I enjoy your column each week ...
Question: I enjoy your column each week and I usually agree with you. However, today I felt prompted to write in, as I totally disagree with your
comments regarding the predictable nature of
In Justice. I believe it is extremely unpredictable television, and a welcome change from the predictability of the
CSIs and
Law & Orders of today's TV. It is also extremely well acted, especially by
Jason O'Mara. Did you happen to catch last week's episode regarding the mentally challenged prisoner on death row? If you did, need I say more about the unpredictability and the acting? Thanks, and keep up the great work!
Answer: After receiving several letters about last Friday's (Feb. 17) episode in the wake of my dismissal of the show, I decided to watch, figuring (rightly) that our heroes at the National Justice Project must have lost their appeal this time. The result was a better episode than the norm, though I could have done without the manipulative use of "Amazing Grace" to underscore the execution by lethal injection of the unjustly accused death-row prisoner. I did not mean to imply that
In Justice was any more or less predictable or formulaic than the many other procedurals on TV. I get why people like the show, which more often than not (the handful of times I've watched) ends with a "feel-good" emotional release as the wrongly jailed person is set free — though not always to an easy life. Where I have a problem, I guess, is with the dramatic mechanics of the National Justice Project: how they take on each new case and how they go about re-solving the crime, invariably discovering some pivotal clue that went unearthed the first time around. (In the death-row episode, it was the fact that the murdered priest counseled prostitutes on Thursdays, the night he was killed.) After watching the show a couple of times, I didn't feel and still don't feel a need to keep tuning in for more of the same. (I'm sure there will be an episode down the pike, if it lasts that long, where the person they go to the mat for is actually guilty, but that's the only other conceivable twist I can imagine.) Like all other forms of TV, crime dramas come in many varieties, some of which I find more appealing than others. For instance,
Cold Case is probably every bit as contrived as
In Justice when it comes to revisiting old crimes, but I simply enjoy it and its characters more. (For the record, I do think Jason O'Mara is a strong series lead and am confident he'll eventually find a show that will make him a star.)
