The Practice virgin’s diary – Can Bill recall a time that he flew with the cape on?

(Season 6, Episodes 14-15)

Every show employs guest actors, but if they’re not megastars, the success of each appearance boils down to two things: how good a job they do (thus the Emmy for guest spots), and how fondly you hold your memories of characters they’ve played in the past. For me, just one episode of The Practice carried a wallop, with two guest actors that I remember vividly for minor roles on two of my favorite shows of all time. Go David Kelley!

6.14 “Man and Superman”

I’ll admit that I didn’t fully catch the connection between Jimmy and Bill Munce (Kevin Dunn), the guy who thought he was Superman and killed a guy after jumping out of a seventh floor window. But I did hear that it was from Jimmy’s days at the bank. Wouldn’t you think that anyone who knew Jimmy was fired for defrauding the bank on a loan application for Bobby would stay far away from his brand of moral and ethical choices? Despite that, I loved seeing Dunn guest here — you might know him better as Joel Hornick from the third episode of Seinfeld … what a crybaby.

I was duly impressed by some of the coherent arguments that Jimmy made, and so was a bit befuddled by Lindsay taking charge of the defense. If after all these years Jimmy still isn’t capable of defending “big” cases…. On the other hand, he seems to muddle through things just as well as anyone else, save for Eugene. So why does he need a babysitter?

Like I said last week, it’s the cases that are compelling. I was very interested to hear how a jury would find, considering the potential negligence on the part of the hospital, Bill’s wife, and Bill himself. However, if they found Deborah Munce (Wendy Gazelle) guilty of negligence, shouldn’t she have had to pay more than $1 in damages? Because that smacks of the jury considering Bill’s future well-being over the negligent behavior Deborah was found guilty of.

And I know it was sad, and I did feel that way about it, but it was also awesome when Bill dove right out the courtroom window in search of help for Dr. Gorman (Tony Amendola). David Kelley loves those show-ending surprises.

Great to see Steven Culp before he became Speaker of the House Haffley on The West Wing. I love to hate that guy.

6.15 “M. Premie Unplugged”

The “previously on” scenes tracked back to two things: Mitch (Scott Cohen) sexually propositioning Ellenor, and Judge Fleming (Bruce McGill) killing himself after Bobby and Helen set him up in a sting operation. You know what that means.

The latter was supposed to seem to have affected a case that Eugene and Rebecca were defending, but I didn’t see it at all. Plus the “uh oh” moment only occurred in the pretrial motions, so the whole thing was rather staged.

What was great was the trial itself, where a man stood accused of almost killing his baby daughter after allegedly shaking her. Eugene kept on talking about how Tom (Thomas Vincent Kelly) was losing control in court, but the one outburst we witnessed was when he was defending his wife against accusations that she had anything to do with their daughter’s hospitalization. If it were me sitting on that jury, I would have seen a man so sickened by the mere thought that his wife could harm their baby that he’d risk the judge’s anger. But I’m just a fellow citizen deemed his peer, so what do I know.

The surprise result that it was all a misdiagnosis by the pediatrician, and that the baby almost died as a result, was just crushing. As a parent, all we can do is trust that someone who knows better knows better. I can’t even imagine.

Meanwhile, I wasn’t even sure who Ellenor’s client was in the perfume spraying mishap, but that didn’t really matter. What did matter was that she not only forgave Mitch, but she also slept with him. And when he invited her to come with him abroad, what did she say? “There was a time that I would have sold my soul to hear you say that to me.” She’s sick. He propositioned her for sex in exchange for a lighter sentence for her client. Then he accused her of doing the propositioning in open court, and followed that up by suggesting that she seek mental help. And then she slept with him.

Ellenor’s sick. Maybe she does need that therapy after all.

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Apr 29, 2010 @ 12:00 EST5EDT