The Practice virgin’s diary – Everybody’s begging for favors

(Season 6, Episodes 10-11)

The Practice has a rather grating method for providing us with a rundown of what’s going on during any given episode. Our favorite attorneys will be giving their clients news, when the client exclaims, “What’s going on?” And it’s always said in some desperate, “I’m being persecuted,” sort of way. Usually when it’s completely inappropriate, too. And also usually when it’s completely understandable what it is that’s going on. In fact, it’s so plainly clear, that every client who says it seems just a wee bit insane. Maybe they’re building an insanity plea?

6.10 “Eyewitness”

Favors are a big part of life, and they definitely play a large role on The Practice, but methinks the gang has begun to push it a bit too far. Ellenor, defending an old client facing a mandatory sentencing for cumulative convictions, asks old friend ADA Mitch Wheeler (Scott Cohen) to do her a solid. The whole sexual quid pro quo thing aside (because it was really dumb), she thought it completely reasonable to ask an ADA to give her client six months instead of 10 years, or however long the new guidelines would dictate. Seriously? That makes sense to her? On what planet?

Lindsay and Jimmy’s murder trial was really interesting. I actually thought that the minister (Tim Guinee) whose “congregant” had confessed to him about committing the murder was really covering for himself. And I think the judge was 100% right not to allow the testimony at trial, because the minister was providing no information. However, that means that he shouldn’t have set aside the jury’s guilty verdict, because there was no proof that someone else had done it. Sometimes the “doing the right thing” part of this show is so completely counter-intuitive and nonsensical. And that the defendant and the minister were actually lovers? That’s just stupid.

6.11 “The Test”

People are infatuated with Jeffrey Dean Morgan, for some reason completely unfathomable to me. So you know I wasn’t happy to see him on this episode as a “wrongfully accused” rapist. It drives me crazy to hear about innocent people who’ve had their lives stolen from them by the justice system for one reason or another, but Lindsay asking Helen for a favor to run a DNA test, with no legal basis whatsoever, is so completely bogus. It makes the entire system about whose lawyer knows the most important people, instead of justice being served. For that reason alone I was turned off by the entire incident, and hoped he’d be proven innocent on the second murder, but still held on the first for lack of exonerating evidence (the sample had deteriorated). But it was crazy to see a thin, young Jeremy Ratchford (Vera on Cold Case).

As for Bobby, he completely screwed the pooch by giving his client, Michael Cudlitz (better as a cop than a con), up to the police. He was afraid he was dead? Come on! Bobby gets on his high-and-mighty, posturing, “I’m right and you’re wrong” soapbox whenever he’s ordering people around out of court, and then in court he bends every law under the sun. I was rooting for Cudlitz’s character to kill him when they were fighting in his cell, because at this point Bobby’s nothing more than a bumbling idiot.

Jeremy Ratchford was the only thing that made this episode worth watching.

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Apr 02, 2010 @ 15:00 EST5EDT