Summary
- Michael Desiato’s decisions echo Walter White’s from Breaking Bad, showing shades of gray in morality.
- Your Honor portrays a world where bad choices lead to unforeseen and harsh consequences for all characters.
- Michael orchestrates strategic moves to control the outcome of cases, blurring ethical lines in the process.
Seven years after Breaking Bad ended, Bryan Cranston took on a new role as a judge in the Showtime drama series Your Honor. The show feels like the perfect vehicle for the actor. Much like how Walter White started making drugs to give his family a future after learning he was dying, Michael Desiato chose to break the law to protect his song after a hit-and-run accident. The series focused on several moral questions, including who is blackmailing the judge in Your Honor.
Judge Michael Disiato outdoes New Orleans mob boss Jimmy Baxter (played by Michael Stuhlbarg in the Your Honor cast) regarding the number of morally questionable decisions committed per episode. But the best thing about the show is that Michael isn’t the only one making shocking and often illegal choices that cause countless adverse ripple effects. In Your Honor, bad people outnumber the good ones by far. Even those expected to uphold the law often break it and do some terrible things during the show’s two seasons.
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10 Adam Desiato
Involved In A Hit And Run
Adam’s actions are the genesis of all the problems that arise in the show. He accidentally hits Jimmy Baxter’s son, Rocco, while trying to speed away from men who want to attack him. Adam’s first reaction is commendable as he tries resuscitating the unfortunate Rocco, who was test-riding his new bike.
However, as Adam panics, he gets an asthma attack, so he heads back to his car to look for an inhaler. This moment is where he made his biggest mistake. Not wanting to take responsibility for his actions, Adam drives away, making this a hit-and-run with a death involved. As soon as he gets home, he tries to get rid of his clothes and hopes everything will be alright. Because Rocco dies, his father (a mob boss) begins a hunt for whoever is responsible, and Adam goes to his father, a judge, for help.
9 Gina Baxter
Ordering A Hit On Kofi
Gina Baxter gets points for being a loving mom who cares deeply about her children. However, her thirst for revenge gets the better of her early in the series. After Rocco dies, Gina is devastated and as soon as the police arrest the gang member named Kofi while he is driving the Volvo involved in the accident, she concludes that he is the culprit.
Her husband, Jimmy, calls for patience, but she goes against his advice and orders a hit. She tasks none other than her son Carlo to do it since they are in the same jail together. This decision is a terrible move because she orders a hit to avenge her son but sends another son to execute it, risking the chance of Carlo getting more jail time added on — with one terrible twist. It’s a poor decision because they soon realize that Kofi is innocent.
8 Frannie
Sleeping With Adam
High school teacher Frannie comfortably has an affair with Adam, who happens to be her student. It’s a considerable risk for her because she could lose her job (and possibly face even worse) if the information comes out. Adam is not yet an adult, so therein lies a bigger problem. If caught, Frannie could end up registered as a sex offender and ruin not only her teaching career but any good jobs down the line.
Since Adam loves her, he lets her know what he did. Despite being slightly older than him, she gives him bad advice by telling him to continue keeping his secret. Interestingly, she doesn’t keep the same secret for long, telling the story to Fia, who is actually the sister of the guy that Adam accidentally killed, and worsening things for everyone.
7 Nancy Costello
Threatening Carlo With The Lethal Injection
Detective Nancy Costello is generally a by-the-book cop who likes Michael Desiato too much to see that something is wrong with him. Since several characters are scheming behind the scenes, it becomes impossible for her to do her job properly when it comes to finding justice in the death of Jimmy Baxter’s son, Rocco. These troubles cause her to do something terrible to Carlo.
In a desperate move, she threatens Carlo with the possibility of a lethal injection. Like a villain, she goes on to describe in horrific and lurid detail how the poisonous fluids in the lethal injection shut down the nerves. The death penalty doesn’t have many fans nowadays, and Nancy using it to threaten a suspect is an action that doesn’t come off as admirable. It is honestly cruel to go into such detail, regardless of what Carlo is guilty of.
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6 Charlie
Tying Loose Ends
Charlie Figaro is the typical smiling but evil politician. Although people believe he is friendly and kind, he is connected with an organized crime family. Charlie also happens to be a close friend of Judge Michael Desiato. To help his friend, he talks to a local gang to help dispose of the Volvo involved in Adam’s hit-and-run accident. Kofi, the boy tasked with getting rid of the car, isn’t so lucky.
