Fairly Legal: Season 2 Premiere

In Fairly Legal the actors are attractive and quippy, the sets are nice looking, and the tropes abound. Of course, tropes will abound because there are only so many stories one can tell—eventually they’re all going to circle back. There was an important old fart who once said that there are only so many types of stories in the world. So what’s a writer to do? What’s the secret to getting around the dreaded horror of redundancy in a narrative? There is no secret! Go buck wild. Redundancies don’t matter so long as you’ve got character. And this show is yet another one of those USA Network shows that attempts to knit together an interesting cast of characters—and they did decide to make their motto “characters welcome,” so they may as well stick with it. But I’m not sure if they nailed the landing on this particular venture.

The idea behind this show apparently is to get us to sympathize with the lead character Kate Reed (Sarah Shahi). Once we’re on her side, we will sit through all manner of ridiculousness just to see how things turn out for her. Kate was a lawyer, but her hatred of all the slime and sleaze that goes along with that profession drives her to quit and take up arms as a legal mediator. It is clear from the get-go that Kate is supposed to be “different.” Even though she grew up privileged in every sense of the word, she has a soft spot for truth and fairness, and her tenacity in these traits gets her into fun-to-watch troubles that instantly bring us onto her side.

In this episode, Kate decides to fight on the side of a cranky yet loveable grandpa with cancer. It appears that the CEO of the large corporation that this grandpa worked at for all of his adult life may have been aware that the plant workers were being exposed to chemicals known to cause cancer. This is unthinkable to the loveable old crankster. He can’t imagine his old boss would do that. All he wants is the truth, and Kate has made it her mission to get it for him. But she didn’t know that her step-mother, who controls half of Kate’s recently-passed father’s law firm, has made a deal with the Corporation’s lawyer to grease the wheels on this deal. If the stodgy grandpa agrees to a settlement, the law firm will get a much needed infusion of cash by the slimy lawyer. When Kate does find out, it only inspires her to further push for what she already decided was right.

But this tenacity of Kate’s has also put her on the outs with her super-hot-from-the-neck-down husband, Assistant D.A. Justin Patrick (Michael Trucco). And now we wonder if Kate can put her tenacity aside for love. Can she compartmentalize? Will she overcome her control issues? Will these control issues stop her from helping that poor cancer-ridden grandpa? All of these things work, so long as you care.

I tended not to care about Kate so much because it seems like there is a lot of work being done to try and make her “folksy.” Her hair is rarely coiffed, and it feels kind of like her marriage has been put on the rocks just so audiences could identify with some sort of fault. These are minor issues, though. One of the more interesting things about Kate is her ethical code. I guess you could say, “She plays by her own set of rules” (but if you do, make sure you say it in a gravelly voice). Kate seems to be a humanist. Her hatred of lawyers leads her to lean toward a more tempered idea of justice. To her it’s not about what’s ultimately right, but what’s right for the people involved.

It’s a reassuring and familiar way to distract yourself for an hour, and sometimes we need that. Just as an aside, the sassy office assistant, Leonardo Prince (Baron Vaughn) is a joy to watch. I was going to say that the writers really un-blanded this character, but then again, we have all seen the sassy comedic relief character before, so maybe not. Either way, he works. And so does the hot Assistant D.A. Everything about him is cliché, but you find yourself rooting for him anyway.

So to me this show was okay, but ultimately uninteresting. If it wants to get better, the writers have to work on humanizing the characters that come off a bit too milquetoast, and perhaps the corresponding actors to those milquetoast characters should spend a summer session at Yale Drama to get their chops up. Glenn Close went there. Glenn Close is very good.