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'Harry's Law' Needs to Ease Up on the Quirk, Emphasize Kathy Bates
by Joel Keller, posted Jan 17th 2011 9:00AM
When I spoke to David E. Kelley last week, he was quick to admit that his new show, 'Harry's Law,' is a bit of a risky move for him and NBC.Not because it's an unusual show or something no one's ever seen before, mind you. "The production values of shows have become so sophisticated that to ask an audience to be patient, to sit in the courtroom and listen to Q&A's, I mean, it's just, it's a bit old fashioned. And this show is a bit old fashioned," he said.
After watching the first two episodes, I definitely agree with him. It has all the hallmarks of a Kelley series: quirky characters and setting, cases that touch upon current societal issues, long courtroom speeches. Unfortunately, in this case, that's not such a good thing.
What the show does have going for it is a high-wattage star in Kathy Bates. She plays Harriett "Harry" Korn, a noted Cincinnati patent attorney who gets fired from her job at a big firm, mainly because she stopped caring about her work. Through a series of concidental accidents, she decides to open a jack-of-all-trades legal office in an abandoned shoe store in a developing neighborhood.
In this office, Bates is joined by her perky assistant Jenna (Bittany Storm), who knows what to do with the shoes the last tenant left behind, and junior associate Adam (Nate Corddry), who left his huge firm out of admiration for Harry, as well as a desire to change things up after a huge break-up.
The firm fields cases of all kinds, mostly walk-ins from the neighborhood. In the first episode, for instance, she defends a college-bound kid (Aml Ameen) who's about to go to away for a long time for a relatively small charge, thanks to the three strikes rule. And in the second episode, Harry defends a grandmother who robs a liquor store to pay her rent. Both episodes have Harry facing off against district attorney Josh Peyton (Paul McCrane), who's prickly and tends to repeat the last words of a sentence.
McCrane's character is the epitome of why the first two episodes were tough to watch. Kelley is great at making characters full of tics and quirks, but the first two episodes of 'Harry's Law' are so jam-packed with quirkiness, it's hard to figure out where the realness of the characters begin. In the first five minutes of the show, Harry is fallen on and then, when she recovers, is hit by a car. Both accidents work in her favor. A seeming thug (Johnny Ray Gill) who comes into Harry's office seeking protection money really has a heart of gold underneath the gang wear. Judges let Harry do her signature Kelley courtroom soliloquies even though she's never had to litigate before.
What's going to draw viewers to 'Harry's Law' is Bates; she plays Harry with her usual combination of likable grouchiness. Harry doesn't have any family and has become disenfranchised by the law; this storefront law firm is her opportunity to help people and reinvigorate her own life and career. The more we explore that, the more we see Harry out of the courtroom and thrust into unusual situations, the better this show will be.
Kelley did mention in our interview that viewers will see more of that as the series goes on. Let's just hope that he has the chance to make that adjustment; the bones of a good series are here, it's just needs a little time to shed a bit of its "Kelley-ness."
'Harry's Law' debuts Monday, January 17 at 10PM ET on NBC.
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