By now anyone who has been
following this column for a sustained length of time knows how much I loathe
Shonda Rhimes. I even wrote up a column just two weeks where I cursed How To Get Away With Murder for the
4000th time. So I expect everyone who reads the following review to judge this
carefully, maybe give it more consideration.
By now, everyone knows the
Shondaland formula. It follows a group of attractive people, usually very long,
who are interested in three things: sex, advancement of their careers, and then
maybe their profession, whether it be medicine, law or politics. The majority
of the leads are females and/or minorities, and if they have any character at
all, it shoved aside for the sake of their careers.
That's why For the People comes like a bucket of ice water to the system of
someone used to this same formula. In the first three episodes, I've seen two
sex scenes - which for Rhimes' world is almost virginal. The majority of the
characters are in law, (yes, like in Murder)
, but they still seem to be young enough not to have the idealism stomped
out of them, and actually seem to believe in justice for their clients. And god
help us, there's actually been character development in the episodes I've seen
that doesn't pertain to sex. (Well, there is a character who seems bent solely
on advancement and sex, but oddly enough, he's also the most loathed. Which is
rare.)
For
The People looks at a group of attorney's for 'The Mother Court', a
district court in New York . Three of the major attorneys have just been
sworn in for the prosecutors, led primarily by Roger Gunn (Ben Shenkman). Three
others work in the public defender's office, led by Jill Carlan (Hope Davis,
finally getting work on television worthy of her.) There are also some fairly
strong authority figures around the courtroom -the main bailiff, Tina Krissman
(Anna Deaveare Smith is in the house!) and Judge Byrne, who oversees many of the
courts and acts as referee (Vondie Curtis-Hall, where have you been the last
ten years). Strangely enough, these authority figures are fully dimensional,
and actually seem to try and give as much of a damn, while still trying to work
within the system. It comes as little surprise that Smith's character is the
most intriguing, as someone who tries to guide the PD's in the direction of
people who need help, while trying to remain working within the system.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the
attorney who play the PD's get some of the juicier storylines. There's a Jewish
attorney who basically worked at his parent's dry cleaner to get through law
school, who finds himself defending a neo-Nazi accused of trying to assassinate
a state politician. He goes through all kinds of emotional tug-of-war just trying to release him, and
doesn't feel any better about what he's done when he's finished. There's
Allison Adams, a PD, who is willing to break the rules with her boyfriend to
get a client off, but still feels pain when it comes time to dealing with
software that might end up sending a child not unlike her to a higher sentence.
And in the lead role is Britt Robertson as Sandra Bell, a foster child who
still burns at the injustices of the system, and who has too much empathy with
her clients.
But by far the breakout character
in this series is Susannah Flood portrayal of prosecutor Kate Littlejohn. A
humorless, fast-talking, rules-following attorney, she seems what Paris Gellar
might have become after Gilmore Girls. (And
frankly, I'd rather have seen Liza Weill playing her than stuck as Bonnie in Murder.) She deliberately makes herself
hard to like, lie so many Shondaland characters. But unlike those characters,
people respect her, and there happens to be a soul in that characters. In last
night's episode, she delivered a heartfelt monologue about her childhood desire
for a trip to the Capitol and what thwarted it that was far more impassioned
than I've heard in any series in awhile. And the way she worked on a project
with Legos, and its final revelation actually revealed a depth that a lot of
network characters don't have.
For
the People, perhaps not that surprisingly, is more of a Shondaland series
in all but name. It bears the producers production sign, but there's little
else. It's extremely well written and acted, and genuinely seems to give a damn
about its characters. Perhaps that's the main reason, it's running a poor third
Tuesdays at 10pm. I have a request. For
the People's ratings are about the same as How to Get Away With Murder, a Shondaland legal drama, which is
anything but. ABC is going to have to make some tough choices about which
series to kill. They'll probably end up saving both, but if I get a vote, it's
for, well, you know.
My score: 4 stars.
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