David E. Kelley has pretty much ruined me for legal dramas. I don't accept anything less than gripping twists, heart wrenching and relevant story lines, humor and fluid relationships between characters that grow and change.
Maybe that's why NBC's new legal drama, "Conviction," falls short in my mind.
The show centers on an ensemble cast of young (and hot) prosecutors in Manhattan. They are young, so they have life lessons to learn in the courtroom, and hot, so they have a lot of sex with each other.
The gritty cases featured in the pilot are similar to the cases from the many "Law & Order" shows, which makes sense because Dick Wolf had a hand in both. And like "Law & Order," the show pits the good guys — prosecutors and cops — against the bad guys — criminals and defense attorneys.
But that's basically where the similarities end. This show, like "The Practice" or its lighter spin-off, "Boston Legal," focuses on the young lawyers themselves — their lives and how the job affects them.
I get the idea. Let's sex up law the way "Grey's Anatomy" has sexed up medicine. It would probably work, and still maybe could, if their lives were a little more interesting and a little less stereotypical.
In the pilot, we first meet Nick Potter, played by Jordan Bridges. He's a rich boy who has slid by on his family's name, but now wants to leave his high-paying job at a private firm to slum it in the district attorney's office so he can "try cases."
Of course, he's in way over his head at the frantic office and actually manages to get someone killed his first week there.
Jim Steele is the deputy district attorney who hires Nick. The writers were not trying to be subtle when they named Steele's character. As we learn from his interview with Nick, he's tough — like steel. He has a bit of a temper and likes to slam things when he's angry. He also threatens to arrest a witness who doesn't want to testify because she's afraid for her life. He tells her they're building a case against her, even though they know she didn't do anything wrong. See, he's tough. Much tougher than pesky little laws.
Then there's the equally tough assistant district attorney Jessica Rossi, who has some sort of weird relationship with Jim that involves really awkward and disturbing sex, the womanizing, hung-over Brian Peluso, the ambitious and egotistical Billy Desmond, and, finally, the neurotic and insecure Christina Finn.
The problem with the pilot is that it's predictable. Christina, who decides to take a case to trial simply because she's never tried a case before, screws up so much in the beginning that the judge is sustaining objections before they're even voiced and the bailiff is telling her how to phrase her questioning. And yet, she somehow finds a way to pull it together in the end.
And Billy Desmond has never lost a case because he refuses to try cases he can't win. Brian calls him on it, but Billy just walks away. I smell a life lesson about the importance of winning and losing coming on.
The show certainly has potential — if the characters are a little more developed and interact with each other a little bit more, I might care about what happens to them. But from what I saw in the pilot, it's a typical legal drama — people butt heads, look pensive, struggle, say things a little too good to be realistic, receive gifts from beyond the grave and wear snappy suits.
And after the countless legal dramas that have come and gone, typical just doesn't cut it anymore.
"Conviction" premieres at 10 p.m. Friday on NBC.
