The Frustrating Evolution of HBO's Murder Mystery Legal Drama THE NIGHT OF

We haven't written about HBO's limited series The Night Of since it started airing, but if you've been watching, you know it's a well-acted, gorgeously shot show that focuses on the ins and outs of New York's criminal justice system through a murder case. Riz Ahmed plays a Pakistani-American student named Nasir "Naz" Khan who is accused of murder, and John Turturro has the other major starring role as his lawyer (or one of them, anyway). You should catch up with the series on HBO Go or HBO Now if you haven't seen it yet, and then continue reading this article.

In the pilot, the series took us through the events of the titular night — all except the actual murder itself. This has allowed recent episodes (including last night's) to introduce and explore possible suspects other than Naz. But for the first few episodes, the story was clearly being told from Naz's point of view. We were with him almost every step of the way on that fateful night, and we were with him throughout the processes of getting arrested, enduring police interrogations, getting a lawyer, and being arraigned at Riker's Island. These first couple of episodes, in my opinion, were the best we've seen so far (last night's was the sixth of eight in season one), largely because for the purposes of the show, we could all identify with Naz at that point.

But here's where things took a frustrating turn. Ever since Naz entered Riker's, he's been acting way differently than he did in the first two episodes. Under the watchful eye of VIP prisoner Freddy Knight (Michael K. Williams), Naz has bulked up, shaved his head, smuggled drugs into jail, etc. The show is making a statement about what being in an environment like that can do to a "normal" person, even if (and maybe especially if) he is actually innocent of the crime the state claims he committed. It's rough living in there, and survival becomes priority number one.

I get all of that. But while the first two episodes put us inside Naz's head, the show has essentially cut us off from his thoughts ever since. We no longer understand his reasoning for making decisions (like getting "SIN" and "BAD" tattooed on his knuckles, something that can't possibly go over well with the jury during his trial), and because we don't have his point of view to justify those decisions, the show feels a little unmoored to me. It seems like it's no longer about Naz, it's more about the system itself. If the show wants to explore the implications of the way the system works and serve as a damning portrait of how screwed up things are with that aspect of our society, that's totally fine — but I think doing that in exchange for losing Naz's perspective on things is an unfortunate misstep in an otherwise strong series. David Simon wonderfully explored deep societal issues in The Wire, but he did it through the prism of his characters and their plights and interactions with the city of Baltimore. The characters were always at the forefront; it was easy to understand to the larger points he was making because we cared about the people these things were happening to. Without that connection, this show might as well just be a documentary about how unfair the criminal justice system is.

For the past few episodes, it's almost seemed as if The Night Of has wanted me to root against Naz. Maybe all of this will come together in a satisfying way in the final two episodes of the first season, but from where I'm sitting right now, I feel like the show has lost the beating heart at its center.