Pilots, Part Seven: Friday-Style Justice

That title seems like I'm reviewing Dragnet. Worry not. It's been six or seven years since the last time they remade Dragnet, so hopefully we have a couple more years before the next one. No, I'm here to talk about the new Friday night dramas, Blue Bloods on CBS and Outlaw on NBC.

Blue Bloods

Blue Bloods is about a family of cops and lawyers in New York. Guess what they do? Fight crime!


It's a cop show (and you know how I feel about those by now), but the family element is really nice and gives it something unique. There's going to be lots of opportunity for discovering these relationships over the course of the series.

The thing I hate most in a cop show is the whole good-guys-vs.-bad-guys thing, but Blue Bloods has taken great strides to mitigate that. Sure they get the bad guy in the end, but the main drama of the episode has to do with police brutality. Is it okay for a police officer to step outside the law if it saves a life? Whenever you can give characters opposing viewpoints where neither is right or wrong - that's good drama to me.

Outlaw

Outlaw is about Cyrus Garza (Jimmy Smits), a Supreme Court Justice who resigns to return to practicing law.


I have some major quandaries with the premise of this show. First of all, Garza leaves the Supreme Court because he wants to be able to actually make a difference, to really seek justice for the people. Huh? Since when is the SUPREME COURT impotent to affect the law or make just decisions? Surely he had more power to control these things as a justice of the highest court in the nation than he will as a litigant for a private law firm.

Equally perplexing was the fact that Garza is supposed the be "the most conservative Supreme Court justice", as appointed by George W. Bush. In the world of Outlaw, "most conservative" seems to translate to "most apathetic to the problems of the American people". The episode begins with Garza being guilted into leaving the Supreme Court by the memory of his dead father. No longer will he be the cold, ambivalent, conservative justice. Now he's going to fight for things like gay marriage (I'm seriously not even exaggerating. He said the words "gay marriage").

He leaves the Court specifically to take on the case of a convicted murderer on death row seeking a new trial. Now, yes, of course the man is discovered to be innocent later in the episode. But Garza has no reason to believe that the verdicts of his trial and appeals were wrong. He stops being the most conservative Supreme Court justice to become the worst kind of bleeding-heart liberal. I don't get it.

The show does offer some fun legal plot twists and interesting interpretations of the law. It keeps the episode interesting. But between the bizarre agenda-pushing origin story and Garza's tendency to make long speeches about morality and justice (while questioning a witness even!), it's not easy to enjoy.

Lone Star's abysmal numbers from last week sank even further last night. Looks like my top pick this fall is done for.

UPDATE: Yep, it's gone.

Up next is No Ordinary Family premiering tonight on ABC.