'Bull' Season 6 Episode 1 Review: Astrid becomes main focus in Benny-less chapter
Spoilers for 'Bull' Season 6 Episode 1 'Gone'
'Bull' Season 6 starts off with a celebration. Trial Analysis Corporation (TAC) has won a case and the win is big. And over the course of the celebration, there are some reveals along the way. For starters, Taylor Rentzel (MacKenzie Meehan) has been seeing her ex-husband. Benny Colon (Freddy Rodriguez) is now happily settled in Rome with the new love of his love. And everything is just fine until Bull and Izzy go home to find their daughter Astrid missing and the babysitter, Tiffany is bound and gagged. The ransom: 1 million dollars.
The storyline of the season opener made waves ever since 'Bull' released the official synopsis. This installment would be a lot more personal. There was a lot more of family and the team than solve cases in typical Bull fashion. A shaken Dr Jason Bull immediately feels this was a revenge move and not a regular kidnapping. Tiffany, the nanny, remembers details to help TAC get a bit of lead. The kidnapper calls him Dr Jason and this takes Bull back to his pre-TAC days where the teens he treated called him by his first name.
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'Gone' is pacy and zippy. There are emotions on full display and this is the sort of storyline that was vastly different from the previous seasons. When 'Bull' aired its fourth season in 2019, it was a forward-to-the-future featuring a grown-up Astrid and this season, it's another personal life start. On the story side, the team zeroes in on a bunch of potential suspects. They cross off the suspects based on their recent activities. Bull is led on a wild goose chase with the kidnapper calling the shots and the identity of the nabber is kept secret up to the first 40 minutes of the show.
The team, in the meantime, pick up on a clue and the team deduce it to be the mother of one of the teens he had treated. The hunch is proved right as the mother of one of his former patients, Simon, is the kidnapper and holds Bull responsible for his death. Bull and the mother engage in a heartfelt conversation with Danny. There's a lot more humanity in the episode and that just hints at the theme of the season.
The cast chip in with impressive performances. Geneva Carr as Marissa Morgan, Christopher Jackson as Chunk Palmer along with Meehan's Taylor and Jaime Lee Kirchner's Danielle “Danny” James play their roles to absolute perfection. The storyline also pays a lot more emphasis to Taylor's personal life as well and that will surely be explored in the episodes to come.
It has been a brisk start for 'Bull'. It may have lacked Freddy Rodgriguez's charismatic presence, but in introducing Astrid as the main figure in the season opener, Benny is forgotten, even for a brief while. The bigger challenge for the legal procedural this season is to see how they can fill the void Rodriguez left. Only time will tell how Jackson fares as the team's latest attorney.
'Bull' Season 6 airs Thursdays, 10 pm ET on CBS.
