ring and find the arrow point to minute 18.The Deep End is clearly trying to be Grey's Anatomy with lawyers, but it can't even rise to that painfully low bar (I'm talking recent seasons of Grey's as the low bar. The Deep End is about a zillion miles from the guilty pleasure of the early seasons, but it can't even match up to the crapitude of present days). The show follows a bunch of newbie lawyers as they navigate the stressful, scary world of working for a big time law firm. I tried to imagine if I'd have been intrigued by this show if I'd never ever seen a legal drama before, but no, not even then should anyone care about this generic waste of time. I loves me a legal drama and I couldn't stand this mess. It felt as though the writers were trying to put all the awesome, salacious, and required elements of every genre ever into one neat little package, but ended up with a giant steaming pile of awful.
The pilot was insanely unfocused and had entirely too many storylines and characters to keep track of. In general, I have no problem juggling tons of characters and tons of storylines all at once, but here? It did not work. At all. I got the impression they
were trying to relay the harried pace and frenetic atmosphere of doing grunt work in a law firm, but instead it was just annoying and meaningless. The closest the pilot came to an actual legal case was a stupid custody battle that ended up being unraveled by one of the up-and-coming young lawyers when, like Human Target, he's having a casual conversation with someone and then does the dreaded, "Wait, what did you just say?!" Ugh. Again. Seriously, you'd think it were a requirement by Standards and Practices. As bad as that storyline was, it at least had some structure and some semblance of legal infrastructure. All the other stories were so fragmented that it was hard to understand given the level of caring I was doing. With ER, the writers managed to showcase what the atmosphere is really like in a busy emergency room and tell dozens of stories all at once and the audience loved it. It was like "Ooh! What's going on over here?!" with ER and "Wait, what's going on over here?" with The Deep End. The biggest difference? I genuinely cared about the characters on ER. On The Deep End? I spent the entire episode feeling nostalgic for all the awesome shows the cast worked on previously which only made their present gig all the more painful to watch. Seriou
sly, never before have I seen a pilot with more "Hey, it's so-and-so!" going on. Even the clients-of-the-week were names. Here's the shortlist (of regulars and one timers): Jack from Jack and Bobby, Mac from Veronica Mars, Billy Zane from, uh, Titanic is about it, I guess, Harold Abbot from Everwood, Carlton Lassiter from Psych, Ellis Grey from Grey's Anatomy (hey, maybe if we have some GA alums on the show, the audience will be fooled into thinking we pulled this off!), Professor Landry from Veronica Mars, and Phee from Dawson's Creek. There were more, I'm sure, but those are the ones I'm pulling off the top of my head. Some of those names make me want to give this show another shot, but I just don't think I could stomach it. Never have I felt so bad for so many actors all at once.Anyway, the pilot goes over most of the standard legal show clichés (while at the same time completely ignoring actual legalese) and then throws in everything else. For example, after work? These kiddies all end up at a bar/swimming pool... be-cause that's just what lawyers do... if they live in Melrose Place. I guess the pool is a metaphor for these kiddies having been thrown in the legal deep end (which, characters actually mentioned the fact that they were in the deep end at least three times in the pilot--oy), but, well, wait... why is there a pool again? Why, for the scantily clad ratings gatherers, of course! Thanks for the clarification, ABC. It still
doesn't make sense. In standard Grey's Anatomy style, the show focuses more on the sex lives of the characters than on anything else. The difference is that Grey's managed to build some relationships that the audience actually cared about and managed to throw in some actual medical. The Deep End frantically forces a bunch of faux relationships on viewers, none of which does anyone care about. So, at the end of the episode when everyone hooks up with everyone else, I couldn't have cared less. Quite frankly, I didn't care about these people as individuals so I cared even less about them as pairs. When there's no build up and no suspense, there's no pay off.I don't care to recount any of the stupid plotlines or even stupider resolutions because I just didn't care. When you don't care about the people you're watching, you don't care if dingy blonde lawyer is having a crisis of conscience or lothario lawyer is getting in hot
water. Aside from what should have been a stellar cast, this show really has nothing going for it... including viewers. Heh. I just checked the ratings and it garnered a paltry 1.8 in the key demo. To give you a sense of how truly awful that is, I believe that's right around Heroes' current numbers. This show won't be garnering any positive word of mouth and the critical buzz has been nothing but bad, so odds are its ratings for next week will been pretty devastatingly dismal for ABC. The good news? This means that FlashForward (whose ratings were considerably higher in the same timeslot) has a fighting chance. FF has its problems, but after watching this assault on the narrative, it's looking better and better by the minute.I've already spent far more time on this mess than I'd like to admit, so I'll wrap this up. The Deep End isn't worth your time. If you're looking for a legal drama to add to your schedule, tune into CBS's The Good Wife. It has engaging characters, interesting legal cases, a working knowledge of the law, powerful dynamics, good writing, witty
dialogue... let's just say it has everything The Deep End doesn't.Except for Billy Zane. Of course. So if he's the draw for you (and I'm operating in a world where that's conceivably possible), you can go ahead and be one of the nine people watching The Deep End next week.
Enjoy! All 8,364 mind-melting minutes of it...
Pilot Grade: F
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