Year:  1963
Genre:  TV series, Lawyer, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Raymond Burr, Barbara Hale
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     The best thing about Perry Mason was Raymond Burr and his (now almost cartoonish) gravitas. But the second best thing I think was the dated and campy way they titled each episode. The Case Of The Nebulous Nephew! The Shifty Shoebox! The Festive Felon and the Devious Delinquent! The Badgered Brother and the Bouncing Boomerang!

     Sometimes though, alliteration doesn’t cut it, and they go with something equally clever and giggle-worthy, like my personal favourite, the Case of the Drowsy Mosquito! The great titles of most of the episodes make the lame titles seem that much sadder. Where was the effort on the Bigamous Spouse, the Floating Stones, or the Deadly Verdict? All of these titles can be seen on Season Seven Volume One of Perry Mason, out August 21^st on DVD from Paramount Home Entertainment.

     You’ll also get the episodes The Wednesday Woman, the Accosted Accountant and the Decadent Dean, as well as guest appearances from some reasonably well-known actresses like Pippa Scott and Julie Adams, most famous as the hottie girlfriend in Creature From The Black Lagoon. Other than that, you’ll get Perry Mason solving crimes. And that’s always fun to watch.

Year:  1962
Genre:  TV series, Lawyer, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Raymond Burr, Barbara Hale
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     In most cop shows, the cops use some varied techniques to catch the bad guys.  In Blue Bloods, Donnie Wahlberg just beats everyone up until someone finally turns out to be the killer.  In CSI and NCIS, they examine forensic evidence until the killer is behind bars.  In Criminal Minds they investigate his brain until they find him.  And in Hawaii Five-O, they just drive around in fancy cars, banter a bit and flex a little, and eventually the bad guy just seems to show up for some reason.

     But it wasn’t always this way.  No, sometimes there were shows where the cops didn’t catch the bad guys.  In fact, there were shows where the cops were so incompetent that they always arrested the wrong people.  One of those shows was Perry Mason back in the 50s and 60s.  Season Six, volume one comes to DVD October 4th from Paramount Home Entertainment. 

     The DVD set features fourteen episodes where Perry Mason masterfully  defends all kinds of wrongfully accused folks.  It’s convenient for him, and for the show, that his clients are always innocent of the murders they are accused of committing.  Not so convenient, however, for the cops.  They try to catch the killer of an old book dealer.  They arrest the wrong woman.  They go after the killer of a super rich heir.  They arrest the wrong woman.  They investigate the shooting of a nefarious boxing promoter, and arrest the wrong man.

     At what point does the police department start getting embarassed?  It’s always the same cops arresting the wrong people.  It’s always the police department who end up with egg on their face.  In fact, to add insult to injury, Perry Mason himself actually solves the crimes and finds the real killers!  The cops here have like a nine percent conviction rate. 

     If I was a baker, and I made tasty cakes NINE percent of the time, I would lose my job.  But these cops somehow keep their jobs, and leave Perry Mason to clean up after them.  I’m cool with it though.  After all, competent cops would make for a less interesting show, and I’m all about some Perry Mason.

Year:   2010, 2011
Genre:  TV series, Lawyer, Drama
Country:  United States
Languages:  English
Starring:  Julianna Margulies, Archie Panjabi, Chris Noth, Matt Czuchry, Christine Baranski, Graham Phillips, Makenzie Vega, Josh Charles
Guest stars:  Alan Cumming, Titus Welliver, Sarah Silverman, Miranda Cosgrove, Michael J. Fox, Ken Leung, Jerry Stiller, Rita Wilson, America Ferrera, Lou Dobbs (as himself – of course), Fred Thompson 
Eye candy:  Margulies, Panjabi, Wilson, Silverman
Creators:  Robert King, Michelle King
Producers:  Tony Scott, Ridley Scott
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I said of Season One of The Good Wife that it was a legal drama pretending to be something else.  In that case, I meant it pretended to be about this woman (Julianna Margulies) and her strained relationship with her philandering politician husband (Chris Noth), when in reality it was a good, solid, compelling legal drama.  The rest was just window dressing.

