MeeVee review: "Raising The Bar" actually lowering it

Stephen Bochco practically invented the big-city ensemble drama with "Hill Street Blues" and "L.A. Law." But his new lawyer show "Raising the Bar," debuting Monday night on TNT, is anything but ground-breaking or original. There's hardly a character or plot point that we haven't seen, like, 8,000 times before. And the one moderately edgy performance, by Jane Kaczmarek as a bitchy judge, just reminds me (and everyone else I've talked to)  of her work as Judge Harm on "The Simpsons." It's not good when your new show plays second fiddle to a cartoon, even that one.

Mark-Paul Gosselaar stars as unkempt public defender Jerry Kellerman - if he can't get his hair cut or tie a tie, he must be a good guy, right? (That's Gosselaar, right. Look at the forehead on the guy, it's huge! What is up with that?)

Jerry's a bleeding heart, which is tough to be in the real world, where 99 percent of a public defender's clients are guilty and the job is triage by plea bargain. But, you know, this isn't "The Wire." So of course his client in the pilot is a black guy on trial for rape, and he's innocent, man, framed by a conniving cop. He's a victim of the system!

LOTS of spoilers follow. But trust me, you don't care.

Even junior prosecutor Michelle Emhardt (Melissa Sagemiller) knows Jerry's client is getting railroaded, so she's willing to make a deal. But Judge Harm - I mean, Judge Kessler (Kaczmarek) - refuses to cut the guy some slack. She sends him to prison on a minor weapons charge - for a pocket knife! - even after the jury acquits him of rape. So instead of groveling a little, motioning for a continuance or whatever, like a real lawyer, Kellerman launches into a frenzy of crappy speechifying about the system and the truth and what "a joke" the judge is. She sends him to a cell for chewing the scenery contempt.

Fellow prosecutor Marcus McGrath (J. August Richards) tells Michelle that the real rapist just happens to have confessed on the very same day. Michelle and Jerry go back to court, but Judge K doesn't care about their evidence, so Jerry mouths off yet again. Back to your cell, hippie! His boss convinces him to apologize, but when he gets into chambers, Jerry delivers yet another tirade (His third? His fourth?).

At this point I wished aloud that Judge Harm would send him to Attica, but oh, right, this is Judge Kessler, so she can only send him to Rikers. In a holding cell where he and his client await transfer, he whines to the guy about the unfairness of it all. Dude, he's the one going up the river, not you! Still, the client looks all sympathetic to lawyer boy, despite the fact that he's facing seven years because this asswad was too busy climbing up on his soapbox to do his job. Real life, the client would have shivved him right there.

(Right, Kaczmarek as Judge Kessler. Left, Kaczmarek as Judge Harm.)

Fortunately, the judge's clerk Charlie Sagansky (Jonathan Scarfe) just happens to be: A) An old law school friend and drinking buddy of Jerry and Michelle and Marcus, and B) Banging the judge. So he talks the jurist down off the ledge by murmuring sweet nothings about how the case might get her some bad press and harm her political ambitions. She kicks the lawyer and his client loose, and everybody skips off to the Bar Association gala to knock back a few drinks and mutter about the failures of the justice system.

Bochco's reputation was first made when "Hill Street Blues" fans learned that Capt. Frank Furillo was knocking boots with Prosecutor Joyce Davenport. So of course the Sagansky-Judge Harm boinkage is just one of the many carnal tangents among the characters.

Jerry's boss (Gloria Ruben) keeps refusing the advances of a rich-boy public defender. Michelle has to fight off her sleazy lecher of a boss (Currie Graham), who was also happy to convict an innocent man, because you know, only bad lawyers are horny jerks. On a really interesting lawyer show, maybe a courtroom idealist would have a keeping-it-in-his-pants problem. This is not that show.

Sagansky is gay - on an ensemble drama today, someone has to be - which makes his servicing the judge seem all the more self-sacrificing.

In the closing moments, as some sub-Coldplay band gets all emo on the soundtrack, we learn that Jerry and Michelle are showering together. Well, she showers, anyway. He doesn't want to get his hair clean. She pats him on the head and says he did a good job today, and they fall into each other's arms.

I'd like to keep beating on this show - the tell-us-how-to-feel music cues; the cheap, generic sets intercut with stock footage of New York streets - but really there's just no fun in it. "Raising the Bar" is generic and duller than a civil suit. Borrrrrrrrrring.

Comments

[chip]

That's it. This show is DOA. When MeeVee's top ratings dog pans the plot, characters, acting and theme.... I'll go read a book.

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[Mila]

Yeesh!
I saw this last week and I have to say I'm disappointed. MPG is not the right one to lead this ensemble. The hair is more of a character than he is.

Steve Bocho I expect more from.