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Times when you realize nobody escapes the weirdo obsession of fandom...last night I read this tiny little thing, barely anything, but it happened to reference a pairing I absolutely hate and damn if it didn't make me want to jump in an argue it! It really made me stop and wonder about what it is about pairings. This wasn’t a Meta-argument either, it was a fic--a short one, and the pairing isn't even a canon pairing. Yet reading it it’s like I felt it was some threat to my own preferred pairing. Objectively it's so stupid, but somehow I felt like somebody writing down a scene of their own pairing changed the status of my own preferred pairings. Yipes.
Don't worry; I didn't actually jump in to say how this person's innocent two sentences made me remember why I hated this pairing, but still just the impulse to want to say something was a little scary. To each his own in fandom but OMG I HATE THAT PAIRING DON'T MAKE ME READ IT YOU TAKE THAT BACK!!
Ahem. Yeah. In other news, I've seen this new show Justice about three times because it's on after Bones and I still don't like it.
The premise of Justice is that it's a high-profile defense law firm in Los Angeles and you're watching the team defend a client. The gimmick is that at the end of the show they show you what actually happened. So far our defense lawyers have always been defending innocent people (or one person who did it but it was self-defense) so they haven't yet had to show you a murder where it turns out they just let the guy go free.
I think there are a number of reasons I don’t much like the show. First, it's very artificial-sounding all the time. I feel like the actors are always speaking expositional dialogue just to keep the audience up to speed: "We've got to prove that he might not have done it. But remember, we can't use that one piece of evidence the judge ruled out in the last scene! And remember the jury person said the test jury didn't like it when we did that so we have to think of something else!" It gives me the feeling like either they think I'm an idiot or else they are, somehow. Originally I thought the show was going to be one case for the whole season, but cramming it into one show makes it all seem very formulaic: get the expert, tell us about manipulating juries, come up with your story etc.
Then there are problems that I think come from the premise. As I said, this is a high-profile firm, which makes it seem like the show is gleefully playing on the sleazy-lawyer stereotype. I mean, it's hard to not be aware that this kind of defense just isn't available to everyone, and that's disturbing. I missed how the guy this week managed to get them since he didn't seem rich, but it's kind of depressing to think of how unfair it is that other people can't afford this firm.
Then there's the issue of the title: Justice. The protagonists are defense lawyers, so that gives you some potential problems in terms of justice being done because they might not be defending an innocent person. There's one guy in the firm, the token idealist I think, who needs to believe the client's innocent before defending him or something like that. Basically it's just once in a while somebody will make some comment about how, "Oh yeah, right, you need to believe they're innocent!" And that means he gets to walk around earnestly telling everybody how important it is that the person goes free. I think that alone is a little nod to the grey area they've gotten themselves into that they need this guy so badly.
It doesn’t make me like him much, though, nor do I like the other lawyers. As much as I hate to sound like the jurors they talk about on the show, most of the lawyers do seem unlikable and arrogant. It might work better if the show acknowledged that but I’m not sure it’s intentional. The one thing that seemed a good sign on the show was that Victor Garber is in it, and he’s the one character who seems to be at least embracing the idea that he’s got the potential for a "love to hate" kind of character, but it’s not enough. There are so many shows on TV based around teams of people trying to solve crimes and make the world better that way (the show comes on right after Bones, as I said) that this bunch comes off really badly by comparison, neither bad but fun or flawed but good.
It's not that I think defense lawyers are unethical--they're important. It's that I don't know how really well-prepared the show is to portray them in a compelling way. To illustrate the problem, I'm going to compare the show to Law & Order, which also has lawyers trying cases. L&O has for its protagonists the DA office, so they're prosecuting. On L&O it's the defense lawyers who throw a monkey wrench into the work of the protagonists, getting evidence thrown out or suppressed, etc. Sometimes that's frustrating when you feel the protagonists lost something they should have been able to use because it's important to the case and more importantly to the jury hearing the truth.
The point is that the way it's portrayed on L&O the prosecution is tries to punish an actual guilty party, and sometimes they change their case when they get new evidence that makes it seem like somebody else is guilty. Occasionally they have moral dilemmas over what the person deserves etc. Occasionally they'll get a defense lawyer character you don't like, but for the most part the defense council are not bad guys. In fact, I think they usually just come across as professionals doing a job just like the DA lawyers—especially some of the public defenders. Even as they're making things difficult you rarely feel outraged at the defense lawyer him/herself because that's their job and it's not like you would want to do away with defense lawyers.