     In the second season, out September 13th from Paramount Home Entertainment, I am of a different opinion.  In the second season, the show is more about the relationship, Peter’s re-election bid, and the office politics than it is about the actual courtroom.

     Kalinda (Archie Panjabi) is relegated to a secondary, (fairly tedious) game of one-upmanship with the firm’s new investigator.  She is involved in a bombshell later in the season – although when you think about this “bombshell”, it should likely NOT have been as big a deal as it was…

     The season is kind of all over the place – the kids get involved with dad’s campaign and screw things up.  The firm is going to split, then they’re not, then they are.  Alicia is getting along better with her husband, then she isn’t, then the bombshell.  His campaign right-hand man is screwing things up for her and Will, who still may or may not get together.

     And in the middle of all this, some court cases.  Miranda Cosgrove (iCarly) shows up as a young music superstar accused of attempted murder, much like Miranda Cosgrove in real life.  Except for the attempted murder.  Michael J. Fox shows up as a cut-throat lawyer and steals the show every time he’s on screen, he’s fabulous.  Other great guest stars include Sarah Silverman, Ken Leung, and Lou Dobbs as himself sowing discord between the partners (especially the left-leaning Christine Baranski).

     In the end, it’s actually the guest stars who carry the bulk of the second season.  They’re good enough to keep it rolling nicely.  Well, Michael J. Fox, Fred Thompson, Miranda Cosgrove and Julianna Margulies who is as magnificent as ever.  I still like The Good Wife a lot, even though it’s quite a bit different for me than it was in Season One.  But just like that first season, I sat down and watched the entire DVD.  As I recommend you do too.

Year:  2003, 2004
Genre:  TV series, Lawyer, Drama
Country:  United States
Languages:  English
Starring:  Simon Baker, Dabney Coleman, Raphael Sbarge, Alan Rosenberg, Wendy Moniz, Amanda Michalka
Guest star:  Zac Efron
Guest director:  Emilio Estevez
Creator:  David Hollander
Run time:  17 hours, 9 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I find myself liking The Guardian less and less.  I guess it no longer matters, because the show is over and the third season is the last one, on DVD February 8th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  I liked the first season, because Simon Baker’s character was interesting – a lawyer busted on drug charges, struggling with inner demons, working for a heartless corporate law firm but forced to do community service with Legal Services where maybe he can find redemption…

     That dichotomy was enough to make this show interesting, if not mesmerizing, for one full season.  But the following two seasons seem to have nowhere else to go.  Oh, there are subplots with foster daughters and stripper murders and Farrah Fawcett.  But none of it has been compelling enough to make me interested in seeing the next episode, let alone the next season.

     The third season opens with a couple of standard episodes – a kid has run away from a traveling carnival, and claims that the carnival director is abusing him.  His mom works at the carnival and can’t go against her boss.  The kid’s father doesn’t want him.  So do you let him stay with the carnival and his mom and his abuser, or do you force the kid into foster care against his will?  Oh, the moral dilemma!

     Then in the next one, a coal company hires the corporate company Nick works for, so he scams people out of their right to sue on behalf of the coal company.  But when he discovers the coal mining operation is making people sick, he enlists the help of the legal services office where he’s doing his community service to help the sick people.  Oh, the moral dilemma!

     The thing is, by now Simon Baker barely seems interested in ANY of these moral dilemmas.  He just sort of coasts around, looking vaguely pained, and says what the script tells him to say.  I’m no longer interested in this character, because this character doesn’t even seem to be interested in himself.  Even when he and his father assault a man following a road rage altercation, and the incident threatens to put Nick’s probation in jeopardy, he doesn’t seem to register much fear.  Or anger.  Or irritation.

     Two seasons ago, I thought Nick was subdued and understated because he was repressing his own tendencies and his own worst nature.  Now I think he’s just a shell of a human being who acts like he cares only because the script tells him that he does.  And if HE no longer cares, I no longer care.  I’m out.

