Bull Season 1 Finale Review

The season finale's case takes the team to Miami, where J.P. defends a single mother.


S1E23 "Benevolent Deception"

J.P. is hired to represent a woman who was found with heroin hidden at her house. Bull is opposed to this case, because it is likely being funded by drug money, but J.P. insists that  they do this case because of the woman they will be helping. The jurors don't want to be there because they are scared, so the court decides to use an anonymous jury, which presents a unique challenge to Bull. How does he analyze a jury he knows nothing about?

Bull will have to rely heavily on the juror's voices and answers to their questions. Bull is still against the client's brother, and after he confronts the client, J.P. gets angry. telling Bull that this should be their last case working together. The team discovers that the 911 call came from the son. Bull tells the client this, and reasons that he was trying to protect his mother, because he saw his uncle bring the drugs the house.

Going behind J.P's back, the team meets, and they decide that Benny and Bull will work with the mother to cooperate with the government. The prosecution and judge works with them in court, to keep this a secret. This way of going about things is interesting, though it is annoying that in a show about a jury consultant, the decision came down to the judge. Bull helps J.P. get out of the way of the responsibility when the brother ends up getting arrested.


This was an interesting case, though the anonymous jury obstacle turned out to be no obstacle at all, which made it pointless, and annoying considering that this show is supposed to deal heavily with the jury.

Score: 7.5/10

What do you think of "Benevolent Deception"? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

Bull S1E22 Review

This is the second of three episodes this season to feature the new character of J.P, who may be added to the main cast next season.


S1E22 "Dirty Little Secrets"

Due to the agreement from last week, Bull has to take on a case that he doesn't want to work on, which is an interesting obstacle. Bull tries to keep the case from going to trial because they will be up against the United States government. Despite being fully against the case, Bull presents it to his team, and acts positive about it. Cable is the most against the case, refusing to work on it.

Bull and J.P. argue about the case when he tries to convince her of something, and she argues that this is a cause worth fighting for. Benny gets the files, and Cable gets someone to unencrypt them. Bull goes to Cable, who has discovered why Bull doesn't like lawyers: he failed the bar twice. This is a great moment between the two of them.

The case this week is actually quite simplistic: Bull doesn't believe in the case but J.P. does, they end up swapping positions, and once Bull talks to J.P, she believes in it again, and as a result is able to convince the jury. At the end of the episode, the show once again exhibits how it wants to be more of a police procedural, figuring out who is responsible, and getting them in trouble.


The moments having to do with Cable were wonderful, and the scene between Cable and Danny was great. However, the rest of the episode underwhelmed, and the relationship between Marissa and Bull felt awkward. Also, I really hope that J.P. ins't a main character next season.

Score: 4.5/10

What did you think of "Dirty Little Secrets"? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

Bull S1E21 Review

This episode shows the beginning of a three-episode arc featuring a potential new main cast member in season two.


S1E21 "How to Dodge a Bullet"

The episode begins with a voice-over from Bull. This voice-over sounds dumb, and it's strange because episodes normally don't start like that. Benny gets arrested, and one of his charges turns out being tampering with evidence, which he didn't expect. He pleads not guilty. Bull is informed of a meeting in the early morning, and this is where he, and the audience, meets J.P, who explains who she is: "a fixer". Bull and J.P. end up at odds, but they come to an agreement: she does this one case for him, and he does three cases for her.

As the third act begins, Bull introduces J.P. to the concept of what he does. It's about time the episode gets to this. This feels like a new pilot for the show. It's re-introducing the concept, and the episode feels a lot different than the past episodes of the show. Then, the episode finally travels to the courtroom. The details of Benny's case is fairly boring. This case is much less interesting than the ones that the show has handled in the past. The case ends up going well, which means that Bull and J.P. will continue to work together, as expected.


I had many issues with this episode. The case was boring, it didn't feel like a normal Bull episode, and the supporting characters didn't get much to do. In fact, Marissa was the only one to get more than a couple of lines. I also did not care for this relationship between Bull and J.P. at all, though maybe the next two episodes will change my mind.

Score: 2/10

What did you think of "How to Dodge a Bullet"?

Bull S1E20 Review

Most of this season's episodes of Bull have dealt with things like lawsuits. But this week, like the pilot and a couple other episodes, deals with a murder trial.


S1E20 "Make Me"

The episode begins by showing us the murder that will be talked about throughout the episode, as a man suddenly kills his father using a golf club. However, he pleads not guilty, and seems to believe what he is saying. Bull decides to take the case, after he discovers that the young man is highly susceptible to hypnotism.

Bull and the attorney he uses try to figure out which jurors are easily influenced by the power of suggestion. Meanwhile, Chunk and Danny visit the cult that the person who killed his father was a part of. Since the people from the cult have taken an interest in Chunk, he is chosen to infiltrate the cult. Meanwhile, Bull talks to the son, and discovers that he was supposed to be in a session when he killed his father, so it's possible that the cult leader was the target, not the father.

In court, Bull tells the attorney to use the word "red" frequently, so that the jurors start to see the color frequently. However this caused me to not focus on anything else in the scene, just waiting for the next time the word "red" was going to be said, and even in the scenes after, they put a distracting amount of red, at least I found it distracting. For me, act four was all about red. Oh, and at the end of the act Chunk finds out that the cult leader knows he works for Bull.

The power of hypnosis is demonstrated in court, and it is shown how that was used on the son. There is also an interaction between Bull and the cult leader, and the way that they talk to each other feels odd, since they haven't interacted before, but they talked as if they had. At the end of the episode, Benny tells Bull what has been bothering him, that he is being investigated.


The episode hardly dealt with the jury, just a few moments and nothing regarding individual jurors. It's a shame that the show has been doing that so often, as one of the things I was most interested in with this show is that jury analyzing. The case, however, was an interesting one, and provided a logically placed turn as to how they were approaching it. Still, there were some moments through the episode that I did not care for.

Score: 6.5/10

What did you think of "Make Me"? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

Bull S1E19 Review

After the death of a cheerleader, Bull ends up working for the person who is accused of killing her.


S1E19 "Bring it On"

Bull and his team get pressured into a case when an attorney accused of killing his fiance mentions on television that he has hired Bull. Bull talks to the attorney, and after this Bull believes that he is innocent. They discover that jurors who are far from narcissistic would be the most sympathetic with the attorney. It's an interesting tidbit, but I want more. The attorney doesn't trust Bull's analysis of the jury, and their bickering leads them accidentally saying that the jury is acceptable. This is something the show has done multiple times before in its short, eighteen episode history. The jury is swung one way and the other by stunts played by the lawyers on both sides.

The attorney calls himself as a witness, which is an interesting layer to this strange case, and there is a surprising development when Bull reveals that the fiance was not who she said she was. The attorney is found not guilty, and something that he had told Bull leads to him and the prosecution attorney finding the real killer. The ending is simple, and the connection that Bull finds the killer off of seems unlikely. The ending also plays out the show's desire to be a police procedural, rather than a legal one. It's okay to find the real killer when trying to prove the client not guilty, but tie it in to the case!


The episode had some seriously unoriginal elements, and did little digging into analyzing the jury. It was a fairly weak episode.

Score: 3.5/10

What did you think of "Bring it On"? Leave your thoughts in the comments!