(Season 6, Episodes 12-13)
Boy is it good to be back! And if I may direct a message to the executives at FX: stop screwing around with your early morning weekend schedule! Let The Practice retain whatever little dignity it can in the otherwise demeaning life you’ve assigned it, scrounging for a syndication audience at 7:00 am, when most people’s TVs are tuned to cartoons for their kids. And while I have your attention, maybe stop promoting your original shows quite so much. I only need to see six commercials for Justified in a one hour span. Of course I’m fast-forwarding through them, but I still know they’re there.
6.12 “Pro Se”
The realization that I came to in this episode was both good and bad. The bad part is that I’m not enjoying most of these attorneys very much; at least not Ellenor, Bobby, and Lindsay. Each gets under my skin for a different reason, and there are a lot of times when I just can’t. The good part? The cases themselves are generally enjoyable, and the cast of characters that parades through each episode is usually great.
Take, for instance, Ellenor’s client, who was charged with murdering his cellmate. Ellenor pushed him toward a plea, but he demurred and instead demanded to act as his own attorney during his trial — “Pro Se” means “for self” in Latin, and is now popularly referred to as a self-represented litigant.
I really liked Giancarlo Esposito, who played client Ray McMurphy. His defense of “necessity,” that he had to kill his cellmate or be killed himself, was totally ridiculous, but I enjoyed his story, as well as watching him go through the motions of a trial in his orange jumpsuit. And I hope his on-the-run character comes back to haunt Ellenor in the future.
Because she’s the one who deserves a shiv in the back, or wherever. If I didn’t have a reason to watch these episodes through, I’d be fast-forwarding every time she spoke.
Same with Bobby. Back from his near-death experience last episode, he predictably charged right back into court against everyone’s advice, only to inevitably be unprepared for it. At this point another season and a half of him seems like way too much. And really, what does the word “partnership” mean to him? Because his partners have a vested interest in holding him back until he’s ready to go back into the courtroom, not to mention a fiduciary responsibility to all of their clients to ensure that they’re receiving adequate representation. Stop yelling about no one telling you what to do.
But in keeping with the plus side, I loved seeing Rene Auberjonois again as Judge Mantz. It always makes me miss Boston Legal!
6.13 “Judge Knot”
Yet another example of a good story with bad lawyers. In the case of the corrupt judge accepting bribes from lawyers for favorable verdicts, Bobby came across as nothing more than distastefully abrasive. Why is his only dialect pattern yelling? And why can’t he attempt to listen when someone else speaks? There are other people out there who might possibly know what they’re doing.
And Helen’s his enabler. She protects him like his babysitter, even playing mediator with Lindsay at no one’s behest. She should let Bobby (and Alan Lowe, specifically in the previous episode) hang himself every once and a while.
But I enjoyed the case, and the involvement of the US Attorney and the FBI. Bruce McGill (the dirty Judge Fleming) is always going to be Sheriff Farley from My Cousin Vinny to me … and how about his attorney, Gregory Itzin? President Charles Logan himself! Funny, because Itzin appeared on The Practice five times as four different characters. Was he not as recognizable back then?
I got a good laugh when Helen questioned the testimony of a convict looking to reduce his sentence, a tool used by the District Attorney on a regular basis. As she said, “Well that’s reliable.” Take a memo, Helen.
I was also stymied as to why the judge would choose to use a drop outside for the money hand-off. While drops make sense when attempting to avoid having person X seen going to the home, office, or known hangout of person Y, Bobby had business in the judge’s courtroom, and arguably in his chambers. Why couldn’t he have just dropped a newspaper off on the clerk’s desk with the cash inside? Weird.
Cool suicide twist, though. Love those cases!
Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Apr 22, 2010 @ 17:00 EST5EDT