Year:  2009, 2010
Genre:  TV series, Lawyer, Drama
Country:  United States
Languages:  English
Starring:  Julianna Margulies, Archie Panjabi, Chris Noth, Matt Czuchry, Christine Baranski, Graham Phillips, Makenzie Vega, Josh Charles
Guest stars:  Alan Cumming, Mary Beth Peil, Titus Welliver, Martha Plimpton
Eye candy:  Margulies, Panjabi, Emily Bergl
Creators:  Robert King, Michelle King
Producers:  Tony Scott, Ridley Scott
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Much like The Guardian, The Good Wife is a legal drama pretending to be something else.  The premise of the show is that Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) has just discovered that her husband Peter Florrick (Chris Noth) has been having a number of illicit sexual encounters with hookers.  Peter is a Chicago state’s attorney whose political career is derailed by the scandal.  When the show opens, he is in prison thanks to some possibly shady business dealings he had while in office.

     There are ample reasons why a show like this could succeed.  First of all, it’s going to be topical, since every few months another prominent politician gets caught Hiking The Appalachian Trail in Argentina with his mistress or paying three grand an hour for some hooker.  And we hear about it all – Spitzer, Sanford, Clinton, Edwards, Mark Souder, John Ensign…the list goes on and on.  The media often speculates about the wives who almost inexplicably stand by their men during these scandals.

     The Good Wife takes place in Chicago – no shortage of political scandal in Chicago (look only to Rod Blagojevich, most recently).  Alicia is a lawyer (as are Hilary Clinton and Elizabeth Edwards).  The comparisons could go on and on.  But this is just the “premise” of the show, and has little to do with the show itself, at least at first.  (Stay tuned for a spinoff where, instead of hookers, the politician gets caught having gay sex a la Larry Craig, Mark Foley, Eric Massa, etc…)

     At any rate, the political scandal and the whole “how-is-she-handling-it” thing wear off pretty quickly, as the show jumps right into the legal drama.  Alicia, a lawyer before she got married and had kids, goes back to work to make ends meet.  She gets hired on a trial basis by a big legal firm, and from there this is a pretty standard legal drama.  Her clients are always virtuous and right, she always finds the one key piece of evidence that will prove them to be virtuous and right, and she always wins the day.  She’s like a really hot version of Matlock.

     In the meantime, we are constantly reminded that Her Husband Is In Jail.  He appears in every episode.  Everyone Alicia meets mentions her husband.  The current state’s attorney (Titus Welliver) has a vendetta against her and her whole family, and she hate him for exposing her family to the public scandal.  Toward the end of the first season, the focus moves back to Peter and his political career, but only after establishing Alicia’s bonafides as a lawyer, in a very traditional lawyer drama show.

     That being said, this is a very good traditional lawyer drama show.  Margulies is magnificent, even when she has to pay lip service to the political scandal part of the script.  The other lawyers at her firm are terrific (especially the always caustic Christine Baranski as one of the senior partners).  And the best character on the series is Kalinda (the gorgeous Archie Panjabi), the firm’s abrasive, blunt investigator who has a terrific relationship with Alicia.

     The cast, and some good writing, elevate this series above the standard lawyer drama fare we get on TV so often.  The constant references to the mostly-irrelevant husband become irritating, but the continuation of that story makes the first season compelling, and made me want to watch one episode after another.  That’s the best kind of TV series to get on DVD, one where you want to watch the entire thing.  And that’s what you get with The Good Wife Season One, out September 14th from Paramount Home Entertainment.

Year:  2002, 2003
Genre:  TV series, Lawyer, Drama
Country:  United States
Languages:  English
Starring:  Simon Baker, Dabney Coleman, Raphael Sbarge, Alan Rosenberg, Wendy Moniz, Amanda Michalka
Guest star:  Farrah Fawcett, Will Ferrell
Creator:  David Hollander
Run time:  17 hours, 9 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     The Guardian was never very good.  It was a decent lawyer show where the central character was fighting his drug demons and everyone around him was getting into trouble all the time.  But it was never more than lip service when it came to the gritty details surrounding the slick lawyer drama at the centre of it all.  I really like Simon Baker, and I think he’s a great actor to have as the star of a show, but he belongs to The Mentalist far more than he ever did to The Guardian.  This show was just a way to pass the time.

