January 29, 2010 4:52 PM

Review: The Deep End is Shallow and in Need of a Dialogue Coach

Posted by Brian Baxter

UPDATE: Feb. 22, 9:24 a.m. The Deep End has been cancelled.

In Saturday Night Live's original incarnation, one of the recurring characters played by Dan Aykroyd was a  tuxedo-clad critic named Leonard Pinth-Garnell whose pithy reviews of substandard cultural events--"Astonishingly ill-chosen!" "Exquisitely awful!" "Unrelentingly bad!"--were hilarious send-ups of PBS's Masterpiece Theatre.

Having struggled through two episodes of ABC's new law firm dramedy The Deep End (TDE), The Am Law Daily thinks it's time for Pinth-Garnell to make a comeback.

Since we first wrote about TDE earlier this month--the show is the creation of David Hemingson, a former Loeb & Loeb associate--there has been no shortage of scathing reviews of the series. One poor soul survived liveblogging the pilot episode, which aired last week. (This rare positive review from the Hollywood Reporter quickly found it's way to an ABC Web site.)

When our sibling publication Texas Lawyer caught up with Hemingson while on location in Dallas last fall, he described TDE as a blend of Grey's Anatomy, Entourage, and The Devil Wears Prada. That's just one reason why TDE fails--it tries to be too many things when it should just stick to one.

And then there's the dialogue, which makes George Lucas's work sound almost Shakespearean. A quick sampler:

"We work 24-7, we have no time for romance."

"That's what I'd love to change about the system. It's all about rules and not about justice. The weaker party always gets exploited...I'm having the same situation with my boyfriend."

"Everybody's scared. The ledges are crowded. But it's what we do in the worst of times that tells the world who we really are."

The onslaught continues, which is a shame, because many of the actors appearing in TDE have talent. Billy Zane (last sinking ship: Titantic) and Clancy Brown (the corrupt prison guard from The Shawshank Redemption and famed Williams & Connolly litigator Aubrey Daniel from The Informant!) play co-managing partners of fictional Los Angeles firm Sterling Huddle Oppenheim & Craft.

Alas, despite the show's title, neither character exhibits much depth. Zane is an eat-what-you-kill figure known as "The Prince of Darkness," while Brown handles the kind-and-wise-leader-with-a-yearning-for-pro- bono role. Everyone else is constantly in your face, trying to tell you who they are and what they want. If only life were that simple.

We're willing to overlook the blatant departures from law firm reality: first-year associates meeting and recruiting clients, arguing before judges, second-chairing major class action cases, and even Zane's character being married to the firm's head of litigation while having an affair with a paralegal. We realize no one wants to spend an hour watching those same associates sob softly as they check Bates stamps during document review.

But TDE is classic lazy television. With characters devoid of depth and scattered storylines, there's little else to hang on to. At its core, the show is a romantic comedy for the small screen. If it's not, then perhaps Hemingson is setting us up for a big sexual harassment plot twist. (A group of Am Law associates interviewed by Texas Lawyer for their thoughts on TDE seemed to agree.)

Thankfully, there's other legal fare out there for those who want it. While we're admittedly not familiar with Damages, a legal drama that airs on FX, The New York Times praised the show in a review this week for its take on the Bernard Madoff scandal. At NBC, meanwhile, the network's late night implosion could soon  result in a drama based on SCOTUSblog founder and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld partner Thomas Goldstein. And on Broadway there's David Mamet's Race, which takes on the touchy subject of racism at a law firm.

TDE's lone highlight in the episodes we watched? François Chau, the Cambodian-American actor best known for playing Dr. Pierre Chang on the hit ABC show Lost. Chau had a few forgettable lines as an expert witness in TDE's second episode. But his appearance did temporarily snap us out of our stupor to scroll forward on our DVR to record the season premier of Lost next week.

As for TDE, we'll close with one more Pinth-Garnell catchphrase: "There...That wasn't so good now, was it?"

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