The new Outlaw or the new independent?
While catching up on fall TV premiers this weekend I caught the first two episodes of NBC’s Outlaw with Jimmy Smits. I’m not a huge fan of the courtroom drama, (i’m not one of the millions going into Law and Order withdrawl now that it has moved to the west coast) but I thought the concept of a sitting supreme court justice going into retirement to return to private practice was interesting enough to warrant at least a first look.
Unfortunately the first episode played all the usual Hollywood cards of “conservatives are evil, haters who are out to screw the underdog, and the liberals are the saviors, out to put the big bad conservatives in their place and save the underdog. Smits’ justice is haunted by the recent death of his ACLU loving father who was at odd’s with Smits’ conservative justice there to enforce the rules and thereby ensure society does not dissolve into chaos.
The first half of the pilot is devoted to setting up the internal conflict that Smits must leave behind is bad conservative days and redeem himself by working for the little people. And by the end of the episode he had saved a man wrongfully accused by dirty cops and an inept justice system. Just the type of happy ending justice served in one hour formula Hollywood loves.
I almost didn’t click on the next episode, but the caption said it had to do with an Arizona cop and the new Arizona immigration law. Curious to see if NBC would have the political courage to do anything but lambaste Arizona, paint cops as racist and script flowery civil rights closing arguments, I started to watch.
To my surprise and the surprise of all of the other characters on the show Smits’ character decided to defend the cop. The details of the case could have been lifted directly from any number of newspaper articles in Phoenix or Tuscon (where the episode was set). The script deftly drew a line between recklessly accusing someone of racism and, the where and when to challenge a law you don’t agree with. The whole episode reminded me of the episode in American history when then lawyer John Adams, chose to defend the british soldiers accused of firing into a crowd of colonists. He chose the unpopular case in order to ensure the soldiers get a fair trial. Almost all of them were acquitted, something that probably would not have happened if the popular opinion of the day were allowed to prevail.
It was refreshing to see an attempt at providing a balanced view come out of Hollywood. While the show still has a decidedly left lean, it is at least not doing a cannonball into the deep end of the left ocean. NBC at least remembers character development and arc in it’s storytelling by showing that even though Smit’s has had a change of heart from his “big bad conservative ways” he was still a conservative supreme court justice and it would be an unbelievable character trait for him to throw that all away in the first episode never for it to return.
The current political climate in this country shows that we are split between left and right, and more and more people are leaving the political parties to become “independent” For an entertainment show to be “cutting edge” now a days it no longer can rely on the liberal agenda. Viewers (or at least I) am tired of having the liberal agenda parroted back to me by “entertainment” shows. Lets hope Outlaw keeps going down the path of “independence” and doesn’t fall into the “the left will save us” philosophy of past shows such as The West Wing. I am going to keep watching for now, to see how it plays out.