     In the second season of The Guardian, out September 7th from Paramount Home Entertainment, the season opens with Nick (Baker) being arrested for killing a stripper.  Of course we know he didn’t really mean to kill her, and that it was an accident, and that he’ll get off and go back to practicing law right away, likely by episode two.  (As it turns out, it IS by episode two!)  I thought only politicians in comedies killed strippers.  I guess Nick Fallin does too.  By accident though.  The stripper’s mom (Farrah Fawcett) and daughter (Amanda Michalka) become characters throughout the season.  Now there’s an old-person romance going on, AND a little girl that needs to be protected and cared for!

     And the show goes on.  And on, and on, and so forth.  Eventually, it gets to the final episode.  And then – out of nowhere, one of the biggest guest stars I have ever seen on an episode of anything appears!  Normally guest stars are about as big as…well…Farrah Fawcett.  But Will Ferrell?  Will Ferrell!  As a rival lawyer on the final episode of Season Two of The Guardian!  Then again, you have to think this appearance was booked in 2003, when Ferrell wasn’t exactly a gigantic star like he is today.  He had just come off Zoolander, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Boat Trip.  He was in the middle of Old School and Elf, the two movies that really launched him to superstardom.  And this was just before Anchorman.

     Anyway, Will Ferrell or no Will Ferrell, this show remains generic, paying lip service to grittiness and the underbelly of society while remaining a formulaic lawyer show.  And Season Two is no better than Season One.

“You men sure will be boys.”

Year:  2001, 2002
Genre:  TV series, Lawyer, Drama
Country:  United States
Languages:  English
Starring:  Simon Baker, Dabney Coleman, Raphael Sbarge, Alan Rosenberg, Erica Leerhsen, Wendy Moniz
Creator:  David Hollander
Run time:  16 hours 12 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment
DVD extras:  CBS series launch promos

     Simon Baker is pretty darn good.  He has had an extensive television career, in series such as The Mentalist and The Guardian.  And he is always compelling and charming and solid, and his Nick Fallin character is no exception.  The rest of the cast of The Guardian was pretty good too, especially Dabney Coleman as Nick’s father Burton.  In The Guardian, Nick works at his father’s law firm, as a high-end, big money lawyer for corporate clients.  But he is given 1,500 hours of community service after some kind of unidentified, unspecified drug bust, and he goes to work for Legal Services of Pittsburgh.  And he finds a world he never contemplated, and grows as a result…and blah blah blah.

     This all happens very quickly.  In the pilot episode, Nick goes to work for Legal Services and doesn’t really know what he’s doing because he’s never been an attorney in court in this way, and so on and so forth.  He takes the case of a young boy who just witnessed the murder of his mother by his father.  He is now sucked in, and wants to do good, and appears to have changed entirely right in the first episode.  In the second episode (a continuation of the first) he blends his profitable business with his community service, suing a pharmaceutical company on behalf of the boy and his father.  It seems like a conflict of interest, but little comes of that.  He’s just a good lawyer, and that’s all there is to it.

     In the third episode, Fallin tries to find a guy who slept with a prostitute twelve years earlier so he can determine the paternity of a boy and collect back child support.  At no point in the show does anyone question whether that is even possible.  Can a john really pay child support for a child he had with a hooker?  I guess so – no one seems to ask any questions at all about it.  The ethics of this are questionable at best.  But no one questions them.  No one even asks for a paternity test.  Wouldn’t you?  I mean, she’s a hooker.  I would suggest that paternity might be a serious question in this situation.  But everything just seems to work out, because Fallin’s just that good a guy.  And that good a lawyer.

