I was greatly anticipating the new show “Bull” starring Michael Weatherly as a psychologist who helps lawyers select and manipulate juries in high-profile trials. The premier episode did not disappoint: plenty of drama and high-tech psycho-babble to make for an interesting hour. I was surprised to see
his character be more sympathetic than I expected, rather than the Greg House-like cynic that the previews seemed to imply
…but that may be a good choice for the future of the show.
It was really, really bad.
CBS isn’t the right network for the show. CBS procedurals still need mostly good protagonists and mostly sympathetic POVs. And they have a jury consultant who works for criminal defense. So - all the clients are going to be innocent a la Perry Mason or he’ll occasionally tank a client so the bad guy goes to jail. For this to work, there needs to be comfort (or at least acceptance) around setting criminals free and CBS doesn’t believe their audience is there.
Also, we already know that he has deep childhood trauma and he really cares about things. The rest of his staff is a bunch of cliches (the “millennial” is especially badly written). And there were way to many significant looks - even for a pilot.
So, according to the trailer, this is a guy who helps rig further a system already rigged towards de 1%, who are, of course, the only ones who can afford him.
And the trailer doesn’t seem to criticize that fact but celebrate it. I’m sure that 90% of his clients will be innocent and falsely accused, of course, and that the character will take a lot of pro bono cases to defend the less wealthy, to make it all look less sordid than it actually is, but come on.
I won’t watch it. There’s a Reason why John Cusack (two Cs) & Rachel Weisz’ characters were the heroes of “Runaway Jury” (2003) and why Gene Hackman’s character was Hated… and it had almost nothing to do with the case involved.
If you watched that movie & didn’t Cheer when the boiler room was broken down like the NAZI headquarters in “The Longest Day” with the dirty-trickster electronics and investigator rats running out just ahead of the approaching sirens, you might just not have a Soul.
It’s irredeemably awful. And a feel-bad show. Basically every week is going to be about Rich People hiring a Jury Consultant to use Mind Tricks to fool a juror into letting the Rich Person go free. Or the message will be that Rich People are always well and truly innocent.
If I had known the Dr. Phil angle before watching it, I would not have watched it.
Awful awful awful. I predict it is canceled before 6 episodes.
In some ways, yes. But Tim Roth’s character was frequently an asshole and the audience wasn’t supposed to like him without reservation, the firm did research work, and they consulted both civil & criminal trials. So it sidestepped a lot of the problems built in to Bull.
I wasn’t impress with it and can’t understand why there is show about a guy pretending to be a doctor . Dr. Phil isn’t a real doctor, he is a bully . I think Michael Weatherly should had stayed with NCIS .
Well, they’re off to a bad start. As awful as the pilot was (and it was), neither of those is what happened. It was #3, a different rich people was guilty.
I can’t believe they’re airing a second episode. This is a ludicrously bad show with a bad premise and a horribly miscast lead. Just another of the network’s attempts to use established stars in new pointless shows. Weatherly was in a perfect position to take his NCIS character into a new format, he could go back to being a Baltimore cop, go work for the CIA, become a private detective, or just do a sitcom. Instead they went with a freakin’ jury consultant? Who cares?
