1 Law & 2 Orders

Good lord, if I never see another mediocre cop show or legal drama again, I just might die happy. But, until then, I’ll just have to slog through the ever-present deluge of standard clichés that seem to crop up in every single set of pilots for just about every network on the air. Sigh.

At some point, it gets difficult to even assess this kind of show because you’ve seen so many iterations. How can something be interesting if you’ve already seen it? How can a story suck you in if you already know the outcome? After watching enough of these shows, it ultimately boils down to the characters themselves. If you’ve seen one legal drama or cop show, you’ve seen ‘em all, but if there are truly interesting characters at the show’s core, it can make up for a lot of the drudgery of the stories-of-the-week. That’s how The Good Wife made it into my top tier. Sure, I’ve seen a million and a half legal shows in my day, but I haven’t seen characters quite like these and dynamics quite like theirs. In fact, when there are engaging, distinctive characters at the core, it manages to make the A-plots more interesting. I care about this random court battle because Alicia Florrick cares about it. Unfortunately, most shows aren’t The Good Wife, and don’t have such a solid foundation to build on. As such, I don’t really care about the characters and subsequently, couldn’t care less about the mundane details of their daily lives.

To varying degrees, new shows Detroit 1-8-7, The Whole Truth, and The Defenders all fall into this disappointing category.

We’ll start off with our latest cop show…

DETROIT 1-8-7

This is your typical cop show. For what it is, it’s fine. That’s really the primary impression this pilot made and that’s not a particularly a good sign. All the actors do a respectable job and the writers at least tried to make the characters original, but when it all boils down, these are the same standard characters tackling the same standard cases in about the same way. The show had its charms, and over time, I think I could probably grow to appreciate them all on a deeper level, but I was so bored by the A-plot case-of-the-week that it would take a much more intriguing set of character profiles to get me invest. If you’ve never seen a detective drama before, you would probably enjoy this show quite a lot, because honestly, in terms of genre, this pilot did a better job than a lot of them that have come down the pike lately, but given that I have seen cop shows before, and a whole lot of them, I was pretty bored. This show does very little to reinvent this particular wheel and I don’t think I’ll be sticking around for long. This show seems to be aiming for a grittier than the network would allow and they just didn’t know what to do with it after that. Decent effort, but there was really nothing new or innovative about this take on an overdone genre.

Pilot Grade: C+

And now for more legal dramas… you know, because we haven’t seen enough of those…

THE WHOLE TRUTH

To the show’s credit, they’ve taken a bit of a different spin on the old genre and that’s really the only reason the pilot held my interest. This legal drama shows audiences both sides of the case, the trial, and then the truth is revealed. In essence, the show gives compelling arguments for both scenarios and then allows the audience to decide what really happened. It’s not the most novel approach I’ve ever seen, but at this point, even a slight deviation from the norm makes a show seem fresher and better than its counterparts. It’s lovely to see Maura Tierney in good health again, but Her Royal Dourness did very little to bring life to this pilot as the tough and talented DA. Her sobering tone suits her character well enough, but the fact that her character is unlikable to the other characters spills over into the audience as well. There are a lot of characters out there that you love to hate or that you love because they’re neurotic control freaks (or whatever), but Maura’s character is not one of those. But, in all fairness, her glum exterior was nowhere near as irksome as Rob Morrow’s obnoxious over-acting, so she wins some points. Morrow plays the defense to Tierney’s prosecution and goes completely overboard in playing the foil. His brashness and casualness were unconvincing and just plain annoying. I actually said to the TV at one point, “Cool it, Rob. We get it!” Sheesh. The writers are obviously pointing to a future opposites-attract will-they-or-won’t-they (or have they already?) romance between the pair, but I sensed very little chemistry between the two. It's impossible to know if things would have been better with original DA Joley Richardson, but I have an inkling it would. It wasn’t a terrible pilot and it was honestly kind of fun to decide for myself whether or not the defendant was guilty, but I don’t know that I’d want to do that every week. The case itself was pretty thin and while the jury convicted the guy (rightly, as it turns out), there honestly wasn’t enough evidence to convict him. I was willing to give this pilot a “meh” until the final scene when the truth is revealed. Apparently, the murder victim’s bloody cross necklace was stashed at the defendant’s home, only to be found by the guy’s daughter, thereby proving his guilt to the audience. I’m sorry, the police didn’t search the house? It took the daughter all of five minutes to stumble onto this key piece of evidence, but the police didn’t even bother to look? Ugh. If this points to the kind of thought being put in week-to-week on the A-plots, I think I’ll pass, thanks. Based on the ratings, I’m not the only one.

Pilot Grade: C

THE DEFENDERS

This show about a pair of buddy lawyers working kooky cases in Las Vegas had the unfortunate distinction of being the last one I screened. I was already pretty bored with these standard genres, so I wasn’t really in the mood for more. From what I could discern through the law-show-addled fog was a pretty typical law show that was executed decently, if not all that compellingly. I’m not much of a Jim Belushi fan, so that didn’t help, but Jerry O’Connell did a nice job. He seemed to be enjoying the role and played off Belushi pretty well. Once again, the case of the week was pretty thin and I became annoyed at the ridiculous courtroom antics more than amused. I really have to question whether or not either of these legal shows has any lawyers acting as consultants because the legal wrangling is often unconvincing if not utterly absurd. I’m no lawyer, but I watch them on TV and I know when a show is just being lazy. Anyway, the actors were all likable enough and the Vegas bent does add a bit of a different flavor to the show, but honestly, for procedurals that are heavy on A-plot, there needs to be one hell of an A-plot, and that just wasn’t the case here. The best part of the pilot was Natalie Zea as feisty prosecutor/occasional lover to Jerry O’Connell’s character, but near as I can tell, she’s not a regular cast member. All the better for Justified, all the worse for this show. It was honestly no worse or better than most other cheesy law shows, but that’s just not enough for me these days.

Pilot Grade: C-