What’s this show called … Harry’s Law?

This past week I started watching the final season of Boston Legal on DVD. I know going in that it’s going to be a little disappointing — the last season was only twelve episodes long, hardly enough to savor — yet I’ve found myself gleefully lost in the whacky world of Crane, Poole & Schmidt.

Re-watching the season, combined with my continued vigil for the elusive eighth season of The Practice to close out my virgin diary, got me thinking about David E. Kelley and the legal dramedy. Kelley is one of the better ones, and I know that his new show, Harry’s Law, premiered not too long ago … I’d stayed away primarily due to Kathy Bates — after her stint on The Office as Jo I decided to keep a wide berth — but curiosity can only be kept at bay for so long. I decided to dive headfirst into another Kelley legal world.

Bates stars as Harriet Korn, a disenfranchised patent lawyer who’s fired from her firm after she loses passion for her specialty. Choosing to continue practicing as a defense attorney, the show centers around the new firm that she forms in an old shoe store that inexplicably still has a full stock of inventory on-hand.

Joining Harry in her new firm are Adam Branch (Nathan Corddry), a young attorney drawn to Harry after facing her on an old case, Jenna Backstrom (Brittany Snow), Harry’s old assistant who continues in the same position in the new firm, and Malcolm Davies (Aml Ameen), who literally lands on Harry and becomes her redemption project.

Last week’s episode began with Harry defending Justin (Tim Conlon), who stood accused of murdering his wife. With the discovery of the wife’s missing finger in Justin’s safe deposit box, Harry decided to drop the case. But when the judge wouldn’t let her, Harry unmasked her client as guilty in open court, resulting in a contempt charge and a brief stay in jail.

I realize that the story is “in progress” five weeks in, but what was Harry doing telling Adam that maybe it was “time to get out?” Sure it’s a place that Bobby, Eugene, and Lindsay all arrived at separately on The Practice, but unlike for Harry it took them much more than a mere four weeks of defending murderers and drug dealers to get fed up.

It was as if the entire trajectory of the character was thrown out the window, with no bother of building toward that moment in season two or six. Instead I heard Kelley speaking there, his exhaustion with the types of clients his characters defend bleeding through. But not someone just getting their feet wet in criminal law.

And where was the suspense, in week five, in Harry’s disbarment hearing? Did anyone imagine that she would lose her bar card now? Even after fifty episodes it would never happen, as exhibited by Bobby, Lindsay, Alan Shore, Denny Crane, etc. But I don’t think any of them made us “wonder” so soon.

I think David Kelley would have us believe that all lawyers sit on that line between disbarment and second chances, if only to give him the opportunity to write soliloquies about the terrible place that the legal practice has arrived at. Listening to Harry attack the profession as her defense strategy was ugly. I got a good laugh at her trademark long serious stares, but I was hoping against hope that Kelley planned to use the disbarment hearing as an opportunity to recast his lead. No such luck.

Nathan Corddry as Adam was very Tom Jeter from Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip … except that he wasn’t. And it took me a while to figure out what was off about him; I think Adam was Jeter as an adult, and either Corddry doesn’t have that talent in his arsenal yet, or he’s not meant to. I was a fan of Jeter’s on Studio 60, but Adam felt like a kid wearing his father’s suit.

The law firm/shoe store thing? My impression is that it’s been toned down since the pilot, but why bother in the first place? Do shows like these need gimmicks? Are there funny happenstances that take place with the same location being a law firm and a shoe store? I’m not sure I get it.

Malcolm’s tale was kind of weird, I think because it seems as if the writing team has decided on Malcolm’s eventual destination and are now scrambling to get him there. Some random nobody getting pressed into going undercover to take down Tank (Neil Brown Jr.) the drug dealer? What city does this show take place in? I doubt even a Podunk police force would be down for such a bad idea. But it was nice to see Tracie Thoms for the blink of an eye; did she land here permanently now that Cold Case is over?

And what was up with Tommy Jefferson (Christopher McDonald) randomly appearing everywhere that Harry was? I’m sure there’s more to that story, but even with all the details does it make any sense? This is one of those times where it seems like it possibly may not.

The long and short — I didn’t see enough court time to determine if as a legal dramedy this is a good or a bad show. But as a series it seems to have evolved well beyond the place that five hours should have gotten it to; as an ensemble it looks to have a miscast lead and at least one other character who’s been poorly written; and it’s chosen to avoid the insanity of Boston Legal, instead going directly to a place called “situations far enough out of the realm of possibility to be implausible, but not far enough to be funny.”

I think it’s back to the drawing board for Mr. Kelley.

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Feb 21, 2011 @ 13:00 EST5EDT