Quick rating: Pass. Stick with Lost (or anything else).
Although I had no desire to initially see it (read: pre-formed skepticism), one of my friends had heard that Justice is worth watching, so I sat down and watched last Wednesday's episode, "Pretty Woman."
Background for my television perspective on legal tv shows
Prior to law school, I liked the original The Practice until all the story lines began repeating and just about everyone on the show had gotten away with murder (literally), and I like Boston Legal because it's funny. Occasionally I would watch some of the various Law & Order shows, but haven't been able to get into it since I've been in law school. Similarly, The Evidence got a one-episode ax also for failure to keep me interested. Needless to say, Justice had to be pretty impressive to even get my attention, particularly since it is up against Lost. So there's my background of law tv shows so you can see where I'm coming from.
Review of Justice: Pretty Woman (and the show generally)
Justice, in a nutshell, is about a criminal defense firm in Hollywood. It stars Victor Garber (Alias) and Kerr Smith (Dawson's Creek) and two other actors (Eamonn Walker and Rebecca Mader) who are using this show as their big break. Like the practice in Boston Legal, they are undefeated and perhaps differently than the Denny Cranes and Alan Shores of the east, this firm loves to showboat the press.
The first show is about a midwestern girl who goes to UCLA (or USC) and runs to the firm after she kills someone in self defense "because she saw them on tv and knew they were the best." The first half of the show is about prepping her and retrieving a knife prior to turning her in to the Beverly Hills Cops and the second half is about trying to prepare for the trial & the trial itself. Like most of television, and if you've ever taken a trial advocacy program, you will once again cringe at the defects in the television process. In fact, while I can suspend this for Boston Legal since the arguments are persuasive anyway, it was tough to do so for this show. I found the plot contrived, the dialog forced and hard to believe as realistic, and like the mock jury on the show, would simply rate its overall performance downward. I did like how the final scene shows the actual murder so you can see if the lawyer's actually did their job or not.
Particularly, and perhaps my understanding of trial practice is rudimentary, but when you cross an expert and demonstrate something as a possible alternative, isn't that argumentative and more appropriate as a direct on your own witness and/or during closing arguments? Maybe the DA they went up against was a novice. Setting that aside, I'm pretty sure the rules of professional responsibility were broken in just about every aspect of Victor Garber's character. It's produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, so it's got that going for it, and Victor Garber does a good job of distinguishing his Alias character, but the show just isn't that good overall, and it won't get a second chance from me. 1 star out of 4.
Conclusion: Pass
So, if you liked the Practice after Lindsay killed someone and after Bobby was charged with felony murder, but before Alan Shore came to the show, and the far fetched episodes of Law & Order where everything falls in the way of the centered-upon attorneys, you will love this show. I rate it higher than the Evidence, but not by much. I can't say it's even worth checking out, but maybe it would be just so you can judge my perspective.
On a related note, I found a link to the pilot of Heroes where you don't even have to download anything, and will post that and my review either later today or tomorrow.
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Review of Justice: Pretty Woman - 1 star out of 4 (for the show specifically and the series in general)
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1 comment:
I actually liked Justice a little bit. I watched both the pilot episode and the second episode "Pretty Woman." I'm not going to continue watching it only because I like more serialized shows like Lost and Smallville rather than shows where every episode can exist on its own. Although there were a few hints in Justice's second episode that they may actually get into the main characters (Garber's character's past relationship with the news anchor, Smith's character's sister's death, Mader's character's sex life or lack there of).
I don't and have never watched any of the other law shows you referenced and am not in law school, so I can't analyze it quite the way you did. But my favorite aspect of the show was that both the prosecution and defense come up with scenarios of how they think it played out, they tell the jury, and the jury buys one or the other. But then at the end they show how it actually happened. In the pilot it happened exactly as the defense said and in the second episode it didn't happen the way either of them said. If I continued watching the show I would hope that occasionally the defense will get them off but they'll show us the defendant got away with it, or maybe even the defense will lose and we'll see it happened exactly as they said, but they just couldn't get the jury to buy it.
I should probably give it a couple more weeks before I give up on it, but I'm not sure I'll have enough time. I almost gave up on Medium in the first 3 shows and now I love it.
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