Every decade or so, someone in TV land who narrowly escaped a career in law decides the world would be fascinated by watching the lives of lawyers. In a better world, we would cast stones at such people and leave their utterly implausible and trumped up shows unwatched. In our world, LA Law was a Thursday night staple for nearly a decade in the late 80’s and Ally McBeal helped establish Fox as a serious network in the late 90’s.

And they didn’t just invade our minds for an hour each week. Instead, they sent generations of young people to law school in droves. Naïve men simply assumed they too would become promiscuous, sports car-driving divorce attorneys like Arnie Becker and equally naïve women fully expected that, like Ally, they too could weigh 90 pounds, drink every evening away at the bar downstairs wearing provocative skirt-suits, and once in a while pretend to do some legal work (all the while being oddly disconsolate).

Again, better people would have stoned the producers who dreamed up these shows, as all too often we have interpreted their shows as career advice.

Hot off their success in luring people to medical school with Grey’s Anatomy (apparently “Grey’s” for aficionados), ABC is hoping The Deep End will do the same for law. The truth is, it’s not the worst show on television (primarily because Everybody Loves Raymond is still on) but it doesn’t yet have the allure of LA Law or Ally.

It focuses on the law firm of Sterling, someone, someone, and someone, but more specifically on four “brilliant” first-year associates making their initial foray into the legal profession. In the background linger the firm’s partners who, as they torture associates, fight over whether the firm should make money or help people. Really.

The Cast

It’s difficult to tell the associates apart because they’re essentially they same; budding optimists who, on the first day of their careers keep reminding people that they’re “damn good attorneys.” But there are some superficial things we can go on.

Addy Fisher is the somewhat homely (there I said it) ingénue from Case Western who gets arrested in the first episode for breaking through a security checkpoint in order to file papers with the court (because it happens). She reminds people how “brilliant” they all are as she steals cupcakes off other’s desks.

Dylan Hewitt, her male equivalent, attended Columbia Law School before he joined the firm. In the first episode, Dylan sits down with a judge ex parte in chambers and convinces him to reverse his custody ruling for a hot client and later has sympathy sex with the firm’s paralegal who had just failed the bar. Dylan’s played by actor Matt Long who actually attended Western Kentucky University. Really.

Liam Priory attended Cambridge (where they’re apparently now granting American JD’s?) and his only defining feature is that he has a weakness for hot women (because that’s not true of other men). In the first episode, he cost the firm a wealthy client by having sex with the client’s daughter. But don’t worry; he made it up to everyone by bringing in the business of an Israeli fashion maven by having sex with her as well. We also learn that he had his way with fellow associate, Beth, when they first arrived at the firm and they have sex again at end of the episode, just to let us know he’s for real.

Beth Branford, from Stanford Law School, completes a CEO transition at a major company about a week after being hired (it happens). Beth is seen-as attractive, though her face is nearly as wide as Evander Holyfield’s and she’s terribly bow-legged (there, I’ve said it). Beth has daddy-issues, evinced by her father actually telling her that she is too weak to have worked at his firm (again, cut from the headlines).

So that’s our cast. The Deep End’s most notable feature is that everyone is stunningly more attractive than their real life counterparts, and while this is true of most TV shows, it’s especially the case here. The legal secretaries are hot twenty-somethings, the clients are gorgeous, and even the partners would do in a pinch. Nowhere is there an obese slob who bills his life away.

There are worse ways to waste an hour of your life (e.g. The Mentalist), but it’s crucial to recognize that almost nothing you see on The Deep End is rooted in reality. To assist you, dear reader, in distinguishing the show’s unrealistic moments, I made of list of just a few things.

Fact vs. Fiction:

Fiction:
The hallway around the firm office floor is about 15 feet wide and the ceiling is about 25 feet high.
Reality:
If you look, the firm is presented as being housed in the Paul Hastings/ City National towers in Los Angeles where the lobbies are barely this large.

Fiction:
Rowdy Kaiser claims that the firm screened 1000 people for 4 spots.
Reality:
It’s more like 10:1, even at the most selective firms.