Kofi gets arrested with the Volvo, and Baxter’s men eventually get their hands on him. Instead of trying to help Kofi and save the young man working for him, Charlie goes to great lengths to tie up all loose ends and ensure nothing ties him to Kofi. Charlie is an evil person who does bad things and never seems to get in trouble in the end (he even becomes the Mayor in this series filmed in New Orleans).
5 Fia
Being Naive
Things get complicated when Jimmy Baxter’s daughter, Fia, falls for Adam. Michael’s teenage son is a mess, but apparently, he’s good with the ladies. Fia’s mother, Gina, does everything she can to end the relationship. Despite being the most innocent character in the show, Fia is naive and unaware of all the madness around her. Her father is a crime lord, and her mother ordered a hit on an innocent young man after her son’s death.
Fia’s decision to date Adam is problematic because he killed her brother, and she doesn’t know about it. Being with Adam also prevents the Baxter family from exerting revenge. Things also become rough when the high school teacher Adam was previously sleeping with tells Fia what Adam did. Everything ends with Fia having Adam’s baby and then putting it up for adoption and leaving her family behind, so at least she smartens up in the end.
4 Jimmy Baxter
Killing Trevor
Someone is blackmailing the judge in Your Honor. They claim that they know that Adam killed Rocco and want $222,000. When Michael goes to great lengths to find out who he is, he uses Detective Nancy Costello to get the license plates of the vehicles spotted at the gas station where the incident occurred.
He eventually discovers that the blackmailer is Ed’s sea-loving son, Trevor. Michael offers to buy him a boat to keep him quiet and partially meet his demand of $222,000. Unfortunately for Trevor, Jimmy Baxter and his henchman Frankie catch him and Michael together, and they believe that Trevor killed Rocco. The judge talks his way out of getting killed and promises to oversee Carlo’s trial and ensure that he gets off. With Michael offering to help his son, Jimmy shoots and kills the blackmailer.
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3 Kofi Jones
Not Being Careful Enough
Charlie Figaro goes to a local gang and asks them for help in getting rid of the car used in the hit-and-run death of Rocco. A young member named Kofi is tasked with getting rid of the Volvo but doesn’t take enough precautions. He does something that eventually leads to his death as he drives the car through the town’s streets, where police are everywhere. As expected, the police recognized the vehicle, and they arrested him.
As a young gang member, Kofi should have known that getting rid of a car meant it was likely used for a crime. He should have disposed of it at night or used routes that aren’t likely to be filled with police officers. Sadly, he doesn’t do that, so he ends up getting arrested, tortured in prison, and violently killed by Rocco’s brother for something he didn’t do.
2 Carlo
Revenge Killing Kofi
Carlo brutally kills Kofi in prison by smashing the young man’s head on a wall seven times, which he does when he has only a few days left on his sentence. By doing this, Carlo risks serving another lengthy jail term, possibly ending up in prison for the rest of his life. That was Jimmy Baxter’s concern in the first place, and that’s why he didn’t want Carlo to pull off the hit after Gina ordered it.
Thanks to his reckless actions, Carlo is arrested again a handful of days after finally being released from prison. His father has to do the same thing Michael is doing, saving a guilty child from the claws of justice. This twist adds an interesting parallel to Your Honor, as it shows two fathers doing whatever they have to do to save their sons.
1 Michael Desiato
Orchestrating The Arrest Of A Black Judge
A problem arises when Judge Sarah LeBlanc receives the assignment on the Carlo Baxter case. Bryan Cranston’s Judge Michael Desiato knows he won’t be able to influence the case with a new judge at the helm. This change would force Jimmy to break his promise to influence the case’s outcome, which was the only thing that kept Jimmy from killing him before.
Michael comes up with a plan and meets LeBlanc for drinks after work, knowing that she’ll drink enough not to be drunk but to be well above the legal limit. He tips off some police to pull her over; her arrest leads to her agreeing to temporarily step down as a judge, giving up the Baxter case. She later tells Michael that she feels someone influenced the case, not knowing that he is, in fact, the culprit. Michael did many bad things in Your Honor, but this was a dirty move on his part.