What will you do when your own child is convicted of killing a classmate? In the new Apple TV + series, Protecting Jacob, Chris Evans as Andy Barber and Michelle Dockery as Laurie Barber are in the process of answering the same question when their son Jacob (Jaden Martell) is taken into custody for a heinous crime.
Analysis of the plot of the series “Defending Jacob”
This miniseries revolves around the Barber family, whose ideal world begins to crumble when their eighth grade son Jacob is suspected of murdering their classmate Ben Rifkin. Assistant District Attorney Andy Barber, and Jacob’s father, only takes on the case only to later discover that his own son did indeed commit the crime. Or not?
He and his wife, Laurie, who is a high school teacher, are doing everything in their power to protect their son from media scrutiny and neighbors’ gossip by conducting all necessary investigations in a closed area. Jacob repeatedly denies Ben’s murder charges and pleads with his parents to believe him. Jacob’s innocence is proven when a pedophile named Patz commits suicide, and his suicide note states that he is the murderer of Ben Rifkin.
Jacob’s business is getting better. The killer has been found and the charges can be dropped. But is this really so? Read on, we will explain everything.
Who Really Killed Ben?
At the end of the series, the question “Who killed the unfortunate Ben” at the end of the series begins to seem purely rhetorical. Well, for those viewers who had read the detective story of the same name by William Landay before that, it is quite obvious. Despite the convoluted storyline with the pedophile Patz. Who first committed suicide, and then did not commit at all. We understand Ben’s killer is Jacob and here’s why.
Defending Jacob who is the killer? Video Review
In the last episodes of the series, everything seems to begin to return to normal until Andy meets Lynn Kenavan. He learns that a blue Lincoln was seen parked outside the home of pedophile Leonard Patz when he died. Lincoln looks like Andy’s dad’s car, and his dad is a former criminal. When Andy begins questioning his father Bill about this, it is revealed that Bill convinced James O’Leary’s father to ask Patz to take responsibility for killing Ben, and later strangled him to death.
In parallel with this, Jacob meets Hope Connors. After a while, they go on a romantic date and the next day the girl disappears. Jacob becomes the prime suspect again.
A drunken Andy loses control and tells Laurie everything he learned about Patz earlier. Laurie, in a state of shock, takes Jacob with her under the pretext of a haircut and asks him about Hope in the car. The boy avoids answering. She continues to speed up the car in anger and ends up having an accident with her son.
In fact, it is not directly stated whether Jacob killed Ben or not, and uncertainty remains. But since Hope’s disappearance, everything seems to be pointing in the same direction. Jacob is a real killer, which, by the way, is written in black and white in the novel of the same name.
