Pulling Strings
Episode 6 of Il Processo begins 10 months earlier with Ruggero and Elena sitting together and discussing Linda, with the focus on how long Elena intends to keep Linda in prison. Ruggero mentions Linda’s first statement and how she lied, before De Luca phones her in the midst of this and grabs her attention, talking about Silvia Orrico. Back in the present, Elena finds herself going back to Colombo’s statement he made to Elena about a scooter from that night, a detail he omitted from the courtroom under her instruction. Elena and her Father discuss trying to find whoever was on the scooter but before she follows through with this however, Elena meets Giovanni who offers up some words of wisdom. Elena manages to track down the scooter owner and learns his name is Ivan Zaia, a man who received a call a couple of minutes before midnight. Ruggero meanwhile manages to obtain a sample of Angelica’s DNA and takes that to the lab, intending to use that against Elena’s to see if they match. Elena interviews Ivan Zaia about his whereabouts that night. It turns out he was on the phone to Angelica and was her drug dealer. She told him she didn’t want any more drugs but because he was busy, he left. Before he drove away however, he saw a woman go near Angelica by the tanks. When Ruggero learns about this, he relays it on to Linda and convinces her he’s working around the clock to try and solve the case. With the defence now on the back-foot and with a lot of the lawyers out of options, Mara concedes defeat while Ruggero remains defiant that Linda’s innocent. As Ruggero soon learns later that day while driving with Mara, Angelica fell pregnant while working and Monaco threatened to kill Angelica. Ruggero tells Mara she needs to testify against Mr Monaco to do the right thing, before hiding her in a 5 star hotel. With this issue seemingly close to being resolved, Ruggero tells Linda about the difficult situation they find themselves in and how he intends to get her freed. Only, Mara is missing from her hotel when he returns and he’s unable to reach her on his cell phone either. Instead, he confronts Mr Monaco who admits that Mara has been transferred to the United States. With her now gone, Ruggero finds himself in a difficult position, especially given everyone around him has been manipulated or bought off to succumb to Monaco’s desires. On the back of this, Ruggero receives word that the DNA test results are ready and hurries off where he learns that Elena is the alleged Mother of Angelica, which is where the episode ends. With a lot of padding and barely any courtroom drama, Il Processo slips across into soapy territory after such a strong start to the series. Learning Mr Monaco is pulling the strings and behind the whole affair is a bit of an obvious ploy and the lack of twists this late on, especially after the opening few episodes, does give the impression that the case could have been resolved a lot quicker. Still, there’s two more episodes left of this one but the slow pacing and numerous padding scenes don’t add an awful lot to the show, which is quickly becoming more disappointing and mediocre with every episode that passes.