Fiction:
We see Dylan combing through books in the law library to look for a way to help a client.
Reality:
Databases Westlaw and LexisNexis essentially replaced law libraries at least 10 years ago. He’d be searching a database alone, not with an attractive paralegal to bounce ideas off of.

Fiction:
Dylan argues in court less than a week after being hired.
Reality:
Attorneys almost never go to court at prestigious firms, let alone in their first week.

Fiction:
In order to make up for torturing her, partner Susan Oppenheim takes Addy Fisher for “$100 pizza at Mozza”.
Reality:
Pizzeria Mozza, sister restaurant to Nancy Silverton & Mario Batali’s Osteria Mozza, serves pizza for $13-22. They’re on the corner of Melrose and Highland, call for reservations.

Fiction:
In the first week, of 4 associates, two have had sex with each other twice (Liam and Beth), one has had sex with a secretary (Liam), and one with a paralegal (Dylan). There’s less sex on Diary of a Call Girl.
Reality:
Varies by case, but expect a good deal less, especially if you’re not hot.

So that’s it for the premiere. See you next week.

Article by Trent Teti of Blueprint LSAT Preparation

And then someone at the justice department decided it was time to reel in Roman Polanski. Gold. Solid gold.

I’ll just set the stage quickly, as I’m sure readers know at least something about this already.

The facts:

Roman Polanski had already directed Chinatown (which, if you haven’t seen, you need to rent immediately) when, at the age of 44, he invited then 13 year-old Samantha Geimer to a photo shoot at Jack Nicholson’s house. Long story short, after plying her with champagne, a hot tub, and Quaaludes (the rufi of the 70’s for younger readers), Polanski raped her twice (vaginal and anal, just to ruin your day) and then forced her to engage in oral sex. Geimer has consistently claimed that she objected and asked to be taken home.

As depicted in the 2008 documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, some believe the presiding judge was motivated by his own vanity when dealing with Polanski’s high-profile case. Because Geimer was reluctant to undergo a trial, the district attorney and Polanski’s lawyers had apparently reached a plea bargain in which Polanski would plead guilty for unlawful sex, the other five charges would be dropped, and Polanski would serve no jail time in excess of a 42 day psychiatric evaluation.

Apparently the judge, whether guided by a sense of justice or his own self-interest, was disposed to reject the plea bargain. When Polanski learned of this, he fled to France where he has citizenship. He’s lived there for the 32 years since and has failed to show a great deal of remorse, either for his flight or the rape of Geimer.

In an interview with 60 Minutes a year after the incident, Polanski claimed that Geimer “ …wasn’t unschooled in sexual matters. [Geimer] was consenting and willing.” Given that she was thirteen years old, drunk, on Quaaludes, and asking to be taken home, one wonders what non-consenting would have looked like to Polanski.

What makes this interesting is that a growing number of high profile people in the entertainment industry are demanding that Polanski, picked up by officials in Switzerland, be released. One isn’t surprised that Woody Allen is a supporter, as he had a sexual relationship with his own daughter (adopted, if that makes it better?) and then married her. But over 100 Hollywood figures, from Martin Scorsese to Harvey Weinstein, signed a petition demanding Polanski’s release.

Whoopi Goldberg, surely in a quest to supplant Jessica Simpson as our nation’s dimmest light, reportedly claimed that Polanski’s action wasn’t “rape-rape.” Again, this prompts one to wonder how gruesome, non-consensual and violent an event must be to qualify as “rape-rape.” One also wonders how relentlessly we’d pursue any man who made such an outlandish remark.

There isn’t yet a particularly coherent argument for why Polanski should be released, but it seems clear that his status as a celebrity must be involved. A couple of silly arguments are sometimes gestured at but I haven’t seen them explicated at length. Polanski advocates might be referencing these obliquely because they realize direct examination would show said arguments to be fallacious. So I thought I’d subject these to just a bit of scrutiny. Without further ado…

Apparently, some believe one or more of the following sentiments carry some mitigating force.

• It was a long time ago.

