With a show as well-written and well-executed as HBO’s “The Night Of,” why did co-creators Richard Price and Steven Zaillian feel the story, ostensibly a crime procedural, needed a romantic angle? Did they look around on-set and decide there were too many guys? Because what they came up with was implausible and contrived, and it diminished what was otherwise a satisfying New York drama with many fine performances.
Chandra Kapoor (Amara Karan) was the attorney who took over the case when her boss, Alison Crowe (Glenne Headly), abandoned Nasir Khan (Riz Ahmed) when he wouldn’t accept a plea for a 15-year sentence. Naz liked Chandra because she supported his desire to maintain his innocence.
Then she did the stupid thing: She kissed him in his jail cell. Yes, there was some sexual tension between the characters, but if Chandra really wanted to prove her client’s innocence, she wouldn’t have kissed him. Undercutting the character once was risky. Derailing her in the season finale was downright peculiar.
As the lead attorney, Chandra decided to have Naz testify on his own behalf, although he was warned against doing so by John Stone (John Turturro). The defense had already introduced enough witnesses to establish reasonable doubt. Naz was not going to help himself by reminding everyone how he couldn’t account for his behavior during crucial periods of the night in question. He agreed to testify under one condition — that Chandra buy some crack for him on the street (bad enough), then smuggle it into jail on her, well, “person.” Let’s just say there was a lot of reaching around under her tailored, tasteful skirt.
Come on. Why would someone as professional and polished as Chandra self-sabotage like that? And do it while someone behind her — a prison guard — had a computer on, one whose screen probably was equipped with a camera? As narrative choices go, this one was really wacky.
Chandra, of course, was reprimanded and told by her boss to clean out her desk. Perhaps Price and Zaillian wanted to show that the old-school deductive methods exhibited by Stone and Helen Weiss (Jeannie Berlin) would triumph in the end, or somebody wanted Turturro to have a great monologue to put on his Emmy reel when Stone was put in charge of writing the closing arguments. Whatever the motivation, making Chandra such a fool shortchanged Karan, an actress who radiated a quiet confidence, and tarnished a character we had grown to like.