“girls club” [ ]
Tonight at 9 p.m. on WNYW/Ch. 5
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HARD as it is to believe, “girls club” (no caps, no apostrophe), David E. Kelley’s new drama about young women lawyers, is not anything like “Ally McBeal” – even though it’s brought to you by the same creator.
For one thing, “girls club” is smarter.
For another, (and of course this depends on what you like in your young lawyer shows) no one comes to work in plastic micro-mini skirts with see-though shirts with their bras hanging out.
No one seems to imagine random acts of meaningless sex with strangers, while dressed like a hooker and talking to a client about a lawsuit.
While “girls club” does use an ensemble company and does take place in a law firm, the “girls” are actually young women, and “the girls” in the title is a take-off on “old boys club.”
Best of all, the “girls” don’t sail to top of the law profession in the first five minutes – although they do share a helluva pad in San Francisco. And really, how three roommates from law school managed to all get hired by the same firm is not only stupid, it’s next to impossible.
“The girls” – first year associates at a big law firm – are Lynne (Gretchen Mol), Jeannie (Kathleen Robertson) and Sharah, (Chyler Leigh).
They work very hard and make huge mistakes. In fact, they make such awful mistakes and are so fresh mouthed to the senior partners that, in real life, they would have had their butts handed to them in about four minutes and would, as we speak, be applying for unemployment.
But this is after all TV which has never been accused of having anything to do with real life.
What makes this one a standout compared to the drecky young lawyer shows the nets foisted upon us last year at this time is that 1) all the actors can act and 2) the writers of the show can actually write.
What’s wrong with the show (and this really ticks me off) is that all the other female lawyers – especially any woman over 40 – are bitchy, nasty, sad and jealous.
Hey, Kelley – women mentor women these days. It’s not 1967 anymore.
Also, while I appreciate the fact that the three women don’t dress like hookers, the clothes are pretty ugly – especially what they put on Robertson. Her jackets are too short, ill-fitting and make her look like she stole them off a Keebler elf.
And the way they dress the senior partner (Giancarlo Esposito). My God, he’s done up like a 1970’s pimp with horrible shirts and matching wide ties, bright purple handkerchiefs in his breast pocket. Puleeze.
That aside, in the first episode, Lynne is handed a capital murder case. Now, of course in real life no first year associate would be assigned such a case, but we find out that it’s pro-bono and a no-win, so they’d rather not have a real lawyer take the loss.
Then there’s Jeannie, who her friends fear is being hit on by one of the partners, and Sarah, who has no idea of diplomacy and ends up calling one of the other associates a “dyke.”
Oh yes, there’s lots of er, slang, that you don’t normally hear on network TV. I’d tell you the other words, but I don’t even think I’ll get away with the first one.
Gretchen Mol, a really fine actress, captures the screen and holds it – not in the cute, anorexic Calista Flockhart-way, but in that Reese Witherspoon-you-want-her-character-to-succeed kind-of-way.
The advance tape had two episodes on it, and I was looking for a third.
This is good because – when you do what I have to do for a living – usually one tape is one too many.