The Trial (Il Processo) Season 1 Episode 8 Recap & Review

Linda’s Achille’s Heel

The Season 1 finale of Il Processo begins with Elena and Ruggero both arriving at the court to learn the outcome of the trial. Elena is suspended while Linda is found not guilty, allowing her to be released immediately.

Ruggero drives Linda away after refusing to speak to the press while Elena finds herself disgraced and forced to wait six months to find out what her fate as a prosecutor will be. The one big question here though is just who Angelica’s killer actually is.

Before that though Elena speaks to Ventura and asks about the verdict, which he confirms would have gone a different way if it wasn’t for her handing over the receipt. While she returns home, Linda and Ruggero wind up sleeping together.

In the morning, Elena awakens to find new evidence being discussed on the news. At Tomei’s house they found Angelica’s backpack which links him with the murder. She rushes to the office and speaks to Caputo about the evidence. They found Angelica’s backpack at his flat but Elena isn’t so sure it’s as simple as that.

As the press swarm all around this, Ruggero awakens to find Monaco and Linda together. They hand over keys as agreed to him, along with a plush new office. Unfortunately Ruggero’s conscience gets the better of him; he believes Lorenzi killed Angelica that night and Monaco covered it up.

Elena meets with Andreoli on the back of this and they decide there’s no way Tomei is guilty, with the latter convinced it was actually Linda. Before that though, Elena heads home and out on a boat ride with Stefano. They bond together and afterwards, Elena heads out for drinks at the same bar Linda went to. Only… the time difference shows an hour. It turns out the receipt she handed over hadn’t been updated for daylight savings meaning Linda may have actually been guilty after all.

Elena immediately confronts Ruggero about this and tells him Linda was the one who killed Angelica. He ignores this for now though and heads out for dinner with her. After drinking and eating, they head home and Ruggero speaks to her about the bar receipt, watching her reaction and contemplating what to do next.

He meets with Elena and they discuss the case, giving their versions of how they believe the scene played out. With Angelica’s pregnancy weighing heavily on the Monaco family, Angelica caught Linda’s eye and they walked outside. Linda did kill her but she did it by accident, stabbing her in the eye with her high heel. This prompted her to panic and nervously smoke a cigarette. She then phoned Lorenzi to let him know what happened; 12cm of heel straight in the eye. Lorenzi took the backpack that night and hid it at Tomei’s place to pin the murder on him.

Ruggero hands over the heel of Linda’s shoe to Elena and tells her to take it to the Judge. Given it has Angelica’s DNA on it, it’s the perfect tool to get Linda back in the court-room. With the deadline of Elena’s appeal some way off, Ruggero promises to help her after handing over the evidence, which is where the episode ends.

Although the true murderer is finally revealed along with the truth about Linda, the lack of repercussions and backlash for the guilty parties is a bit disappointing. Linda is still technically free until Elena hands over the evidence (which I’d assume will lead to another court case rather than straight to prison) while Monaco continues to deceive and pay off those around him.

Ruggero and Elena being on the same page at the end is probably the highlight of the entire episode but there’s an underwhelming feel to how this one ends, setting things up for a possible second season while trying to close things off at the same time. After an underwhelming finale, Il Processo squanders what potential it did have early on and peters out to become quite the disappointing series.