New ABC Show About Biglaw

As some of you know, I like television shows about lawyers. Granted, I liked them a lot better before I knew they were full of crap, but I still like them.
But not like this. This, my friends, is going to suck.

Some complaints after the jump.


The Practice was a really great show. You know why? It was great because it was about trial attorneys, and they were all poor, struggling to keep their business alive, and most of them were ugly.
And that is as it should be. If you are actually going into court everyday, so you get the cool, made-for-TV closing arguments, and you are taking on interesting cases, so you can portray moral dilemmas in our legal system and in our society, then you are talking about a small firm of trial attorneys. And those people are either broke or used to be broke. Struggling to keep the business alive is a huge part of their lives. The Practice hit all the right notes.
But when the show got spun off into Boston Legal, everything fell apart. Everything. Suddenly, everybody was rich, everybody was well-groomed, all the secretaries had breast implants … yet we were supposed to believe that these guys spent a significant amount of time in a courtroom. Bollocks! Unless William Shatner was on the screen, that show was unwatchable. I will not argue about this.
ABC’s The Deep End seems poised to make all the same mistakes of Boston Legal, only they’ve replaced the coolest white man in the galaxy with Billy Zane. Billy Zane! The apex of Billy Zane’s career was when Owen Wilson said: “Listen to your friend, Billy Zane” in Zoolander. That’s his ceiling, as a funny name to reference in a movie.
But as an added treat, The Deep End brings us four first-year associates who couldn’t even play their roles in the preview. They don’t pass the smell test. Magically, the actors manage to be not nearly confident enough (in terms of body language and demeanor) and way too overconfident (in terms of opening their mouth in front of their betters) at the same time. A first-year should act like he’s the king of the world in front of family and friends, and act like he’s never been out of steerage when around partners (sorry, I’m really hung up on this BIlly Zane thing).
And they’re all basically attractive. Are you freaking kidding me? The preview tells us that these four first-years were the only new hires out of a candidate pool of “thousands.” You’re telling me that the four chosen ones are also pretty? Bite me. The girl should be a twenty-something that looks forty-something. Her make-up should look like it was applied on the subway as she was rushing into work, and her hair should look like she has a comb in her purse that has never seen the light of day.
The guy should be slightly overweight, as pale as Vermont snow, and have some kind of subtle facial disorder. You know, something between a noticeable overbite and Bell’s Palsy.
And at no time should anybody, ever, have sex. Not at home, certainly not in the office, not in the alley behind the office when they try to drop $200 on a prostitute during a 2:00 a.m. smoke break.
Sorry, there is a way to make a legal show work. This is not one of them.
Sneak Peek: The Deep End, the show that’s replacing FlashForward (for now) [T.V. Squad]

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