Law in Popular Culture

New Lawyer Show Sugarcoats Reality, Above the Law Blogger Says

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A fan of television shows about working lawyers, blogger Elie Mystal thinks The Practice was great and Boston Legal was worth watching when William Shatner was on-screen.

But ABC’s latest legal drama, The Deep End misses the mark, he contends in an Above the Law review today of the new TV show.

Among his complaints: The show’s actors are too attractive and are portrayed as having sex lives.

To be realistic, the makeup on a female attorney in such a legal drama “should look like it was applied on the subway as she was rushing into work and her hair should look like she has a comb in her purse that has never seen the light of day,” he writes. Her male counterpart “should be slightly overweight, as pale as Vermont snow and have some kind of subtle facial disorder.”

He’s not the only one who’s dubious about The Deep End, which is to premiere Jan. 21 and run for six weeks, according to TV Guide.

Focusing on the travails of four young lawyers at a prestigious Los Angeles firm as they struggle to make a go of law practice, the show is “just not really memorable,” according to the Futon Critic.

The Dallas Morning News offers a behind-the-scenes look at the filming of the show, which takes place in its home city.

In one upcoming episode, the newspaper recounts, the attorneys attempt to bond by slapping colorful sticky notes on their foreheads at a pizza party as they attempt to guess which one word colleagues use to describe them. (For actor Ben Lawson, it is “sensitive.”) Still sporting her sticky note, actress Tina Majorino puts on a cranky face as she is subsequently left alone to clean up the mess.

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