Widge's bulletized review:
- The look and feel of the show are like Law & Order and ER had a kid together. This is not a compliment.
- Too many characters. Or, put another way, it takes a good writer to juggle as many plotlines and characters in a single show and not confuse the audience as to who is doing what and why. This show does not have that writer.
- It took me all episode to finally come up with the pecking order of the characters and who supervises whom in the office. While this was perhaps an attempt to have us associate ourselves with the Very New Guy Who Just Started Work That Day, it's kinda hard to do that when A) he's fighting for screentime along with everyone else and B) he's a fucking idiot–so why would we want to have anything to do with this bozo? No, this is just, if not bad writing, bad writing masquerading as trying to be clever. This is a Dick Wolf show. And does anyone sit down to a Dick Wolf show and want clever?
- I was looking forward to this show because I always did like Stephanie March…but here she's apparently the head ADA in this game and thus has maybe a dozen lines.
- Not that I'm a prude or anything, but did we really need the obligatory Two Hot People in Bed sequence? What is this, Las Vegas? And the final sequence which promised that, whoo-boy, there are hook-ups to come…! God, who the hell cares? One of the strengths of L&O is that only the hardcores know about the lives of the characters, which is why you can sit down in front of any flavor L&O, from any season, with any characters, and enjoy yourself without having to worry about anything you might have missed. It's obvious that with these Young and Gorgeous Stars we're going to get some bad NBC boom-chicka for our buck. Ugh.
- I am glad to see Eric Balfour do something after both he (and I, for that matter) had to slog through the Texas Chainsaw remake. Elias Koteas is always welcome–sorry to see he was just a guest star.
- The dialogue in this thing is just bad. Not wincingly so, but just enough to make your eyebrows throb.
- …though not as bad as the music. Please fire whoever picked that crap and decided to put it behind every Important Scene.
I'm very disappointed that Trial By Jury died and now this thing is here to take its place. I won't bother to watch again. I'm torn between thinking it'll die after a few episodes or, because things that are bad tend to be embraced by the Great Unwashed, it'll run for eight years. Yawn.
Music Postscript: Turbonegro's enjoyable "All My Friends Are Dead." When it hits your MP3 list, it sort of acts the bully to any stray modern pop songs you might have hiding out. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Found via callmeMICKEY.