New Show Review: Harry's Law

The show is being advertised as a dramedy. In other words, it's supposed to be a dramatic show with laughs thrown in. Whether you like the show or not, whether you agree with its "spirit of the law" message or not, watch it again with this in mind: It's not a dramedy. It's a satire.

It's subtly and brilliantly poking fun at the underdog lawyer genre that we as the American viewing public have come to love and accept out of hand. The show is too ridiculous to be taken seriously. Harriet gets sent to the hospital twice in one day by pure chance (the "everything happens for a reason" motif, I get it, but still). She spends the first 60 seconds of the episode complaining about how boring patent law is, then almost dismisses her first potential client out of hand because his is a criminal case, not a patent one. The prosecuting attorney in her first case has a comically  fast and repetitive speech pattern (repetitive speech pattern) that is not found in nature. Her partner/junior associate views his first client as a deserving criminal, then, in one half-hearted speech by the client accompanied by moving music, he changes his point of view so completely there's no chance the writer's intended it to be realistic. And to top it all off, everyone speaks in an overly scripted dialogue reminiscent of Lorelai Gilmore or any of Aaron Sorkin's characters. (I guess that's the more fitting reference considering lead actor, Nate Corddry's one season stint on Sorkin's Studio 60.) The problem is, that kind of dialogue has always seemed excessively fake and requires quite a bit of "suspension of disbelief" even when it's done well, and this show just doesn't pull it off. Things have to move too quickly for the tone to settle and everything anybody says seems forced (seems forced). Either that's because the Academy Award winning lead and her ensemble just can't handle this style of speech or maybe it's simply that the writers of the new show are still struggling to figure out the natural rhythm of speech.

But here's the catch. It's not awful. None of these issues I've pointed out are glaring mistakes. None of them make me want to change the channel. They're all exactly small enough that a viewer can move past them and keep watching with a little more suspension of disbelief. It was only when I started to notice how consistently these annoying little blips showed up that I came up with my theory that it was intentional.

It has to be a satire, because if it's not a satire, it's just bad. I choose to be optimistic and give the writers the benefit of the doubt.