Thursday, October 7, 2010
CEASE AND DESIST: In move as sensible and inevitable as "someone getting confirmed to the Supreme Court despite major gambling and womanizing issues and then stepping down from the Court because his Liberal Lawyer Ghost Dad changed his heart and told him he could do more justice as a roving lawyer than as a Justice and he never has paying clients and can abandon the whole 'liberal' thing by episode two" was not, NBC has halted production on Outlaw with five completed episodes yet to air.
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Look, what they were trying to do was a legal version of House (see also the James Woods show from a couple of seasons ago--Shark--and there've been a couple of other shows not quite as blatant, but in the same framework). The problem is that it doesn't work for a LAWYER to be the hero in such a show because he's our hero so we know he's (pretty much) always going to be right in the end--House always figures out the diagnosis, even if he doesn't save the person's life. Here, we know Garza's clients are if not "innocent," then justified/appropriate, because that's the way TV works. There are two ways to get around it--first is making the character/show expressly morally compromised and ambiguous (Fox tried that with the short-lived legal drama "Justice," and the early years of Alan Shore on "The Practice"/"Boston Legal" also represent that), or to have your hero be a judge "seeking truth" rather than a lawyer represnting a party.
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