I made it through. But it was quite cringe worthy.
A lot of defense attorneys (and yes, even public defenders) are pretty cynical. It’s generally the premise of shows like Better Call Saul or The Good Wife. I had no issue with that.
A prosecutor is typically trying to put someone in jail because, in part, they’re convinced the person is guilty. Everything they have to present in court supports that premise.
A defense attorney, on the other hand, doesn’t know that their client is innocent. In fact, they may have good reason to believe their client is guilty. Their job isn’t so much to ensure their client is acquitted, their job is to ensure that their client gets a fair trial and that the prosecution does its job properly.
It seems to me that it’s easier to be an idealistic prosecutor than an idealistic defense attorney. And it’s more likely for a defense attorney to become cynical. Sure, you’re going to have people you believe in and are trying to protect because you have faith in their innocence, but you’re probably also going to be defending “bad guys” too. Especially a public defender.
As much as I am unimpressed with the show, I do think that Dan as an old, cynical, jaded public defender makes a ton of sense. I think it fits better than him being a prosecutor.
Saul Goodman was previously mentioned, but he’s a good prototype for the “slimy defender” role and Dan Fielding works also. I think viewers can accept that better today than they might have in the 80s, when most people have Perry Mason as the template for a defense attorney.
I’m a big fan of the original series, but haven’t seen this reboot. But I’m also a criminal defense attorney, and figured I should chime in to affirm these statements.
In a defense practice, your clients are overwhelmingly guilty of the charges. Your job isn’t to acquit them, it’s to mitigate damage by reaching a plea agreement with the government (usually, keeping your client out of jail is considered a win - even if they end up admitting guilt and being saddled with strict probation requirements for the next few years).
And they lie. All the time. No matter how much I try to convince them that they can confide in me, clients will lie about things easily disproven.
Then again, the cops who arrest them also lie. All the time.
So everybody’s a liar.
And your clients will be happy to throw you under bus/blame you whenever it’s convenient them. After all, they want any ability to deflect blame. Of course, in the next breath, they’ll be your best friend, since you are their only lifeline. But that dynamic can be exhausting.
And that’s before getting into the truly crazy and delusional people. (As a private attorney, I can decline cases, but public defenders don’t have that option. Yesterday, I decided against meeting with a woman who told me that people had hacked her phone and were talking to her through it. Not calling, mind you; she could just hear voices).
Yes, there’s the occasional wronged person who you look forward to vindicating. But even then, cases usually end with more of a thud than a boom - if you are an exonerated person then you won, so you get to go home. The police aren’t going to apologize, and nobody is going to pay you for your troubles.
So, yeah, cynicism goes with the job.
Would you please make this into a series? I’d watch it in an instant, since it sounds that it would swerve from being a comedy like Night Court one week, to a drama beyond what we get to see on Law and Order or Better Call Saul. Pretty please?
I watched the first episode last week, but it looks to me like you need the premium version of Peacock to stream anything after that. Anyone else trying to watch it streaming? Any success?
“We have a D&D…D&D.” I can imagine that line in the original series.
Talking about old characters coming back, why not Reinhold? He was the baby Dan delivered on the episode where multiple babies were delivered in the court. Reinhold is Dan’s real first name. (A producer was named Reinhold Weege.) Be interesting to see Dan’s reaction to the now-grown man.
Yes, it’s on NBC and Peacock. I have Peacock Premium, so that’s how I’ve been watching.
I didn’t realize shows were still doing this either. None of the shows I’ve watched in a long time do and it made the whole thing seem cheesy and dated. I loved the original, but I’m going to have a hard time getting past this. It’s Always Sunny, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Arrested Development, Veep, and a ton of other comedies for the last few decades have gotten by just fine without it.
I’ve watched episode 1 and it was OK, but it’s going to have to get a lot better over the next few for me to stick with it.
It feels very much like the producers of the reboot are trying very hard to emulate the look and feel of the original show as much as possible – and that includes making it feel like a multi-camera sitcom, taped in front of a live audience. (None of the modern comedies you mention are shot that way; they’re all filmed more like films.)
The show does the drama/personal stuff with Abby and Dan well enough, but unfortunately the comedy is just terrible. Nearly every “joke” in E3 left me feeling that it could have been much better without much more effort – the dialogue, the characters, etc. I loved the original show and I love John Larroquette, but if the writers don’t find their funny in the next episode I think I’ll be cancelling my TiVo OnePass.
I seem to remember an episode of the original where a TV news crew was in the courthouse for some reason. The call letters on the side of the camera were WEGE.
Those are all Cable. And altho comedies, to me, they are not expected to be actually laugh out loud funny.
In fact, Reinhold Weege was more than “a producer” of the original Night Court – he was its creator and executive producer, wrote 14 episodes, and his production company, Starry Night Productions, produced the show. In modern TV terms, he would have been considered the “showrunner.”
So far, I rate this show a solid “meh”. It is not bad, mind you. It has potential.
Those cupcakes must have been a shout-out to Reinhold Weege’s work on “Barney Miller”: Yemana takes a call about an “erotic bakery” that is selling X-rated cakes and pastries, displayed right in the shop window.
I liked how Abby was scraping the frosting off one when Dan came in.
I guess I’m alone in not liking the bailiff much. I think she over acts the character by a lot. Though I’m not totally sure if it’s the writing, her acting, the directing, or maybe a combination of all three.
I remember the baby episode. It seems like Dan said something snide/dumb? to the woman he was helping deliver. She grabbed him by the tie and told him to try and pull a cabbage patch kid out of one nostril and see how he liked it. That’s a paraphrase; I don’t think I’ve watched an episode since the original run. I found that particularly hilarious as my first child was born in '86 and my last in '91. I could so identify.
My wife and I re-watched those two episodes during Superstorm Sandy when she was imminently expecting our youngest daughter. Fortunately, she held out until the storm passed and the hospital was just fine.
They aren’t? I’ve been watching them wrong, because I laugh out loud at every one of them. As do my wife and children. Way more often then I did on the first episode of this show.
I was just saying that I didn’t realize a lot of shows still did this, because none of the shows that I’ve watched still do. I suppose if you’ve been watching shows with a laugh track all these years, it wouldn’t seem as jarring. It didn’t bother me in the 80s, when every show I watched had one; but now that I haven’t watched any in so long it just struck me as strange and off-putting.
I’m not sure how many of them, even in the '80s, had laugh tracks, so much as that most sitcoms in that era were filmed in the multi-camera format, in front of a live audience. Compare the original Night Court (or Cheers, or Murphy Brown), which were all multi-camera/live audience, with filmed sitcoms from a bit earlier, like I Dream of Jeannie or The Brady Bunch, which weren’t done in front of an audience, and clearly had laugh tracks added.
(Note: it’s absolutely possible, probably likely, that sitcoms filmed with a live audience also had laugh tracks added in, for spots where the audience was deemed to not have laughed enough, or particular scenes that weren’t filmed in front of an audience.)
Many of the multi-camera/live audience sitcoms from recent years have been on the broadcast networks, rather than on cable-only channels, and in particular, they’re those produced or created by Chuck Lorre, including The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, Mike & Molly, B Positive, etc.