Please rise for Bryan Cranston’s addictive Breaking Bad follow-up.
Both seasons of Your Honor are now streaming on Netflix. The thrilling drama, which first premiered in 2020, marked Cranston’s first starring TV role since he wrapped his iconic Emmy-winning run as science teacher turned drug kingpin Walter White. Like on Breaking Bad, Your Honor finds Cranston playing a law-abiding man who turns to crime to help his family — except this time there’s no pleasure in partaking in the other side of the law.
Produced by Cranston and Evil masterminds Robert and Michelle King, Your Honor features Cranston as New Orleans judge Michael Desiato, who, after a deadly hit-and-run, is forced to choose between protecting his son and upholding the law.
“I believe that a person’s character is determined by the decisions they make under pressure,” Cranston tells Tudum. “My role as Michael Desiato is a person who starts out as a protagonist and maintains his hope to remain one. Unlike Walter White, Michael doesn’t give in to the dark side. He’s just trying to make the best of a bad situation. I really think that anyone who likes a great mystery thriller is going to love Your Honor.”
No objection here! Read on to learn more about the series.
The first episode of Your Honor doesn’t wait long to jump into the series’ inciting incident: New Orleans high school senior Adam Desiato (Hunter Doohan) begins having an asthma attack while driving, and when he looks away from the wheel to reach for his inhaler, he runs into another teenager on a motorcycle. Adam attempts to help the victim, before leaving the scene in a panic. Distraught and devastated, he tells his father, Michael (Cranston), what happened, and the elder Desiato, a local judge, does the honorable thing: He takes his son to the police to explain the situation. But once they arrive at the station, Michael realizes that the victim was Rocco Baxter (Benjamin Wadsworth), the son of powerful crime boss Jimmy Baxter (Oscar nominee Michael Stuhlbarg). In that moment, Michael makes the decision to protect Adam by covering up his involvement.
The premise of Your Honor was first pitched to Cranston by Season 1 writer and producer Peter Moffat, who posed the actor a thorny question. “He said, ‘What would you do to save your child?’ ” Cranston recalls. “I said, ‘Anything.’ ‘Would you knowingly become a criminal if you thought by doing so your child would live?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘What if that decision led to someone innocent getting hurt or killed?’ And that was when I thought, ‘Oh my god, I don’t know how to answer that!’ That is Your Honor in a nutshell.”
The series has two seasons.
Your Honor is adapted from the Israeli TV series Kvodo.
Your Honor takes place in New Orleans, with famous locations in the Garden District and the French Quarter appearing onscreen. The city plays an important role in the show, according to Cranston. “There’s a vibrancy, a history, a sexiness to it — the life, the food, the jazz, the people,” he told Entertainment Weekly in 2020. “And there’s also an underbelly to New Orleans that can’t be denied.”
In the end, Michael couldn’t save Adam — and, in a twist of fate, his son’s shocking death comes as a result of Michael’s actions to conceal the initial accident. Michael first allowed Kofi Jones to take the fall for Rocco’s death, eventually paving the way for Rocco’s incarcerated older brother Carlo (Jimi Stanton) to kill Kofi in prison. Meanwhile, on the outside, the Baxters blew up Kofi’s house. The explosion killed his mother, but luckily, his younger brother Eugene (Benjamin Flores Jr.) was not home at the time.
Jimmy soon finds out the truth about Adam, and so Michael agrees to pull strings to ensure that he’s the judge when Carlo stands trial for Kofi’s murder. The plan works and Carlo is found not guilty. In the midst of all this, Adam has begun dating Jimmy’s daughter Fia (Lilli Kay) — yes, the sister of the kid that he crashed into. And this is why Adam is present at the Baxter family’s hotel for a party celebrating Carlo’s freedom, and that’s where little Eugene shows up looking for revenge. As Michael watches through the window, Eugene arrives and shoots at Carlo, but he misses, hitting Adam instead. Michael rushes in, falling to the floor holding his dying son.
“Before the final act in Season 1 was discovered by Peter Moffat, he and I discussed the ending quite a bit,” Cranston shares. “And I will admit, how he came up with that brilliant ending of enormous tragedy was so shocking to me — and the perfect ending ... perhaps inevitable. It underscores a cautionary tale that, whenever someone tries to become someone they are not, it cannot sustain. The truth will eventually reveal itself. And man, did it ever.”
“Everything that Michael Desiato did was in a quest to keep his son, Adam, alive. And he failed,” Cranston continues. “That devastating end marked the end for Michael too — as we knew him, anyway. And that leads us right into Season 2. Talk about a shock … wait until you see what happens to Michael then. Hope you enjoy the ride!”
Like Cranston said, that tragic Season 1 conclusion didn’t mark the end of Your Honor. Originally planned as a limited series, the thrilling drama continued for a second and final season, with the finale returning Michael to where he began Season 2: prison. The sophomore batch of episodes opens with Michael in custody for his involvement in ensuring Carlo was acquitted of Kofi’s murder, but Olivia Delmont (Rosie Perez), an assistant US attorney, gets him out to help take down the Baxters.
Still mourning his son’s death, Michael finds new life in the news that Fia has given birth to Adam’s baby, whom she named Rocco after her late brother. But Michael is eventually forced to confront the series’ initial sin. During Eugene’s trial for Adam’s murder, Michael identifies Eugene as his son’s shooter, while also coming clean about everything — from Adam’s fatal accident with Rocco, to Michael’s subsequent cover-up, to Eugene’s brother Kofi taking the fall for it. Behind the scenes, Michael protects Eugene by tipping his lawyer off to the fact that the explosion at the Jones’ household had to be deliberate, as the family’s gas was turned off weeks earlier. In a private moment leaving court, Michael and Eugene apologize to each other for their respective losses.
In the end, Eugene is allowed to go live a new life in witness protection, Fia puts little Rocco up for adoption and skips town, and Gina (Hope Davis) emerges as the new head of the Baxter family after she manipulates her father into shooting Jimmy, who is revealed to have barely survived. The final scene of the series features Michael willingly re-entering prison, where he’s prepared to face his deserved judgment. And that’s case closed on Your Honor.
