If we’re talking lives screwed up by the Glory Days case, the strongest argument after the victim and the man accused of her murder could be made by Eddie Rojas. (May he swole in peace.) But the work of crusading defense attorney Mickey Haller never ends, even when the show unexpectedly kills off his driver, and so he’s griping to Izzy about it from the back of his brand-new bulletproof Lincoln. It’s pretty shortsighted. Still, Mickey and his team have prepared a list of witnesses they hope to have testify, a list designed to support the relevance of calling to the stand their ultimate witness, the DEA’s James DeMarco. But it’s tricky, because Haller’s plan requires considerable buy-in from Judge Regina Turner. In court, after some of the questioning goes his way, and more of it is bogged down with repeated calls of “Objection! Relevance!” from Forsythe, counsel is finally called to the bench as baby attorney Sly Funaro, Jr. fumes on the stand. 

The problem here is that in this courtroom, anyway, DeMarco’s usual scheme for the silencing of both witnesses and lawyers – you know, by murdering them – isn’t currently on trial. And after another individual questioned on the stand either can’t or won’t concede the DEA agent’s under-the-radar manipulation in the Glory Days case, Judge Turner makes Mickey’s life even more screwy. “I am not allowing Agent DeMarco to testify at this time, Mr. Haller.”

You win some, you lose some. Which applies to Andrea Freeman’s case, too. Still troubled by her moment of professional neglect – while Freeman forgot to phone her client about her violent ex-husband’s temporary release, the guy proceeded to murder her client – Andy shares her sense of lasting regret with her protégé and assistant attorney, Vanessa Blake (Chelsea M. Davis). Sensing an opportunity in a cutthroat office environment – it’s a move Andy probably taught her – Blake brought the oversight to Suarez, the boss district attorney, and now Freeman has been removed from the case. 

It doesn’t matter that Andrea already fessed up to Suarez about her moment of negligence. The fall is still hers to take. But when she pops in at Mickey’s, looking for empathy or at least the acknowledgment that her mentee stabbed her in the back, he only says he’s not surprised. Shouldn’t she have anticipated this, working in a DA’s office full of opportunists and climbers? “I’m saying ambition can be costly,” Mickey says as fury begins to cloud Andy’s features. “Maybe you were blinded by yours.” And then we get another classic use of one of the best recurring bits on The Lincoln Lawyer: somebody, in this case Andrea Freeman, letting Mickey have it after one of his self-involved speeches. “Fuck you, Haller.”

How will Mickey “un-nix” Judge Turner’s refusal to let him call DeMarco? With a little bait in a trap from Cisco and Izzy. The team already linked Neil Bishop and DeMarco to an unsolved cartel double-murder, back when the former was still a cop out in the Valley. But by putting a potential witness to those murders on the new list submitted in the Glory Days case, and using a ruse to place cameras in his house, they catch DeMarco and Bishop breaking and entering at the property. The footage can prove the DA’s current investigator in the Glory Days case is in direct cahoots with the cowboy DEA agent who Judge Turner refused to let testify. And its freshness date is much closer than a ten-year-old double-murder. It’s a win for the team after another round of losses. 

Or is it? Our understanding of the legal system is based mostly on watching shows like The Lincoln Lawyer. But how is it not entrapment if the defense attorney in a case arranged for exactly this bait to be on exactly this hook? To reference another line made famous by lawyers on TV, will the footage of DeMarco and Bishop picking locks and snooping around even be admissible in court? And hey, no less a television legal authority than David “Legal” Siegel agrees with us. Legal is currently staying with Mickey after he was kicked out of the assisted living place. (Siegel’s take on Freeman’s “Fuck you, Haller” moment was simply to cluck his tongue like the member of the Silent Generation that he is.) And while he loves nothing else than to dig around in the legal weeds, this latest tactic has Legal thinking he should get outta town to Boca Raton. 

“Criminals with badges are the worst kind of all.” Legal has known Mickey a long, long time. It’s Haller who’s always looked to David Siegel as a mentee. But this time the cagey old attorney takes his young friend’s face in his hands with real concern. This is a guy whose innocent driver was recently murdered in what amounted to a targeted strike on his life. And now he’s high-fiving his staff just because he caught the suspects in the act of another brazen crime? Legal stresses to Mickey how dangerous crooked members of law enforcement can be. No matter how much Haller trusts his prowess in in the courtroom – if he can just get DeMarco on the stand, he believes in his ability to eviscerate him, to implicate him – this time the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been. “A guy like this,” Legal says of DeMarco, “if you go for him, you better not miss.”

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.