I just saw “The Judge” on NBC. The case was already dreck, with the usual story of a successful man taking care of “Working Girls” on the side to help theme through college or whatever. He was accused of murder. All of a sudden, at the end, the defense attorney got ESP (or the writers got desparate) and dramatically ripped open a girl’s teddy bear in court. And lo and behold, the evidence needed to exonerate “The Judge” was in it. They confronted the lawyer who really did it, and he committed suicide in front of them, but not before showing them on the desk a meticulously written confession neatly packaged in a professional portfolio.
Oh boy, now I have a new phrase to replace “deux ex machina”: “Rip open the teddy bear.”