Kind of. I mean, it’s been 32 years, so that is a long time. Perhaps time heals all wounds and/or we should forgive and forget. But there’s a fallacy at work here.

There are at least two different issues in the Polanski case: (1) he raped Geimer and (2) he fled from trial. Even if we granted that the time lapse does mitigate the first (though I’m not suggesting such a view), the time lapse cannot mitigate the second. It has been a long time since the incident, but that’s because Polanski fled the trial.

Polanski’s flight was the cause of the time lapse that prevented this issue from being resolved, and thus it would be incoherent to treat the flight as a mitigating condition for this entire incident. While it has indeed been a long time since this all happened, that’s entirely due to Polanski’s evasion.

As an aside, I’m not even sure if it would change our intuitions if he’d been conscripted into the Army to fight in foreign lands for 32 years, only then to return home and face the charges. In that case, we might have the sense that he was denied that chance to deal with these issues in a timely manner. But in this case, Polanski did something terrible, illegally fled prosecution, and now his supporters are hoping the government isn’t still mad.

Furthermore, the mind shudders when imagining the rippling implications that would result if successful flight from prosecution somehow could reduce the punishment for a crime.

• He’s suffered enough.

Polanski actually offered this justification in the 60 Minutes interview a year after the incident. He actually said that he’d suffered terribly during the months following the event, presumably because of the publicity and the prosecution. But it isn’t clear that he suffered any more than any other well-known figure who committed such an act. It probably sucks to be accused of drugging and raping a young girl. But it kind of goes with the territory if you’ve actually, you know, drugged and raped a young girl.

To be charitable to this argument, I’d prefer to widen the scope to include all 32 years which might have contained suffering that derived from his act. Polanski’s been living in Europe (moving back and forth between France and Switzerland) and making successful movies. He’s beloved in France (if, for some odd reason, you didn’t already hate the French, this gives you ample cause) where he resides in Paris.

He’s wealthy enough to have a home is Gstaad, and I’d like to pause the bio there. Gstaad might be the single most beautiful town in the entire world. I was born and raised in Carmel, California, which, when I was growing up at least, was arguably one of the most beautiful small towns in North America. I traveled through Gstaad in my 20’s, and please let me assure you, Gstaad makes Carmel look like Tijuana. It’s literally the model for those Swiss Miss commercials.

So try as I might, I just can’t see the suffering. If Polanski’s life over the last 32 years constitutes “suffering”, I think it’s a species of suffering for which most of us would gladly swap our tedious passing of days.

• But his parent’s were killed in the Holocaust and the Manson Family killed his wife.

Both terrible circumstances without a doubt. But I’d want to point out that there are many people whose parents were killed in the Holocaust who don’t rape children. In fact, I haven’t ever heard anyone argue that Holocaust survivors or their children are even more likely to rape than the general population (in fact, I think even the suggestion of such a correlation would be considered anti-Semitic). So the parents died-in-a-death-camp bit, as terrible as it is, fails as a causal explanation for Polanski’s action.

About the wife being killed by the Mansons—that admittedly sucks (and what are the odds)? But again, there are other people whose entire families have been brutally slain who don’t drug and molest children. Here again, I’d venture to guess that there isn’t even a positive correlation.

The truth-truth about the rape-rape:

Many feel that the only reason Polanski wasn’t taken into custody years ago is that he’s a talented filmmaker/celebrity. In fact, the most striking part of this story is not that the Nazis or the Mansons murdered his family, but that he’s a famous director whose movies have been watched by many millions of people.

It’s really hard to believe that we’d be talking about this if it were a poor black man that raped a young girl and then fled prosecution. It’s also fairly certain that there wouldn’t be a petition going around Hollywood.

So the question seems to be, can a person’s talent mitigate a serious crime? Or should there be different rules for the rich and famous?

One last thing. I know I’ve beat this drum too much, but can we really reconcile the following: Plaxico Burress is going to prison for two years for bringing a gun into a club and accidentally shooting himself, and at least some high-profile people want Roman Polanski to walk after drugging and raping a 13 year-old girl. I mean, really…

Article by Trent Teti of Blueprint LSAT Preparation