The Lincoln Lawyer Brings Connelly’s Los Angeles to Netflix’s Digital Shores
Photo Courtesy of Netflix
Mickey Haller does not believe in seatbelts.
This is not the most important takeaway of The Lincoln Lawyer, the latest adaptation of a beloved Michael Connelly property to hit a streaming platform in the last seven days. But given the fact that L.A.’s best criminal defense attorney (and Harry Bosch’s undiscovered half-brother) earned his moniker building cases out of the backseat of a small fleet of new and vintage luxury Lincolns, his relationship to seatbelts is nevertheless one that at-home viewers are likely to clock immediately, once his eponymous work habits make the leap to the streaming screen.
So, as a bit of service journalism for those annoyed that a man like Mickey Haller is just never, ever, ever wearing his seatbelt, I say again: The Lincoln Lawyer does not believe in seatbelts. Or at least, the creative team behind The Lincoln Lawyer doesn’t believe in them on his behalf. Either way, let this warning save you the headache—and distraction!—in advance. No matter how desperately you might want Haller, played in this Netflix adaptation by an unassumingly charming Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, to just buckle his goddamn seatbelt even one of the times he climbs into the backseat of his silver Lincoln Navigator, it won’t happen. Twice, maybe three times—when he’s in the driver’s seat of his vintage, top-down Lincoln Continental—you’ll see him belted in. (And to the show’s credit, both his daughter and his driver wear theirs in every circumstance.) But the rest of the time? Not a chance.
If that seemed like a lot of words to spend on what is, ultimately, a tiny detail in The Lincoln Lawyer’s densely packed first season, you wouldn’t be wrong. At the same time though, creator David E. Kelley and showrunner Ted Humphrey have packed the freshman legal drama densely enough—and Connelly has given them a pile of cases and characters to play with that were developed with enough care—that even tiny details like Haller’s seatbelt matter. See also: Lorna’s (Becki Newton) slightly off-kilter Elle Woods aesthetic. See also: The way Kelley and Humphrey use the specific celebrities of co-stars Newton, Neve Campbell, and Christopher Gorham to play with the audience’s expectations. See also: Every little personal parallel Haller has to his yet-to-be-discovered detective half-brother (the glass-walled house overlooking the whole of Los Angeles; the predilection for jazz; the bone-deep belief that everyone deserves justice) that will feel to fans of both series like some sort of secret code—if it’s not already meant to be.
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