Thursday, October 16, 2014

Underthinking Pilot Season: Bad Judge

Cat here. I'll keep this one quick, mainly because I didn't take any notes. Bad Judge is very much in the vein of two shows I watched last season, Rake and Bad Teacher. Look, I make bad choices.

The show is more like Bad Teacher than Rake, not because it has a female protagonist and features Ryan Hansen as a love interest, but because it doesn't really allow its lead character to be charismatic and is too focused on downplaying any "badness." I've never seen Kate Walsh in anything else but she does have her moments in the pilot. However, those moments are few and far between because of how this part is written. Rake allowed Greg Kinnear to showboat and show off his starpower and charisma. Bad Judge holds Kate Walsh back so that a lot of the moments where she shines are the moments when she can take a breath and react to what another character is doing or saying. In a way, the show doesn't let her be the star.

I've read that the pilot they showed on TV is not the same pilot they originally sent to critics and it shows in the way the story doesn't hold together. The structure is very off and the Robbie plotline doesn't fit in well at all.

My last complaint is about the last scene in the bar which seems to set up the dynamic of the series as one girl and five guys. Come on, now. Bad Teacher at least had a better gender balance.

Final Conclusion: I'd skip this one. I can't see it lasting and there's not much there there to attach yourself to. I'm certainly not going to stick with it.