New TV Review: Fairly Legal

I think USA is a pretty underrated network. They seem a little buried under a lot of other networks like FX and TNT, though I'm not sure why-not enough advertising maybe?

In any case, they put on some pretty good shows, such as one of my favorites on TV, Burn Notice, a fantastic spy action show with good writing and great cast including the one and only Bruce Campbell.

The network is rolling out some new series as part of the new year, one of which is Barely Legal. Is it worth your time? Read on to find out!

Fairly Legal tells the story of Kate Reed (Sarah Shahi), a young and attractive mediator (and former attorney) in San Francisco. After her father dies, she is left with her step mother, who is listed in her phone as "wicked witch" and whose ring tone is her infamous theme song. The first time we see Kate work as a mediator is not in a normal setting, but when the store where she's buying coffee is robbed at gunpoint. When the clerk sticks a baseball bat back in the face of the robber, she stops them both and works out a deal to give the robber what he really wanted ($50 worth of beer and beef jerky), amazing the clerk, the robber, and the customers. So right away, we know Kate works beyond her office.

It turns out her stepmother is also her superior at her father's firm where she works. Kate isn't afraid to let her know how she feels about her, calling her "my evil stepmother" right to her face. She's set up, then, as the largely attractive but tough-as-nails working girl.

Her first client is a man waiting to make a big business deal, but is coming under fire for crashing his car in what appears to be a drinking and driving incident. He claims, however, that he was rammed and had a gun pointed at him by another car, making him panic, swerve, and run into the guard rail. Kate uses her connection with the DA to see how to get him out of the possible drunk driving incident, and as it turns out, said DA is her ex-husband. Ooooh boy!

Naturally, as it turns out, it seems the businessman is not being entirely honest. Seeing a red flag in a file given to her by the DA (which she wasn't supposed to read), she decides to speak with the two suspects herself. After speaking with both of them, their story doesn't match up with what the businessman told her (they claim the car swiped them), and Kate goes on the case.

Seeing ads for Fairly Legal, I was definitely pretty apprehensive for a few reasons. First of all, I'm not a fan of legal shows, and TV is absolutely flooded with them right now-so what would set this apart? It seemed from the ads that they were going for the "kickass female protagonist who doesn't play by the rules and doesn't care what anybody thinks. Oh but she's hot too!"

Aw shucks I'm cute...but tough!

But I decided to give it a chance, given that USA has put out some good shows. Unfortunately, I was not very impressed. The important thing to note is that Shahi is not the problem: she gave a good performance for the material that was given to her. The weakness lies in the writing, which goes for a character who appeals to many different types of people (especially with traits to target both men and women) but ends up being what feels like just a splattering of different traits. The story itself was fairly interesting, but in the end it was dragged down by poor character writing. I might tune in next week to check out the next episode, but as of right now...I'm not terribly impressed.  Sorry, USA.