September 10, 2008
Television Department
Raising the Bar: Stephen Bochco Strikes Back
No, unlike David Feige, Stephen Bochco did not leave a comment on my blog. What he did was make the second episode of Raising the Bar. This one was much more polished than the pilot: The actors are more believable, the dialogue dances and flows, and the cases are far more interesting. Even the lighting on the set is better. Also, they seem to have cranked up the realism a bit.
Spoiler Alert for Raising the Bar episode 2,"Guatemala Gulfstream".
Spoiler Alert for Raising the Bar episode 2,"Guatemala Gulfstream".
The most important structural difference between this episode and last week's pilot is that this episode splits its time between two different trials, which gives the writers enough going on to fill the hour while still keeping each story lean and mean.
In my critique of last week's pilot episode, I expressed my hope that not every client will be actually innocent, and as it turns out, one of this week's clients is guilty. Defended by Patrick Woolsley, a public defender who comes from a wealthy background, he's a young man accused of beating up a kid from his school. This is considered a felony because he kicked the victim while wearing boots. Sadly, I suspect this is a realistic touch.
His story, which seems credible, is that the victim was the leader of group of kids who were daily threatening to hurt him and that the victim had just made a verbal threat to rape his mother. That's not really a defense---you're not allowed to use violence unless you face an imminent threat---and the jury finds him guilty. So he did a bad thing, but he arguably doesn't deserve a felony record.
On the other hand, Jerry Kellerman's client seems like another innocent. He's accused of murder, but he claims he killed in self-defense. There was a corroborating witness to that story, but the prosecution tried several tricks to keep him from taking the stand, thus hiding the truth from the jury. At the very last minute, Patrick Woolsley pulls a rabbit out of his hat and gets Jerry's witness to court. (This seemed pretty unrealistic, but it was the only way to show us viewers that the prosecution was hiding something important.)
In the usual manner of courtroom dramas, the case should end there, with Jerry's client being found not guilty by reason of self-defense. Instead, Jerry accepted a plea to manslaughter, which gets his client out of jail with time served.
People with real defense experience like Seth Abramson are still a bit thrown by Mark Paul Gosselaar's "insufferable and overacted" character of Jerry Kellerman, but he's starting to grow on me. A little.
Even after just two episodes, the show is developing some interesting trends. For one thing, the public defenders haven't had any clear wins in their trials: All three clients have a criminal record by the time their story is over, but not necessarily for everything they were charged with. That sounds about right.
Also, by my count, we've seen five defendants so far: Last week's rape trial, this week's murder and assult trials, a random guy in front of Judge Kessler's bench, and Charlie Sagansky's new favorite bartender. All of them are minorities. And nearly all the extras in the holding cells are minorities. I suspect this is pretty realistic.
.
Leave a comment