Tonight on CBS their new series All Rise airs with an all-new Monday, February 8, 2021, season 2 episode 8 called, “Bette Davis Eyes,” and we have your All Rise recap below. On tonight’s All Rise season 2 episode 8 “Bette Davis Eyes,” as per the CBS synopsis, “Mark is forced to prosecute his childhood icon, Samara Strong (Lesley Ann Warren), an ’80s Hollywood star accused of murdering her husband 30 years ago.
It’s a showdown between him and celebrity lawyer Adam Pryce (Jere Burns), who makes a mockery of the courthouse. To make matters worse, Judge Laski (Paul McCrane) is presiding over cases in 802 while Lola is on maternity leave.”
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Judge Jonas Laski was taking over Lola’s courtroom. He was reassigned there because there was an issue with his own courtroom and there was a little thing called “cutbacks”. The judges were all warned that they should be saving money where they can. Judge Benner was the one in charge of everything and so she was the one dealing with all the stress. She was doing her best to be there for everyone.
She had to keep Lola’s trial team together because to separate them would just be a hassle with Lola and she also had to comfort Lola over the Laski decision. Laski wasn’t anything like Lola. They have different judge styles and Lola wasn’t sure a man like him should be reassigned to her courtroom. She would rather another judge fill in. She tried to talk Benner into changing her mind and Benner told her there wasn’t anymore they could do what with the layoffs coming.
Benner didn’t mean to tell Lola about the layoffs. Lola was on maternity leave and hearing about it had worried her. Benner didn’t mean to do that. She reminded Lola that Lola’s first priority has to be the baby right now and so Benner told Lola to leave everything to her. Benner said she would make things work on her end. She gave the courtroom to Laski and Laski was deeply resented by Lola’s team.
They all hated him. They hated his style in his courtroom which was basically him demanding things from Sherri and he didn’t even demand them nicely or remember their names. He would ask Sherri for the “thing”. She would ask what thing and he imply she was slow for not figuring out how to mind-read him.
Laski was overseeing a celebrity case. It was the People vs Samara Strong. Strong is an actress and her case is the first celebrity case with this new District Attorney. Therefore, Mark who was representing the people had needed to be at his best. He couldn’t afford to make a mistake and later on he was doing really well in implying Strong’s guilt. She was accused of murdering her husband more than thirty years ago.
The people couldn’t find the evidence back then because the murder weapon went missing and no one could prove when that happened. The murder weapon was an award that Strong won. It went missing literally days after she won it and everyone knew it was the murder weapon because marks on the statue matched up with her husband’s injuries.
The husband was bashed in the head with this statue. The statue wasn’t found until a few days ago after the new homeowner dug it up and so that’s what Mark was basing his case on. He was basing it on the fact Strong buried one of her most prized possessions within hours of her husband’s death. Blood was found on the statue and it matched the husband’s.
Mark also has a former nanny who reported that Strong was arguing a lot with her husband in the lead up to his murder. Mark put the nanny on the stand and he was caught off guard when the defense brought her book. The nanny wrote a book. She tried selling it years ago and no one bought it back then. Now, could be different because now there was actually going to be a trial and so the defense attorney claimed Ms. Greer was lying about her testimony to sell her book.
Somehow Laski allowed the book to be brought into evidence without any foreknowledge. Mark had been upset by that and he asked his second chair to read the book for him. The nanny didn’t even try to hide the names. She claimed Strong murdered her husband and that their daughter was a witness. This detail was later changed in other versions of the book, but Mark felt they had stumbled across something and he wanted to pursue it.
He later talked to Lola about it. She suggested cognitive testimony or in other words take the victim through the crime scene. Strong’s daughter Kelsey might remember more if she could see where her father died. Mark argued this in front of the judge and the judge ruled that Kelsey should be shown the scene of the crime.
Only Nessa didn’t like that. Nessa met Kelsey and she likes her. She doesn’t want Kelsey to be traumatized for her testimony. She tried to get Laski to change his decision and she went too far. Nessa was close to being insubordinate with what she said to a sitting judge. She later talked to Lola about it and Lola advised her to apologize. She told Nessa that it wasn’t her place to tell a judge what he should or should not do. Nessa said she didn’t like how a white man was assigned Lola’s courtrooms. She’s heard the downsizing rumors and she thought that they were trying to push Lola out. Lola again told Nessa that’s not her place to be worrying about it. Lola trusts Benner who is both her mentor and her friend.
Nessa hadn’t liked being told to apologize to Laski. Even though she was right about it traumatizing Kelsey because Kelsey ended up remembering her mother murder her father and at first she didn’t want to even consider that possibility. Kelsey called the therapist taking her down memory lane – legal trickery. She thought he made her remember something that didn’t happen and so she was hurt by being forced to remember.
Kelsey now knows that her mother killed her father. Mark was glad to able to use this information. He was going to call Kelsey on the stand and surprisingly his father Vic was in town to watch it all. Vic was a huge fan of Strong’s. He and Mark both used to watch her films all the time and so that’s the only reason why Vic is back in town.
Vic and Mark have a troubled relationship. His father is a conman that Mark is always bailing out of trouble and still Mark allowed him to be in court because a part of him had never stopped loving his father. Mark therefore understood Kelsey’s troubled relationship with her own mother. She was unhappy with her mother and she didn’t like testifying against her, but that doesn’t mean she stopped loving Strong and Strong knows this.
Strong took the stand next and she confirmed everything her daughter said because she didn’t want to further hurt her only child. Strong confessed to murder on the stand. She killed her husband because he was leaving her and he was going to take Kelsey with him.
Mark was able to close his case thanks to that confession. He never would have been able to if it hadn’t been for Lola and meanwhile Lola was considering going back to work early. She was afraid of losing her job. She didn’t want to be moved or to find another team. Lola talked to her mother and her mother told her not to go back. Her mother was herself forced to return to work early because of the times back then.
She missed out on so much that she didn’t want Lola to have those same regrets and so Lola dropped the whole going back to work thing right now. She was going to take her full maternity leave to just be there for her daughter. And hopefully she’ll still have job afterwards.
Then there was Emily. Emily celebrated her birthday. Her boyfriend wasn’t in town, but Luke was around and Luke bought her a huge birthday cake. He didn’t really have the money for it because he got wrapped up in paying a guilty man’s fine and then giving him money to fin a job. And so Luke needs to find a middle ground between helping someone and giving them all of his money.
And Mark later stole a bust of a dead deer out of Laski’s room because Lola hadn’t liked it being up in her office.
THE END!