A black screen ushers in this witness, and of course it’s the blue-blazered fop who assaulted Phoenix. If this comes as a surprise to you, it’s possible a stranger has hit you on the head with a fire extinguisher, so if you also are having difficulty remembering your own name, you should consider going to the hospital. He stalls on providing his name and occupation. “Before I do, I’d like to clarify a little something,” he says. Payne allows this because he’s a wiener. “Just now, you introduced my wonderful self to the court, correct? Perhaps as a ‘drifter who was taking a walk‘?” Come now, sir. Payne clearly did not have any red in his inflection. And given the red emphasis, is he mad about the “taking a walk” part, as opposed to the “drifter” part? Really? “But I will not stand for that!” the witness says, flipping his hair. “Now you’ve tinted the court’s eyes and colored me wrongly.” Oh. I guess my eyes have been tinted, and that is actually a fuchsia blazer. So he’s for sure the murderer.
Payne is already looking beyond sorry he ever called this witness, and this jabroni has barely even warmed up his douche engines. He unleashes a Wendy Oldbag-like torrent that I would be up a creek trying to quote without the game script online: “Sure, I suppose calling me a university student would not be the absolute truth, but to give in and just settle would be as evil as death and I can’t have that! Everything in my life is to be of the utmost, highest, top grade quality, you understand. I am merely looking for that perfect, top notch, unbeatable university, don’t you see…? I have a rigorous selection process and I was in serious thought during my ‘walk‘ as…” Seriously, he says all this in the span of about three seconds. But this puts our witness’s appearance in a little more context: clearly he had his heart set on getting into Princeton so he could spend every weekend hobnobbing at the poshest eating club and going out with the lads on the club yacht, but his application was unfairly rejected when they saw he only owns two pairs of Sperrys. After Payne apologizes for…whatever it is he did, and Phoenix and Maya have had a good long eyeroll, the witness shakes his bangs around again and declares, “Fashion! Cars! Women! Glasses! And of course, University! First-rates only need apply!” Each item on his Rich Kids of Instagram list is punctuated with a bang! sound effect. I was going to say one of these things is not like the others, but I know you all are going to assume I mean the “Women!” part. And I’m with you, don’t get me wrong, but there’s another thing to focus on here, given what the witness is definitely not wearing right now. Thankfully, Phoenix picks up on this immediately, so hopefully I will not have to sigh at him as this point is less and less subtly made a dozen more times.
‘Ageist! Check your privilege!’
The witness sasses the judge when he’s once again asked for his name, but once he’s satisfied that he is the boss of this courtroom, he answers, “I am Richard Wellington, the ‘Drifting Virtuoso’ with a Ph.D. in Drifting, as it were. If you wanted to, you could call me a ‘University Student in Transit’.” I think I will settle for calling him Dick Wellington, aka Miles Edgeworth’s favorite application of puff pastry and foie gras.
Payne attempts again to clarify that Wellington was taking a walk in the park at the time of the crime, and again Wellington is irrationally weird about it. “It would appear that you are attached to that word,” he says. “If you must, then by all means. But I remind you that I am in no way a prepubescent boy, ‘out on a walk’ with mommy.” OOOOOOOOOKAY. Clearly he is more of a Daddy’s Boy. Whatever he wants to call it, Wellington finally agrees to testify about what he saw.
“I was at the park all afternoon, deep in thought about my life situation,” Wellington testifies. So…crying on a playground swing, hoping someone would take pity and buy him dinner. Got it. “I don’t remember the time all that well, but I do believe it was past 6 PM. All of a sudden, a police officer falls from above, right in front of my eyes.” A still of this moment shows Wellington kneeling on the ground above Prince’s body and staring up at Maggey with a blowjob mouth. Prince’s right hand is already extended in writing-in-the-sand position, as if he’s misspelling his girlfriend’s name at that very moment, even as someone is there who might help him not die. “Without a thought,” Wellington goes on, “I looked up, and there I met the eyes of a charming, young lady. Of course I remember her sweet face. It was that of the pretty defendant there.” Laying it on a little thick, buddy. CHICKS. He finishes, hilariously, “The only other thing I saw was the banana that fell with the police officer.” I’m now picturing Maggey and Prince as Donkey and Diddy Kong. Maggey was just throwing Prince toward a hard-to-reach banana bunch in the sky! This actually makes more sense than the murder, since dying just happens in those games.
