‘The Lincoln Lawyer’ Season 3 Episode 9 Recap: The Ghosts of Guilt

With Izzy’s promotion and the position of Lincoln Lawyer driver once again open — maybe don’t put in the ad what happened to the last guy — Mickey Haller has time to think while he drives himself between the house, the office, and the hospital where Julian La Cosse is recovering from getting shivved in prison. What would the people he has lost tell him? “You took your eye off the ball,” Glory Days tells Mickey from the empty backseat. “You’re doing that thing again Mr. Haller,” Eddie Rojas says. “Where you blame yourself for everything that happens to the other people in your life.” And when his father appears, it’s with a whiskey tumbler in hand. “If you really wanna be as good as I was,” says the ghost of Mickey Haller Sr. (Jon Tenney, returning from season 1), “better than I was, you need to do whatever it takes to get that ‘not guilty.’ Your client expects nothing less.”

This “I see dead people” conceit is a nice addition to a Lincoln Lawyer Season 3 that’s featured a few other interesting wrinkles, like the time jump that set up Mickey and Andrea’s romance or the wakeup call of Eddie’s startling kill-off. But with Julian’s stabbing, the immediate challenge is to block DA Forsythe’s angling for a mistrial. “He knows our story is landing with the jury,” Mickey tells the team, “and he’s going to use this to try and get a do-over. That’s what I’d do.” And so Haller and Lorna get to work convincing Judge Turner to keep the trial alive as Julian fights for his life and Cisco works his contacts to figure out who tried to take it. As Mickey, like all of us, assumes that DeMarco orchestrated Julian’s attack, who walks into the courthouse but the bent DEA agent himself. He’s responding to their subpoena, conveniently offering his testimony where a suspended jury can’t hear.

It’s a tense situation. DeMarco’s lies on the stand are so smooth, even Mickey’s surprised. But he still presses. Did DeMarco know Hector Moya, shot caller for the Tijuana cartel? Does he know anyone in the courtroom, like Forsythe or Neil Bishop? As the latter looks on with an increasingly grim expression, Mickey pushes DeMarco right up to the edge of where the Glory Days murder case converges with the dirty DEA agent’s underhanded moves and his dealings with Bishop. But the judge sustains the DA’s objections, and with a final slithering glare for Mickey, DeMarco walks.

Outside, during a quick lunchbreak, Andy approaches Mickey. This is the first time they’ve seen one another since her big “Fuck you, Haller” moment, and the tone is awkward but apologetic. Mickey admits he spoke out of turn while Andrea admits that he was pretty much right – her office really is a snake pit. They also agree that neither of them are super great at work-life balance. And with a gentle moment of clasped hands, with a poignant wail of sax on the soundtrack, these two adults say farewell to their fling. They both need time to forgive themselves for their respective mountains of guilt. And to that end, Andy wishes Mickey good luck. “I have faith in you, Haller.” In terms of where to leave it, this is a lot better than another “Fuck you.”

Whatever it takes. That was the ghostly backseat advice of famous hardball attorney Mickey Haller, Sr., and at the hospital, it’s a sentiment Julian’s partner David agrees with. Julian is barely stable, and under total sedation. But with David’s permission and participation, Mickey does a little very necessary pretending for the court. How could there be a mistrial? His client is awake! And he has signed the form that grants the trial to continue in absentia! On the stand, under questioning from Forsythe, David lies about this with at least as much panache as DeMarco. But the difference is that his perjury is noble. Because David’s partner did nothing to deserve any of this, he got shivved despite being in police custody, is now fighting to recover their life together, and is still facing life in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. Mickey Sr. would likely be proud of his son’s latest bold courtroom play.

Throughout Lincoln Lawyer Episode 9, we saw Neil Bishop becoming increasingly crestfallen. It wasn’t just the texts he was receiving about the guy who stabbed Julian, or his watching the scheme nearly explode during DeMarco’s testimony. It was seeing Holt McCallany silently express Neil’s profound guilt at letting down the young son whose picture is on his phone. As Bishop sits outside the courtroom, Mickey tells Lorna he knows how to use the surveillance footage they’ve been trying to bring into the case. He approaches Neil, calls up the break-in on his tablet, and shows it to the district attorney’s investigator. “I think you’ll agree this is bad.” Mickey says he doesn’t even care to expose Bishop as a criminal accomplice. He just wants justice for Julian La Cosse, accountability for Glory’s murder, the acknowledgement that Eddie Rojas didn’t die for nothing, and in the process of all of this, to nail DeMarco’s ass to the wall. “You’re sick of it, aren’t you,” Mickey offers to Neil. “You’re a lot of things, but you’re not a killer. And whatever this is, I think deep down, you want to make it right.”

Julian’s murder trial is now. The jury is entering. And there’s only one episode left of The Lincoln Lawyer Season 3. Mickey Haller rises. “The defense calls Neil Bishop to the stand.” 

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.