him to the crime. She tries to add a hate crime charge by arguing that Jablonski left Brenton to die because he was Black and assumed he was a gangbanger.

While KJ and Fish are trying to get someone to cross the blue line, Latrice and Isaiah are slowly working their way back towards each other and part of that has to do with Isaiah telling the truth about Brenton and why he was in the park. Their marriage may never fully recover from Brenton’s death but Isaiah coming to terms with his son’s sexuality is a turning point for him and it is punctuated by Seth reassuring him that Brenton knew his father loved him.

The trial itself goes through its ups and downs. KJ strikes a victory when Isaiah and Kadeuce’s testimony lays to rest the rumors that Brenton was a gang member. But when KJ’s witnesses testify that Brenton was wearing a hood, the hate crime charge is almost thrown out because they can’t claim bias if Jablonski couldn’t see that Brenton was Black. Their big break comes when Fish realizes the grill of Jablonski’s car was missing and he gets Teresa, the only person with a conscience, to tell them where it is. Jablonski agrees to roll over on the other cops for leniency, but when Latrice tells his wife that DiAngelo wanted him dead, it backfires and pushes Jablonski to stay silent rather than turning on the other officers. In the end, the jury doesn’t convict Jablonski of a hate crime and gives him less than a year in jail and he can be up for parole within 30 days. It’s a devastating, but realistic verdict. KJ says it repeatedly, cops don’t pay.

The Good

• FISH! The character I thought would be mildly racist and completely incompetent turned out to have the most heart and integrity. His guilt over Nadine’s death and his determination to find justice was great.  

• KJ’s closing arguments. You expect closing arguments on television to be moving and Claire-Hope Ashitey brought it. She was vulnerable and strong and spoke for Brenton while laying out all the facts. If they wanted to end with Jablonski going away for a long time, I would have believed it after KJ’s final words.

• Isaiah’s redemption. For a character that spent most of the show being intractable, his turn was welcome. The relationship he forged with Kadeuce was made all the more melancholy by the knowledge that it took his son’s death for him to understand him.  

The Bad

• Marie’s apology to Latrice. The fact that Marie would even attempt to apologize to Latrice after the stuff we’ve seen her pull after knowing her husband was guilty is just unforgivable, but on top of that, Latrice telling her that DiAngelo tried to kill her husband causes her to clam up even further. She was a coward through and through.

• The ending never had any hope of being truly satisfying given everything we knew. Jablonski’s sentence was laughable and everyone else got away with everything including Nadine’s death. It’s tragic but the characters we were rooting for truly did their best.