THE EQUALIZER Post-Mortem: Adam Goldberg, Adam Glass, and Ora Yashar Break Down ‘Never Again’

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Sunday, March 12 episode of THE EQUALIZER, “Never Again.”]

THE EQUALIZER shed light on Harry’s (Adam Goldberg) past with the Sunday, March 12 episode—and allowed him to have a bit of closure with his deceased mother.

After growing up thinking his mom had abandoned him, an encounter with his former rabbi led to Harry learning the truth: His mom was sick and left him with his father to protect him.

“I think that’s a pretty heavy thing to wrap your head around,” Goldberg tells Give Me My Remote. “I think we all sort of blame our parents for things. And then, in my case, you become a parent and it’s, like, ‘Right, I see…Being a parent is really difficult and challenging.’”

“I think that’s why that end scene is so sad,” he continues. “If you’ve lost anybody in your life, you know what it’s like if you wish you had said something more, if you had more time with them.”

Harry, who had shied away from his Jewish heritage, ended the episode reciting the Mourner’s Kaddish for his mother—a prayer that is said for the dead.

“We knew from the jump—we knew the end almost before we knew anything else,” THE EQUALIZER co-showrunner—and “Never Again” co-writer—Adam Glass says. “We knew we wanted to end on that and come full circle and show it, because it’s such a beautiful thing. And have him explain to Mel this is how we turn around and we remember our dead. [Co-writer Ora Yashar and I] both agree it’s one of the more beautiful traditions that we carry.”

But despite the step forward, “it’s not like Harry is going to turn around and now he’s Super Jew,” Glass says. “Probably Harry is going to be a little more connected to his community than he has been in the past because of this journey.”

“It doesn’t come up as a storyline, at least in the next few episodes,” Goldberg adds. “For me just as an actor, knowing about all that stuff now makes being there just a more complete experience…because that just wasn’t information that I had…I don’t know if we’re gonna revisit his family in some way or not. Obviously, I would like to.”

In crafting the episode, the writers had to balance showcasing the antisemitic hate crimes at the center of “Never Again” with what is actually acceptable to have air on network television.

“We really worked closely with the clearance people,” Glass acknowledges. “It was sort of a negotiation, I’m not gonna lie. We went back and forth. But they, too, realized—and I think they pushed their boundaries of what they would usually accept so we could tell a story and we could show all these things. And so it was a happy medium. But again, they understood that we had to do some of this to really sell this story; you’ve got to show what’s out there, you’ve got to show the truth. And sometimes that’s hard to see.”

Also hard to delicately handle was the sequence where white supremacists storm a temple, and congregants have to hide out while the team fights them off.

“For me, it was beautiful and scary at the same time,” Yashar, who made her television writing debut with “Never Again,” notes. “When I was in that space, that’s when I really, really felt it. Especially the scene where you know the congregants are all hiding…it was just terrifying to watch. I really felt that moment and being in a situation like that and how scary that could be.”

“I don’t go to temple very often, but even the once-a-year that I go, I constantly have it in my head, is something going to happen?” she continues. “So I think being in that space and watching what was happening inside the temple, it really just brought everything home for me.”

“The rabbi of the temple was with us [during filming],” Glass adds. “And she even was getting very emotional and thanked us for doing this. That’s why she said yes to it. Because a lot of synagogues didn’t want this in their synagogue. But she thought it was so important to tell the story, that when she read the script, she said yes.”

THE EQUALIZER, Sundays, 8/7c, CBS

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