What seemed to be just one more of the many legal dramas that typify the genre in serialized television productions in the United States, taking up a standard theme, the weak confronting the powerful, attractive since time immemorial. The biblical origin of its title, Goliath, gives the storyline away, although its creators strayed from predictable routes to advance along paths not often frequented by the corporate entertainment industry, addressing the corruption, illegality, immorality, thirst for profit and contempt for human beings inherent to the military industrial complex of our neighbor to the north.
Presumably, Amazon, the production company, and creators of the series, David A. Kelly (Boston Legal) and Jonathan Shapiro (The Black List) themselves imposed some limits: denouncing individuals and not the system, condemning the exception and not the rule. And, of course, the aggressive role of the United States as policeman of the world was entirely ruled out. Nonetheless, the plot offers more than enough for viewers to draw conclusions if they have the information and analytical capacity to see reality through the gaps exposed.
Bear in mind that the spiraling arms race has never stopped and has been growing exponentially in the United States since the Cold War era. Until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the weapons brokers found support in the confrontation between two powers; then the crusade against terrorism played this role, while ignoring terrorism generated by a state that seeks to exercise global control at all costs, and make a good profit. Some truly believe in the messianic role of the United States - one of the motivations of the young lawyer Lucy Kittridge (OIivia Thirlby's work deserves a round of applause) who gets involved in the matter, apart from her ambition and unhealthy relationship with her boss; others act consciously, armored in a shell of cynicism, with their ethics cast aside.
The corporation under scrutiny in Goliath, Borns Tech, and the law firm Cooperman & McBride that represents it, are fictional. But to better understand what the game is all about, the names of leading companies in the military industrial complex could easily be substituted: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, BAE System, Northop Grumann or Raythorn. And that of the law firm could be any one of the many that have grown like unbridled hydras within and beyond the country’s borders. (dl Pipe, Kirkland & Elis, Latham Watkins, Baker McKenzie) Left out of the game, in the series, are other regular players, barely mentioned: those providing corporate links to government (the departments of Defense, Commerce, State…) There is but one connection to the FBI established, in the person of agent Joe Farley (Jason Ritter) who, although he contributes to some justice being done, in the end, it is only because he wants to move up in the ranks and, in the process, annoy colleagues in other federal agencies such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) that investigates illegal activity is these areas and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).
Borns Tech develops a weapon of mass destruction based on napalm, and one of its employees, Ryan Larson, dies in an explosion near the Californian coast. Officially, someone totally without suicidal tendencies has committed suicide, the widow is quieted with compensation, and that should be the end of it, until the dead man's sister, Rachel, decides to sue the corporation.
A friend, a small-time lawyer, Patty Solis-Papagian (a superb performance by Nina Arianda), puts her in touch with another lawyer, Billy McBride, an alcoholic, out of touch, on the decline. The plot thickens.
In the eight episodes of the season broadcast by Multivision, three plot lines intertwine. The most consistent, the one that places McBride against the ropes and lost in the labyrinth of his own judicial system, in which deals and compromises are common, and neither the law or the courts consistently defend the truth, until he manages to find a loophole to succeed. The most entertaining episode obliges viewers to follow clues of attacks, the planting of false evidence and extortion, with mercenaries and police agents included, and the struggle for power within the firm, with the rapacious, unscrupulous Callie Senate (Molly Parker) as its face.
The third and most deplorable conflict is focused on the personal confrontation between McBride and Cooperman, former partners who become irreconcilable enemies, the antihero and the sociopath, in a dark story, insufficiently justified and poorly resolved with the latter suffering a debilitating stroke.
A major plus is Billy Bob Thorton's performance as McBride, which qualifies as one of the most brilliant and consistent we have seen on the home screen for some time. On the other hand, William Hurt's Cooperman is entirely overacted.
The second season has already begun on Multivision. Amazon discovered a vein in McBride. The theme? The tentacles of drug running gangs. Let's see if they can hit the bull's eye again.
