(Season 6, Episodes 1-2)
Season six exploded out of the gate with a sensational murder trial that was all-consuming for the firm. While I like that everyone gets to be involved in those sort of things, it’s far more enjoyable when each attorney is the star of their trial, instead of being someone else’s backup.
And over in the District Attorney’s office, Helen got a new buddy to first ignore, then begrudgingly accept, than form a weirdly close relationship with. What are the odds that she and Ron Livingston don’t sleep together?
6.1 “The Candidate”
Funny how we move on from calamitous events so easily, right? Last time we (although not I) were mourning the loss of Richard Bay; this time he’s not even a distant memory. Oh well. He’s even been replaced on the show, by new ADA Alan Lowe (Livingston). So much for treasuring his legacy.
Lowe didn’t do anything for me, but in much the same way that Richard’s predecessors didn’t do much for me. I figure, if they don’t make you want to kill them, they’re doing okay.
Anyway, the two hour season six premiere was the Ellenor show, featuring her close friend, State Senator Keith Ellison (Dylan Baker), who was accused of murdering his wife Marsha’s (Virginia Madsen) lover. I was about 10 minutes into the two hours when I figured out that Marsha had actually killed Keith’s lover, and that Keith thought being gay was worse for his political career than murdering the guy sleeping with his wife in cold blood.
So more interesting than the case for me were the actors playing the Ellisons. I know Virginia Madsen is famous for many things, but I loved her as Hope Stevens in Smith, and that’s really the only thing I associate her with. Dylan Baker, on the other hand, is another story. Not only did he play a somewhat political figure on Kings, but he just played a man standing trial for murder on an episode of The Good Wife! I realize this episode of The Practice is from 2001, but it’s like Baker’s year to be a murderer at my house. And he’s a creepy dude.
I loved how Jimmy got egg all over his face. He’d interviewed a woman who could place Marsha and the lover together at an office party, but when the witness took the stand for the prosecution, she put the Senator and the lover together as well. Indignant, Jimmy arose to cross her and asked why she hadn’t told him that when they spoke. Her answer? “You didn’t ask me.” Damn!
It was an injustice that Keith got the jail sentence and Marsha didn’t, but if he’d rather be a murderer than gay, why does Ellenor have a problem with it?
6.2 “Killing Time”
Of course she did have a problem with it, and a third of this episode was about Donnell & Associates trying to get around privilege in order to send Marsha to prison. The lawyers there never miss an opportunity to judge their clients instead of serving them.
Steve Harris (Eugene) lucked out and landed a story that allowed him to work with Charles S. Dutton, who played Leonard Marshall, a man up for parole after serving 12 years of a conviction for a murder that he continued to maintain he didn’t commit. Dutton is awesome, and hearing him take the parole board to task for requiring that he show remorse for a crime he says he didn’t commit, in order to get paroled, was amazing. Does an innocent man really need to effectively plead guilty in order to see the light of day again?
Lisa Gay Hamilton (Rebecca), meanwhile, got to work with the late, great Ron Silver, who infused his role as a death penalty appeals attorney more with his presence than with his talent. I thought it would have been funnier had he simply been proselytizing to these death row inmates rather than trading the bad cases for the good, but then again I suppose he would have been far easier to detect had he been doing it that way. Either way, I appreciated getting to see Silver in something for the first time again. He is most definitely missed.
Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Mar 04, 2010 @ 16:00 EST5EDT
