'How To Get Away With Murder' Is Just Wrong

There is something just so scream-worthy about a show that can't bother to even get the basics right.

It’s officially fall, and beyond the brisk temperatures and ubiquitous pumpkin spice lattes, that means there’s a new crop of television shows all vying for our attention. This season there seems to be a higher rate of shows that use the law or lawyers as a backdrop for the drama, but few have received as much attention (and as many positive reviews) as the Shonda Rhimes/Viola Davis joint effort, “How To Get Away With Murder.” And it makes sense; ABC has pretty much gone all in on Shonda Rhimes as their personal lord and saviour, and the talented Viola Davis has joined the flock of film actresses who’ve decided the best roles are now on the small screen.

But until now I’ve resisted the the urge to watch. I mean, the show is loosely (very, very loosely) based on attending Penn Law and now that it’s over, who really wants to revisit law school? However, when bad weather and a lingering cold conspire to keep me at home all weekend, the siren call of the On Demand listing just proved too much for me to resist…

I have a friend who is a police officer and he never watches police procedurals. Even in the years when the Law & Order franchise owned the soul of NBC he wasn’t ever tempted to tune in. He says that he gets too frustrated watching the show get all the details of his job wrong and it just saps all the enjoyment out of watching tv. I never understood his position; there were never any dancing babies in my legal career, yet I was able to enjoy the escapism of Ally McBeal. But watching HTGAWM, I finally understood. There is something just so scream-worthy about a show that can’t bother to even get the basics right.

Sure, there are minor details that irk (like the 1L who boasts of a summer internship with Chief Justice Roberts), but I had a huge problem with the very premise. The class featured in the show is supposed to be the criminal law class for 1Ls and the show is filled with references to the students just starting out, yet Viola Davis’s Professor Keating refers to the class as the eponymous “How To Get Away With Murder,” and each week she mines her class for ideas on how to get her latest client off the hook. Yay free labor.

Maybe it’s just me who worries about these things, but… what about the rest of the crimes that are supposed to be covered by Crim Law? Will these poor 1L’s never learn the difference between assault and battery? Will they never have to compare and contrast competing theories of punishment? How will they ever properly issue-spot on an exam if they do not know about inchoate offenses? The show makes it clear this isn’t some 3L seminar used to waste time before graduation where the minutiae of a particular law get rehashed for months; it’s a core class, part of the basic curriculum that all law students take. This makes for a bizarre setting for the issues the show actually wants to talk about.

Then there is Professor Keating’s flip attitude toward the rest of the law school. Once Keating selects the chosen few who have impressed her with their defenses of her client, she demands they show up in court the following day. When a gunner complains that conflicts with Torts, Keating replies with a wittier version of “too bad, so sad.” Now, I am not surprised that a law professor is so enamored of her own class that she refuses to acknowledge the impact her demands make on the overall education of her students. But I am surprised no other faculty member seems to care. Wouldn’t the Torts professor be livid that the “best” students just stop showing up to class? Why isn’t the dean forced to be involved? How are the students so myopically focused on an A in Crim Law they’re willing to sacrifice their grades in other classes? It just all seems so implausible.

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The show also takes a derisive view of life in Biglaw. There is the big money quote Staci wrote about:

Everything after this moment will not only determine your career, but life. You can spend it in a corporate office drafting contracts and hitting on chubby paralegals before finally putting a gun in your mouth, or you can join my firm and become someone you actually like.

Actually, this seems pretty dead on. But [spoiler alert — but really it’s a spoiler for like the first scene in the entire show so you should probably just deal with it and read on] the student Keating is encouraging to be the person he will “actually like” in this quote is TRYING TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER. So I guess the message is murderers are better than corporate lawyers? Or at least murder is better than hitting on chubby girls. I’m not really sure, but I’m pretty sure I disagree with both. Biglaw may indeed suck your soul, but you generally avoid causing bodily harm to other people.

But there are tons of sex (gay and straight) scenes, so maybe just watch for that.


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Alex Rich is a T14 grad and Biglaw refugee who has worked as a contract attorney for the last 7 years… and counting.  If you have a story about the underbelly of the legal world known as contract work, email Alex at alexrichesq@gmail.com and be sure to follow Alex on Twitter @AlexRichEsq