The judge declares this decisive testimony, which I guess it was, if the thing we needed to be convinced of was Wellington being a Larry Butz-level tryhard. Maya is panicking that they are doomed, but Phoenix blue-fonts, “It’s strange… My mind is very calm and clear.” We know it’s empty in there, Nick. But he has an epiphany: “Maybe it’s because I…believe in my client.” Maya actually says, “You mean Maggey?” No, his other client in this murder case, Maya. Christ, I thought Nick was the one who sustained a hit to the head. “Yes,” Phoenix says while rolling his eyes. “And if she really is innocent, then that can only mean one thing: That guy is lying!” I would make another joke about brain damage, but of course this is Phoenix returning to his old self, the guy who thinks the critical dividing line between truth and lies is whether he has an emotional attachment to the person paying him. But I’m sure that will never, ever come back to bite him on the ass, since Phoenix Wright only defends the innocent!
Hey, pal, Phoenix will have you know DeVry Law Institute is very classy.
Phoenix’s cross-examination of this account mostly consists of Wellington being a mouthy prick to Phoenix and refusing to answer any questions without at least five text screens of self-aggrandizement, which sounds more fun than it is. I think this guy might be Oldbag’s grandson. He has a grandiose sense of self-importance but is actually a loser, wears too much makeup, talks too much and too fast, hates Phoenix, and (just guessing) is in love with Miles Edgeworth.
To cut to the relevant bits of the cross: even though he clearly says he didn’t know the time exactly but that it must have been after six, Phoenix makes him explain how he knew the time, and he finally relents and says he saw it on a clock at the park. “Did you get that?” Wellington asks. “Do you know what a clock is? It’s a thing that tells you the time.” Dang. Wellington even points out that the first photo of Prince’s body shows a clock on a post, which reads 7 p.m., before going into a diatribe I refuse to recap about the meaninglessness of time and how inferior drones are just slaves to their watches, man. There’s no way this dude isn’t a regular on Bruce Niceguy’s old MRA message board.
He’s Making America Great Again!
After Wellington notes he identified Prince as a cop because of his “shoddy, do-it-yourself hairstyle,” his “cheap, low-quality shoes,” and least of all, his “officer’s uniform,” since it’s important we have someone in this court who comments on fashions at all times, Phoenix moves on to his statement about seeing Maggey’s “pretty” face. “Are you sure you got a good look at her face?” Phoenix asks. That is fucking cold, Nick. I’m surprised we’re not getting a smash cut of Maggey crying into Phoenix’s business card because he thinks she’s ugly. Anyway. “Animals have this thing called an ‘eye’, Mr. Wright,” Wellington answers. “They use this ‘eye’ to see things. In the case of humans, we have two of them. Yes, even you!” I am in awe of this guy.
‘Whatever it is, it must not allow you to be around mirrors.’
But finally, we get to the crux of the matter, the “banana” statement. Wellington clarifies that it was “More like a bunch of bananas,” which, obviously. Everyone derps about what this could possibly mean, and what bananas could have been doing there. Maya even feels the need to say, if Wellington is not outright lying about the presence of bananas, “Well, maybe he thought he was seeing one thing, and it was something else…?” Phoenix thinks to himself that that would mean an “inaccuracy.” But what could he have really seen?!?!?!
Phoenix has ouchie in head spot!
Jesus. I nudge Phoenix toward presenting the yellow dildo glove. Wellington still thinks the glove is a bunch of bananas, and chastises Phoenix for not mentioning earlier that he knew of them. But when he hears that it’s a baseball glove, his demeanor breaks for the first time and he starts gripping the ends of his scarf in agitation as his teeth chatter. “That’s not… It’s a… Noooooooo!” he wails, pulling on the ends of the scarf until he chokes himself. And out in the middle of the courtroom! Phoenix sighs. You’re supposed to save that behavior for the broom closet!
Phoenix has an opportunity to explain what this proves about Wellington. The actual answer is, “This witness has bad eyesight,” but for fun let’s go ahead and click on another answer. Phoenix shouts, pointing his finger, “Mr. Wellington loves large bananas!” Hee. Hee hee hee hehehehehe.
Okay, that was so worth it the judge didn’t even penalize Phoenix. Let’s do it right this time. “By the way,” Phoenix asks, “just how bad are your eyes?” Payne insists that “it is very simple to mistake a glove for a bunch of bananas,” which would be laughable except for this specific glove looking exactly fucking like a bunch of bananas. I can’t believe this is the hill we’re all gonna die on. After yelling at Phoenix while looking really unattractive, Wellington finally admits his eyes are 20/25 and that he recently lost his glasses. There’s no way Phoenix can prove that Wellington didn’t have his glasses on at the time of the crime, but nobody is going to care about that, so he plows ahead anyway. “Therefore!” he shouts, in the zone. “The identity of the ‘woman’ [again, Phoenix, way harsh] at the scene of the crime and that of the defendant can not be proven to be the same by this witness!”
