The Right Thing (Season 21, Episode 1)
Premise: A celebrity singer released from prison after an appeals court throws out his rape conviction is shot outside his home, and the woman who first accused him stands trial for his murder.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 21, Episode 1
- Detectives
- Det. Kevin Bernard (Anthony Anderson), Det. Frank Cosgrove (Jeffrey Donovan)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy), ADA Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi), DA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston)
- Guest stars
- Jeannine Kaspar as Nicole Bell, Norm Lewis as Henry King, Lisa Arrindell as Veronica King, Carey Lowell as ADA Jamie Ross, Alicia Coppola as defense attorney Keller
- Ripped from the headlines
- The case appears to draw on Bill Cosby’s: in June 2021, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court overturned his 2018 sexual-assault conviction, freeing him from prison, after ruling that a former prosecutor’s agreement barred the charges.
- Director
- Jean de Segonzac
- Writers
- Dick Wolf & Rick Eid
Summary
The Investigation
“The Right Thing” opens with singer Henry King telling a television interviewer he is innocent; he served more than three years before an appeals court vacated his conviction for raping a string of women. That night he is found shot five times at the service entrance of his Upper West Side brownstone. His wife, Veronica, lied about when she got home but was drinking at a nearby bar when he died. King’s fired agent says an angry text threatened only King’s career, and Shabazz Walker, whose brother’s crew protected King in prison for a fee, has an alibi.
Street video shows King quarreling days earlier with ADA Jamie Ross, who prosecuted him. She explains that her old promise not to charge him in one case, made so the first accuser could depose him in a civil suit, is why his conviction fell. Cosgrove’s pointed questions anger her, and Dixon tells him to stay above the fray.
A cigarette butt dropped by a figure in a green hoodie near the house carries the DNA of Nicole Bell, born Nicole Atkins, the first woman to accuse King. Cameras place her nearby, a damp green hoodie turns up in her dryer and the .380 pistol is pulled from a dumpster. Cosgrove assures her that no prosecutor would charge her and that she will go home; she confesses and is arrested, while supporters chant for her release.
The Trial
Price believes Cosgrove’s promises make the confession unreliable, and McCoy, warning that the police are under attack, lets him drop it. On the stand Cosgrove mentions it anyway. The judge denies defense attorney Audrey Keller’s mistrial motion and tells the jury to disregard the remark, and Cosgrove tells Price that deceiving suspects is part of his job.
Bell claims self-defense. Veronica King testifies that she saw her husband grab Bell before the shots, and Price uses the bar manager’s account to show she was not home. Bell describes King raping her twice, once after drugging her wine, and says she took her husband’s gun to his house and fired when he followed her outside and grabbed her. Price learns Bell visited Ross hours before the killing; subpoenaed, Ross takes the Fifth on every question about it.
With the jury apparently leaning toward acquittal, Price has Maroun deliver the closing. She reveals that her sister was raped and killed in Georgia nine years ago by a man police could never charge, and argues that fantasies of revenge are human but acting on them is murder.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury convicts Bell of second-degree murder as her supporters protest in the courtroom. Afterward, Maroun says the verdict does not feel right and urges that the lightest possible sentence be requested.
Why it stands out
- The episode launched the revival NBC ordered in September 2021, more than a decade after the original series was canceled in May 2010.
- Anthony Anderson and Sam Waterston return as Bernard and McCoy alongside new regulars Jeffrey Donovan, Camryn Manheim, Hugh Dancy and Odelya Halevi, and Carey Lowell guest stars as Jamie Ross, the prosecutor she played in Seasons 7 and 8 and in later guest appearances.
- It aired on February 24, 2022, which would have been the 100th birthday of Steven Hill, who played the show’s original district attorney, Adam Schiff.