Jimmy Smits stars as Cyrus Garza, the youngest and most conservative member of the Supreme Court. He's a bit of a womanizer and his gambling debts are starting to pile up. After the recent death of his father, a lawyer who had been just as lionized by the left as Cyrus is by the right, he's re-examining his life. And that re-examination leads to his controversial decision to stay the execution of convicted cop-killer Greg Beals. Not only that, but Garza announces (from the bench, no less) without warning that he is resigning from the Court. He's sick of refereeing the battles, he says, and wants to go out and fight them himself. For his first fight, he's going to take on the defense of Greg Beals, the very man whose execution he just stayed.
That's just the first ten minutes. And believe it or not, the show manages to get even more wildly implausible than that. What's the peak of crazy? Maybe it's when Cyrus sends two of his young associates to wiretap the phone of one potential suspect in order to locate another. Or maybe it's when another young associate, in the mistaken belief that Cyrus is dying, announces in front of half a dozen people that she is in love with him.
Those young associates? They are the standard House-esque assortment of pretty young people, all enthralled by their eccentric hero. None of them makes much of an impression, but then again, none of them is really expected to.
No, this is definitely Jimmy Smits' show, and he carries it well, delivering the big courtroom speeches with passionate conviction. But even Smits can't make these stale lines ("When the rules lead to injustice, you have to find some new rules," etc.) sound fresh, and he certainly can't make the far-fetched premise seem believable.
You can get away with a lot of crazy in a premise if you're willing to have fun with it, to acknowledge that it is crazy; courtroom dramas like Ally McBeal and Boston Legal pulled that off with great success. But Outlaw has no sense of humor whatever, which leaves the absurdity of the premise completely exposed, and the show sinks under that weight. It's a big fat mess of a show.
(If you're still curious, NBC will be repeating the pilot this Friday night.)
No comments:
Post a Comment