And we’re back in the courthouse, folks. The world – both ours and that of the show – is very different since we last saw Lola, Mark, Emily, and company, and “A Change Is Gonna Come” is very much about getting us acquainted with those changes.
The catalyst for a lot of these changes is Lola being arrested at a protest. We see this event regularly and from a few different angles in flashbacks, and it’s clear all throughout that something happened during the event which has irrevocably altered Lola’s perspective of the American justice system, the cultural climate, and her longstanding platonic relationship with Mark. And there’s one other significant revelation we’re treated to regarding Lola, saved for the end of the episode – she’s pregnant!
That happy news is for another time, though, since Lola and Robin continue to have a long-distance marriage and pregnancy tends to take a while, so it’ll likely be a season-long affair. Of more pressing concern are the two primary issues affecting the American public right now – Covid-19 and racial bias within law enforcement.
That flashback reveals Lola was arrested for basically no reason beyond being Black in America, and it’s Mark’s assumption that she did something wrong that drives a wedge between the two of them.
In the present-day, a case that might be classified as a hate crime leads to a lot of toing and froing between Lola and her new opinionated law clerk Ness (Marie Ware), who is obviously younger and more aggrieved but without Lola’s earned understanding of nuance and the legal system.
Lola coaching Ness through the system helps her to work through her own feelings, especially since her treatment at the protest has left her more incensed than ever about how much work still needs to be done.
The Covid-19 stuff – apart from everyone wearing masks, obviously – primarily affects Emily, in a case which sees her trying to get an imprisoned client with underlying health issues away from possible infection. The woman she’s defending is indeed only in jail because circumstances in the pandemic forced her to steal basic essentials to feed her children. It’s heavy-handed, sure, but “A Change Is Gonna Come” at least has the guts to take this storyline in a morbid direction.
The big news with Emily, though, is that she and Luke are no more, and since they were the show’s fan-favorite couple that’s likely to have some fans in an uproar. The exact circumstances of their break-up are left nebulous for now.
It seems platonic, and as much a part of their shifting careers – Luke is no longer a bailiff and instead works out of the DA’s office – as the world changing around them. The dynamic is complicated by the fact that Luke seems to have moved on with his colleague, Sam, so it looks like a good old-fashioned love triangle is on the cards.
With everything going on right now, and the characters in the positions they’re in, All Rise certainly seems a less upbeat show than it was last season. It could do serious when it needed to, certainly, but you have to wonder whether it’ll have the same likability factor in this newer, more serious arrangement.
There are still jokes here and there, but the overall vibe is quite different – time will tell to what extent that affects things moving forwards.
This recap of All Rise season 2, episode 1, “A Change Is Gonna Come”, contains spoilers. We recapped every episode — check out the episodes tag.