On Justice it's the defense lawyers who are the protagonists, so the prosecution has to be in the role of making things difficult. And that's a problem because unlike the defense on L&O, who come across as just as professional and valuable as the DA only doing a different job with different goals, the prosecution on Justice often comes across as malicious, smugly trying to keep the defense from evidence. Last night, for instance, the defense sent a lawyer and an expert to an autopsy, and the prosecuting lawyer kept trying to make things difficult for them--he tried to keep them getting a picture of a cut on the corpse's foot, for instance, that backed up the defendant's story of how he got her blood in his car; he tried to keep them from turning the corpse over because the back had nothing to do with the case.
That's not just trying to win, that's trying to keep the truth from coming out and it's disturbing to watch. It's like the show sometimes feels like they have to make the defense lawyers good guys by making the prosecution bad guys.
Part of the trouble with this, I realized, is that the two sides doing the same type thing leads to very different results. If the defense wins on L&O, and the prosecution was right and the person is guilty, then what happens is a guilty person goes free. On Justice, if the prosecution wins and the defense was right and the person is innocent, an innocent person goes to jail--and that's a lot worse. There tends to be a real difference on L&O between cases where the guilty person has just gotten off and cases where the guilty person going free is a danger to others (in fact, I can think of more than one show when a dangerous criminal went free and was promptly killed by someone outside the court). The DA’s office may be frustrated to see the guilty unpunished, but it's more important that they go to jail if they mean danger to others.
It's not that I can't believe that a prosecuting lawyer could do something wrong--they can and do. It's not like we haven't had innocent people sitting on death row while another person is in jail having confessed to the crime for which they're scheduled to die. People have been unfairly tried and convicted. It's just that when you're putting together a fictional show, there's a real question of who you're rooting for and why, and it's fine to be rooting for the defense lawyer, particularly if the person is innocent. But I think you still need to acknowledge the different jobs of the two sides, and let them both be part of a functional, if imperfect, justice system. Because at the moment they seem to have created a really cynical universe where very few people, if any, actually care about the truth at all.
I should mention as an aside that the jury doesn't ever come across well either. The idea that people on a jury could actually follow the logic or truth of an argument seems to never even be a possibility. It's just all about how to manipulate them into liking who you want them to like. Both sides are just telling a "story" and the winner has the story the jury likes better, usually based on their own prejudices, not the story that's better proven or more likely true.
Don't worry; I didn't actually jump in to say how this person's innocent two sentences made me remember why I hated this pairing, but still just the impulse to want to say something was a little scary. To each his own in fandom but OMG I HATE THAT PAIRING DON'T MAKE ME READ IT YOU TAKE THAT BACK!!
Ahem. Yeah. In other news, I've seen this new show Justice about three times because it's on after Bones and I still don't like it.
The premise of Justice is that it's a high-profile defense law firm in Los Angeles and you're watching the team defend a client. The gimmick is that at the end of the show they show you what actually happened. So far our defense lawyers have always been defending innocent people (or one person who did it but it was self-defense) so they haven't yet had to show you a murder where it turns out they just let the guy go free.
I think there are a number of reasons I don’t much like the show. First, it's very artificial-sounding all the time. I feel like the actors are always speaking expositional dialogue just to keep the audience up to speed: "We've got to prove that he might not have done it. But remember, we can't use that one piece of evidence the judge ruled out in the last scene! And remember the jury person said the test jury didn't like it when we did that so we have to think of something else!" It gives me the feeling like either they think I'm an idiot or else they are, somehow. Originally I thought the show was going to be one case for the whole season, but cramming it into one show makes it all seem very formulaic: get the expert, tell us about manipulating juries, come up with your story etc.
Then there are problems that I think come from the premise. As I said, this is a high-profile firm, which makes it seem like the show is gleefully playing on the sleazy-lawyer stereotype. I mean, it's hard to not be aware that this kind of defense just isn't available to everyone, and that's disturbing. I missed how the guy this week managed to get them since he didn't seem rich, but it's kind of depressing to think of how unfair it is that other people can't afford this firm.
