Friday, March 3, 2006
TV
So, while we are eating dinner we decide to turn on TV. There is Conviction, the show I had downloaded in iTunes, but it's there, so we watch it — well, some of it.
What's right:
Two actors are very good: the bumbling novice woman attorney and the conscientious black attorney both stood out, outdoing the material. The caring attorney is actually so good I didn't recognize him at first — he is the actor who played Angel's gang-member-good-guy cohort in, what else, Angel. Also in the show: the actor who was the boyfriend in Six Feet Under and is presented as the irresistible boy-candy character. He has an interesting, sculptural face. But he is an actor — he is supposed to be expressive. Too impassive, skeletal — he has a dancer's mask of a face — you just watch him.
And that was the good. The not so good:
Well, once again you have a show that looks like it came out of a factory. The writers seem to have no frame of reference other than other TV shows. The default dark gritty interiors seem to speak to the 1940's but are without referent; even old municipal court buildings have modern lighting these days— things are brightly lit in the halls of justice. The opening theme sounded like a rip-off of Alabama3 — the group whose music is often used for the Sopranos. The actors are almost uniformly dark haired and about the same age. Brainless casting — there should be clear demarcations in appearance; and who would have guessed it? — terrible writing. An example of the writing: the caring black attorney comes into a room with a battered woman who is being interviewed by someone in law enforcement. He says to the law enforcement rep, “Does she speak English?” Do you think a guy who was a caring attorney would speak around the victim — as though she is an object to be discussed? What are the producers of this show thinking?