The Seamless Web: A Blog on Law, Popular Culture and Related Issues

And the Lawyer Shows Roll On

One new legal drama for fall ordered up by  CBS--featuring a female attorney (this one's from Bruno Heller, who brought us The Mentalist). Check!

Drop Dead Diva Drops, Well, Dead, After Four Seasons

Lifetime has cancelled the legal dramedy Drop Dead Diva, which featured "Jane Bingum," an attorney who shared a body and brain with a reincarnated model, "Deb Dobkins." More here from The Hollywood Reporter. Too bad; I liked this quirky show, which pushed the boundaries of law and relationships and did so with a grin.

What's the Buzz?

Sheldon Cooper must be(e) so pleased. A team of Brazilian bee specialists has named a bee species after his signature word. Meet Euglossia bazinga. Bazinga, indeed.

CNN's Playlist Debacle

I really like journalist Soledad O'Brien, but had given up on her new show, Starting Point, on CNN a while ago, in part because of the addiction to the "playlist" -- ("here's a selection from X's playlist"). I honestly have little interest in the music choices of people whom I do not know, and I think such music would be be better played elsewhere than on an early morning news program. Today, here's this story about CNN's playing of "Only the Good Die Young," right after a segment on that horrific shooting at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek. Please, let's abandon the playlist business.

The Doctor Is In

Check out page 8 of the September/October 2012 issue of Scientific American Mind. It has a sidebar on Psychology: As Seen On TV! which discusses the image of "mental health professionals" on television, beginning with the 1950s and running through the present. This particular essay doesn't seem to be available online. The first professional discussed is Dr. Joyce Brothers, who had her own show in the fifties. Some may remember that she first became famous not as a psychologist but as a winner on the quiz show The $64,000 Challenge (her specialty was boxing). The psychiatrists and psychologists turn up a lot on legal and law-related shows, including Ally McBeal, Law & Order (all the variants), Psych, The Mentalist, Boston Legal, Lie To Me, CSI (again, all the variations), The West Wing, and Boston Legal.

ABC Orders Pilots For Two Shows, Both Law-Related

From the Hollywood Reporter: news that ABC is ordering two pilots for dramas. One involves an as-yet unnamed series about a DA who pursues a "sensational murder case." The second is a cop show, "Low Winter Sun," which features "cops and criminals." More here.

Actor Peter Falk, Wife Shera Danese, Fund Scholarships For UCLA Students

Peter "Lieutenant Columbo" Falk left enough money in his estate plan to set up a scholarship fund to send some lucky students to UCLA free of charge. He and wife Shera Danese set aside the hefty sum of $3 million for the educational futures of young people they don't even know. That's very, very generous. More here from the UCLA Newsroom.

Howard and Bernadette's Wedding Plans

The Hollywood Reporter teases us with this "will they, won't they" story about "The Big Bang Theory"'s Howard and Bernadette's upcoming wedding. The suggestion is that the plot hinges on NASA's decision to change the launch date for Howard's upcoming shuttle mission, thus throwing the wedding planners into a tizzy. Of course, I would be remiss if I failed to point out that the couple could actually get married via a kind of proxy (actually "subspace radio marriage," as the Star Trek people would have it). See for example Adam Candeub and Mae Kuykendall, Modernizing Marriage, 44 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 735 (Summer 2011) at 783; Andrea B. Carroll, Reviving Proxy Marriage, 76 Brooklyn L. Rev. 455 at 458 (discussing a Russian cosmonaut's radio marriage celebrated aboard the International Space Station and at the Houston Space Center; it was re-solemnized in Russia when the groom returned to Earth because while the marriage was legal in Texas it was not recognized in Russia). In Howard and Bernadette's case, the marriage could be held either at the Houston Space Center (or anywhere in the US, where marriage by proxy is recognized where the couple chooses, for that matter, as long it is willing to take steps to register the marriage properly with US authorities), though not in California, which does not allow marriage by proxy.

2 Broke Taxpayers

The April 16th episode of 2 Broke Girls really stretched credibility, not that the show doesn't usually. Caroline decides to help Earl from the diner and Max with their tax forms. Now, notice that much of this show's storyline is premised on the notion that Caroline has to work at the diner because she has "no marketable skills" and/or cannot find a job, even though she's a Wharton graduate. Yet, she clearly has skills, including the ability to fill out tax forms. She understands the tax code, which few of us do. That's a pretty marketable skill. Why can't she find a job, at the least, at one of those chain tax prep outfits? Why isn't she working on her CPA exam? She's obviously got ambition. 

Now, please understand that I am not denigrating the work of wait staff. They work hard, and they work long hours, and can make a good and satisfying living. But Caroline didn't like the job at first and clearly doesn't plan to stay there. So, if she has skills that could allow her to move on, why doesn't she use them? If the problem is (as she has said before) that her name prevents her from getting an interview at a firm, why doesn't she set up her own firm, working out of the apartment? I just don't understand why she's working so hard on the "cupcake business" and not on a business that she could control herself.

But never mind. Let's move on. As the story unfolds, it's April 17th, and Caroline and Max are making a mad dash to the Post Office (the Post Office?) to file Earl and Max's taxes. Actually, they need to file Earl's completed taxes and Max's extension. Really? Clever Caroline doesn't know that one can file an extension online via the IRS website? She doesn't tell Earl that cheap software can help him find those deductions? And if the idea is that you need the main office to stamp the envelope to show that Earl's tax return was received on time, why does Caroline tell Max that she is going to post Earl's return "outside in the box"? It won't get a time stamp that way unless a Post Office employee comes out to get the mail in the box at midnight and stamp the mail in the box. The Post Office clerk in the episode doesn't seem any too likely to do so and seems rather mean, although I have to say that the Post Office employees in my city who are open until midnight on Tax Day actually do stay open until everyone who shows up to drop off tax forms has the opportunity to do so, and they do go and get forms dropped off in the boxes. They are extremely nice people. The Post Office clerk in the episode does unbend at the end and provides a stamp for Max's envelope (it's a running joke). Now, that's unlikely.

Of course, if Caroline had a more lucrative position, she'd be making more money, and perhaps she wouldn't be living with Max in that walk-up. Alternatively, they might still share an apartment, but might be making quicker progress toward that cupcake fund.

All in all, a disappointing episode.

 

 

 

 

 

CSI Cat

Courtesy of LOLCATS.