Then there's the issue of the title: Justice. The protagonists are defense lawyers, so that gives you some potential problems in terms of justice being done because they might not be defending an innocent person. There's one guy in the firm, the token idealist I think, who needs to believe the client's innocent before defending him or something like that. Basically it's just once in a while somebody will make some comment about how, "Oh yeah, right, you need to believe they're innocent!" And that means he gets to walk around earnestly telling everybody how important it is that the person goes free. I think that alone is a little nod to the grey area they've gotten themselves into that they need this guy so badly.
It doesn’t make me like him much, though, nor do I like the other lawyers. As much as I hate to sound like the jurors they talk about on the show, most of the lawyers do seem unlikable and arrogant. It might work better if the show acknowledged that but I’m not sure it’s intentional. The one thing that seemed a good sign on the show was that Victor Garber is in it, and he’s the one character who seems to be at least embracing the idea that he’s got the potential for a "love to hate" kind of character, but it’s not enough. There are so many shows on TV based around teams of people trying to solve crimes and make the world better that way (the show comes on right after Bones, as I said) that this bunch comes off really badly by comparison, neither bad but fun or flawed but good.
It's not that I think defense lawyers are unethical--they're important. It's that I don't know how really well-prepared the show is to portray them in a compelling way. To illustrate the problem, I'm going to compare the show to Law & Order, which also has lawyers trying cases. L&O has for its protagonists the DA office, so they're prosecuting. On L&O it's the defense lawyers who throw a monkey wrench into the work of the protagonists, getting evidence thrown out or suppressed, etc. Sometimes that's frustrating when you feel the protagonists lost something they should have been able to use because it's important to the case and more importantly to the jury hearing the truth.
The point is that the way it's portrayed on L&O the prosecution is tries to punish an actual guilty party, and sometimes they change their case when they get new evidence that makes it seem like somebody else is guilty. Occasionally they have moral dilemmas over what the person deserves etc. Occasionally they'll get a defense lawyer character you don't like, but for the most part the defense council are not bad guys. In fact, I think they usually just come across as professionals doing a job just like the DA lawyers—especially some of the public defenders. Even as they're making things difficult you rarely feel outraged at the defense lawyer him/herself because that's their job and it's not like you would want to do away with defense lawyers.
On Justice it's the defense lawyers who are the protagonists, so the prosecution has to be in the role of making things difficult. And that's a problem because unlike the defense on L&O, who come across as just as professional and valuable as the DA only doing a different job with different goals, the prosecution on Justice often comes across as malicious, smugly trying to keep the defense from evidence. Last night, for instance, the defense sent a lawyer and an expert to an autopsy, and the prosecuting lawyer kept trying to make things difficult for them--he tried to keep them getting a picture of a cut on the corpse's foot, for instance, that backed up the defendant's story of how he got her blood in his car; he tried to keep them from turning the corpse over because the back had nothing to do with the case.
That's not just trying to win, that's trying to keep the truth from coming out and it's disturbing to watch. It's like the show sometimes feels like they have to make the defense lawyers good guys by making the prosecution bad guys.
Part of the trouble with this, I realized, is that the two sides doing the same type thing leads to very different results. If the defense wins on L&O, and the prosecution was right and the person is guilty, then what happens is a guilty person goes free. On Justice, if the prosecution wins and the defense was right and the person is innocent, an innocent person goes to jail--and that's a lot worse. There tends to be a real difference on L&O between cases where the guilty person has just gotten off and cases where the guilty person going free is a danger to others (in fact, I can think of more than one show when a dangerous criminal went free and was promptly killed by someone outside the court). The DA’s office may be frustrated to see the guilty unpunished, but it's more important that they go to jail if they mean danger to others.
It's not that I can't believe that a prosecuting lawyer could do something wrong--they can and do. It's not like we haven't had innocent people sitting on death row while another person is in jail having confessed to the crime for which they're scheduled to die. People have been unfairly tried and convicted. It's just that when you're putting together a fictional show, there's a real question of who you're rooting for and why, and it's fine to be rooting for the defense lawyer, particularly if the person is innocent. But I think you still need to acknowledge the different jobs of the two sides, and let them both be part of a functional, if imperfect, justice system. Because at the moment they seem to have created a really cynical universe where very few people, if any, actually care about the truth at all.
I should mention as an aside that the jury doesn't ever come across well either. The idea that people on a jury could actually follow the logic or truth of an argument seems to never even be a possibility. It's just all about how to manipulate them into liking who you want them to like. Both sides are just telling a "story" and the winner has the story the jury likes better, usually based on their own prejudices, not the story that's better proven or more likely true.
