Gasp! A Shondaland Show For The People. Yes, Really

As anyone who pays even remote attention to my column knows, I utterly loathe almost everything Shonda Rhimes is attached to. Which is why I was so surprised – delightfully so, in fact – that the most recent Shondaland series, For The People, is such a delightful tonic. There have been legal-based dramas in the Shonda-verse before, but this one takes place in a world so far removed from How to Get Away with Murder that it might as well be in an alternate universe.

The courtroom drama, once a staple of network television, has all but died out, with even standard bearer Dick Wolf all but vacating the field. So the fact that there is not only one on network television, but one that actually tries to appeal to the better angels of our nature, is something that television, in all it forms, desperately needs. Set in one of the New York District Courts, the series focuses equal time on both the prosecutors, led by Roger Gunn (Ben Shenkman), and the public defenders office., led by Jill Carlan (the always great Hope Davis. This being Shondaland, Carlan and Gunn are now in a romantic relationship, but its been a remarkably chaste one that both characters spent most of Season 1 denying. The prosecutors and defense attorney are, as per Shondaland, young and diverse. There’s Leonard Knox, the arrogant motivated African-American who cares all about winning. There’s Jay Simmons, the Jewish defense attorney, who still lives with his parents. There’s Sandra Bell (Britt Robertson), the foster child who plays a defense attorney with her ideals intact. And there’s Kate Littlejohn (breakout star Susannah Flood) the seemingly mechanical prosecutor, who may be the smartest person in the room.

And what may be the hardest thing to believe about For the People is how little the characters seem to care about sex. There were maybe half a dozen sex scene in the entire first season of the show, which for a Shondaland series is tantamount to wearing a chastity belt. There have been none in the first two episodes of Season 2, which is even more remarkable. The characters are attracted to each other – that’s nothing new – but they seem to care about their careers first, justice second, and then their love lives. In Scandal and Murder, justice wouldn’t even make the top five.  Which means that the series is actually about – gasp –  the law, and those who try to abuse it. In an absolutely brilliant story last night, Kate basically spent the entire episode trying to convict a shady defense attorney of conspiring to murder his wife. She knew all the legal pieces that he had done, but couldn’t use the law to crack it. It was when she tried to break him on such a basic level of humanity – how everybody handles personal email – that she managed to beat him. This is superb work, and I really think Flood should be in the consideration for an Emmy.

But by far the most appealing and relevant story came last night, when Tina Krissman (the always astonishing Anna Deveare Smith) found herself taking care of the son of a witness who had been called in to testify in a trial and was picked up by the government as an illegal immigrant. She spent the entire episode trying to protect the boy, and what happened unified the entire courthouse in a way that would’ve done Aaron Sorkin proud.  There was a confrontation in the courthouse halls between ICE and Tina that unified the entire court, and demonstrated the arrogance of ICE, when they told a district judge that he had no authority.  There was the utter futility of a defense attorney trying to get through a credible threat hearing in Arizona and getting nowhere. There was a scene between Jay and Tina about what America was, what it is, and what it could be. And there was a solution where Leonard Knox – traditionally the most ruthless person in the room – was all but reduced to tears when he tried to come up with a way to save him. I’m not saying the ending was necessarily realistic, but the optimism and humanity in the writing and performances – especially from Smith – had a teeth and idealism to them that has been missing from any network drama about the law in a long, long time.

Earlier this year, TGIT did the world a huge service by putting A Million Little Things – a good series with no Shondaland connections – after Grey’s Anatomy. Its ratings doubled and it was renewed for a second season. I’m really hoping that the same kind of bump occurs for For the People. Right now, its ratings are on the same level as How to Get Away with Murder, but this is the series that needs to be binged and adored. It’s not just one of the best courtroom dramas on TV; its one of the best shows on network TV period. And considering the source, you know what it takes for me to say that.

My score: 4.75 stars.