     There are some decent moments as the series goes on – a brief mention is made about a homosexual kid and why he can’t get placed with gay foster parents.  There are revelations about Nick’s father, and his background with labour relations.  There are kids who are lying about being raped and women who trick Nick into representing them.  Parents who hate their gay children, and crack addicts who take babies hostage.  Sometimes it’s totally obvious, other times it’s totally contrived, but Simon Baker makes it consistently watchable.  That doesn’t make it great, but it makes it good enough to see.  The Guardian, Season One comes out on DVD October 27th from Paramount Home Entertainment.

     I like Perry Mason.  Raymond Burr was so grave, and wise, and showed such dogged determination as the titular lawyer that even when the story was silly, or the courtroom scenes strained credibility, the show remained interesting and pretty cool.  As always, Mason takes only the cases of those people falsely accused of murder.  If he was getting guilty people off the hook, he would not, of course, have been nearly so compelling.  Those people have been falsely accused, but almost always have been framed for the crime.  And since it’s always such a convoluted and involved frame-up, getting them off the hook becomes a difficult task.

     Of course, most of these frame jobs are pretty much preposterous.  The idea that someone would dress up in drag, dye their hair blonde, wear high heels, be sure to make a lot of noise after the murder, and steal someone’s car is a little involved.  I think most lawyers who got a case where several eyewitnesses identified their client fleeing the scene in her own coat and her own high-heeled shoes and getting into her own car and driving away, would assume that she was guilty.  But such is the gravitas of the wisdom of Perry Mason that he can see through these obviously faked circumstances.  And then, invariably, he exposes the real killer live, in court!

     This was a convention taken to the extreme with shows like Matlock.  Lawyers became detectives, they investigated, on their own, the crimes of which their clients were accused.  They made certain that there was never any “reasonable doubt” when the case was decided, because they had already fingered the Real Bad Guy in front of the jury.  This of course supposes that people are willing to go to great lengths to accuse someone else of a murder, and that the police are pretty darn bad at their jobs.  But as long as lawyers like Perry Mason are good at theirs, we will be entertained.  Perry Mason, Season Four Volume One hits DVD June 9th from Paramount Home Entertainment.

“I quit!”

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      Oh, how silly the supporting characters are in Jake And The Fatman!  The Fatman (William Conrad, as the district attorney) is so abusive to his underlings that they whimper and cry until they finally snap and yell and quit.  The women are all cops, who are implausibly attractive and not very smart but tough, anyway.  And the bad guys are of course cartoons.  Sometimes pretty good cartoons, but cartoons nonetheless.  No one on this show, however, could be more cartoonish than J. L. McCabe (The Fatman), who is so fat that he is virtually unintelligible.  He seems to be forcing the words out of his mouth through jowls so thick that it appears he has ingested the words, chewed them thoroughly, and because there is just no more room in his stomach for them, they come spilling back out of his mouth in a mangled, wheezing sort of way.  When you’re too fat to talk, you are too fat for TV.  It seems to me.

     For some reason, Season One was split into two volumes by Paramount Home Entertainment.  Season Two, which comes out on May 5th, gets its own DVD set.  Maybe because this is a whole new show.  And it’s growing on me.  You see, in Season Two, the show moves to Hawaii!  There is a double-length episode to kick off the season and explain the move.  Jake Stiles (Joe Penny), the Fatman’s investigator, goes on vacation to Hawaii to visit an old friend.  But that friend has of course been murdered.  And before long the rest of the crew (minus that fat bulldog) are joining Jake in Hawaii to help him defend himself against charges of murder.

     We discover (at least, I think we discovered this in Season Two – I don’t remember it ever being brought up in Season One) that J. L. McCabe cut his teeth working in Hawaii, and he still has contacts and informants and community ties on the island.  And, over the course of the first episode of the second season, McCabe gets blackmailed into taking the prosecuting attorney’s job in Hawaii, then he extorts Jake to force him to come work for him there, and the rest of the people are bullied and pressured into coming along…and, we’re in Hawaii!