Witness, that is uncalled for.
The judge basically agrees that Wellington didn’t see Maggey’s face, but instead of just throwing out his entire testimony as useless and declaring Maggey not guilty, the judge asks him to continue providing testimony about what totally true things happened next. Sure, why not. Wellington says in his second testimony, “The girl on the upper path ran away as soon as she realized I was there. After that, I immediately called the police station to report the crime. It must’ve been 6:45 PM when I made the call.” He flips his hair and shakes his head, as if this is the most perfect testimony ever. “They must have a lot of free time on their hands since they showed up within 10 minutes.” Yeah, what a bunch of layabouts, showing up right away after someone called in to report a murdered police officer! Don’t they have anything better to do, like stroll through a park thinking about the university that will maximize their ability to run for president?
On its face, this is of course ridiculous–Wellington “clarifies” to the judge that since he saw Maggey, and says she ran away, she must be the murderer. Except we’ve already established that he could not see her clearly, so what are we even doing here? I say all this like he isn’t lying up and down in the first place, but even if he were telling the truth this would be a waste of time. Underlining my point, Phoenix presses on Wellington’s first statement and asks how he saw Maggey if she ran away as soon as he looked up. Wellington goes “Eek!” in about as clear a sign as possible that he’s been caught in a lie, but Payne swoops in to his rescue. “The witness has already answered that question,” he says. “He has stated the defendant is the culprit!” Yeah! He said he saw her, so it doesn’t matter whether he saw her! Jesus Christ. The judge is fine with this mindfuck of circular logic and strikes Phoenix’s question from the record. And Phoenix gives up, just like that! Everyone’s in fine form today.
God dammit, Nick.
Not that any of this matters, because there’s a much bigger issue with Wellington’s testimony. Surprise, the dude who was giving Phoenix shit about not knowing how to read a clock is going to be undone by time discrepancies! Phoenix throws the autopsy report, and its 17-minute hole in his testimony, in Wellington’s smug face. “You said that you called the police immediately after the murder took place,” Phoenix says, tapping the autopsy report and getting to look like a smug dick himself. “However, by the time you had called the police, it was already 6:45 PM.” He slams his hands on the table, satisfied with how smart he looks. “There is clearly a 15 minute gap here! Do you deny it?” Or 17! Math is hard! But the point is the same, and Wellington chokes himself out in panic. Be careful, buddy! Give yourself a safe word!
Obviously, Phoenix wants to know what Wellington was doing during these 17 15 minutes. Payne objects that he must have been in shock and “a little dazed” after what he’d seen, but 17 15 minutes is just too much time in Phoenix’s estimation for someone to be catatonic. I mean, he’s right, since Wellington himself said nothing at all about having a bad reaction to witnessing Prince’s murder. But still. Dr. Phoenix thinks this is all highly unlikely! Regardless, Dr. Phoenix gets through to the judge, who also asks what Wellington was up to during that time. Wellington stutters, “…I… Uhh… Telephone… Err… I mean…” and then finally gets out, “I…I was searching for a phone booth!” This game takes place in 2017. What the fuck is a phone booth?
Even the judge is like, “You mean, you don’t have a cell phone?” What is this guy, some kind of grandpa? “You and your questions!” Wellington seethes, tugging on his scarf ends. “As if you’re trying to open all the layers of a Matryoshka doll.” And now, for no reason, I’m picturing Phoenix and Edgeworth matryoshka dolls that have progressively less clothing as you open each one, until the smallest one in the center is naked. That went to a weird place. Anyway, Wellington admits that he lost his cell phone. “Unbelievable!” the judge says. “You lose your glasses, and your cell phone! You must be very scatterbrained when it comes to your belongings.” He is so happy to not be the most senile person in the room for once.
The judge lets Wellington rant for a moment about how he must be a “genius” because all geniuses have a “strange quirk” like not being able to keep track of their stuff, but cuts him off before he can build up a good head of steam. Meanwhile, it miraculously only takes Phoenix a moment of fingering his chin, plus Maya overtly asking him about it, to connect the cell phone in his pocket to Wellington. He decides to press further on the issue and asks where Wellington’s phone is now. He smirks. “Heh, what are you getting all excited about? You seem to be a little confused. I found my phone, I’ll have you know. See. Here is it.” Nice, translation team. He holds up a cell phone that is–in a twist that’s both perfectly obvious and perfectly insane–identical to the phone in Phoenix’s possession. That is, identical to Phoenix’s own blue Nokia brick.