     There is a blonde woman in this first episode.  We think, for a second, that she is a Bad Guy because not everything adds up!  But, this being a cop show set in Hawaii, I knew exactly what was going to happen.  She was actually going to be an undercover cop, and…gasp!  Likely a recurring character on the show from that point on!  No TV show set in Hawaii or another tropical location can fail to be at least a little silly and ridiculous.  Hawaii Five-O, Magnum P.I., Sweating Bullets…(sidebar – did you know that Sweating Bullets, the dreadful Canadian TV show from the early nineties, is still a gigantic hit in Serbia?  Or that the guy who played Nick Slaughter on that show is in Serbia now filming a documentary about his bizarre popularity over there?  Food for thought…)

     So we get some ridiculous moments, some silly dialogue, a womanizing investigator-cop, tropical locations, hot women, and a really fat guy struggling to breathe.  And somehow, it all works just enough to make this show watchable.

“Anyone arrogant enough to believe they can seduce me into revealing the whereabouts of one of my operatives needs to seriously consider the benefits of self-reflection!”

That sentence says it all.  If you think that sounds deliciously clever and it makes you tingle with anticipation of the tension that will ensue in the scene, then J.A.G. is for you.  But if, like me, you think that seems like an awkwardly constructed, poorly thought out and almost inane statement, then J.A.G. is likely not your cup of tea.  Because that sentence is as good as it gets.  The rest of Season Eight is all of the “I can’t do this any more.  I won’t” variety.  There is one episode that uses the words “need to know basis” and then follows them with the words “well, I need to know” about four hundred times.  Another episode hits the peak of cleverness with a reference to the Vienna Boys Choir.  The same reference that is always being made when that group is mentioned.

“Are they bad guys?” 
“Well, they ain’t the Vienna Boys Choir”.

I really wonder how the Vienna Boys Choir came to represent all that is pure and good in the world, such that describing someone as the antithesis of the Vienna Boys Choir emphasizes just how evil those people are.  Or how badass.  That is what the poor VBC is reduced to now – they are either the antithesis of evil, which makes them saints I guess, or they are the antithesis of badass.  Which makes them the Wussiest People On Earth, according to movie scripts.  Poor kids.

Anyway, there is also an episode in Season Eight of J.A.G. where two characters do that sit-com thing where one (David James Elliott) poses as the husband of the other to cheer up her dying mom.  But it isn’t a sit-com.  So it isn’t funny.  At the very same time, another character (the gorgeous Catherine Bell) is pretending to be the pregnant wife of a CIA operative so they can take down terrorists.  Seriously though folks – this is NOT a sit-com!  Catherine Bell, it should be noted, is spectacular.  So much so that I have now noted it twice.  But it’s actually a problem.

You see, the makeup artists at J.A.G. have done a fantastic job on Catherine Bell, making her spectacular (three references).  But it is too fantastic.  Because she is always wearing makeup.  She’s in the courtroom, going up against the hilariously-named “Harm”, she’s wearing lipstick, eyeshadow and foundation.  After six weeks in the jungle and desert hunting terrorists?  Lipstick, eyeshadow and foundation.  In fact, even after she has been beaten to a pulp by those same terrorists, the bruise-and-blood makeup is applied over the lipstick, eyeshadow and foundation.  And she still looks sensational.  At least she’s a good actress.  I have a thing for Catherine Bell.

That being said, she is asked to do some pretty silly things on this show.  There is a scene with one of the aforementioned terrorists where he and she quote the Koran AT each other.  It’s actually reasonably funny, if you have (like I like to think I do) a highly-developed sense of irony.  The Eighth season opens with the second part to the cliffhanger upon which they left the last season, where Bud has been blown up in a land mine attack.  Can you really “attack” with a land mine?  Doesn’t matter.  This season ends with another cliffhanger episode.  So now I have to wait for Season Nine to come out on DVD in order to find out how Harm and Mac will repay that nice old Mennonite man after wrecking his plane! 

Season Eight of J.A.G. comes out in Canada on DVD March 17th from Paramount Home Entertainment.