TV Review: How to Get Away With Murder

The new Thursday night entry on ABC is called How to Get away With Murder.  It is about an attractive African-American woman who is a top criminal defense attorney who wears red leather outfits while teaching first year criminal law at a prestigious law school and who recruits students to work with her in high profile criminal cases.

This premise is so outrageous it makes Lost look like a Ken Burns documentary.

Where to begin?  No top criminal defense attorney teaches a regular first year class at a major law school.  They are too busy putting in billable hours to take time off to teach first year law.  A top criminal defense attorney may teach a third year seminar, but first year professoring is pretty much a full time obligation (although I did have a civil procedure professor who was on a sabbatical from practice).

Second, what she is teaching is not anything resembling “law.”  For example, one student ingratiates herself to the professor by calling optometrists, pretending to be the secretary of a prosecution witness, and learns that the witness is color-blind.  And what legal theory does that support? All of her stratagems are based on facts, not legal principles, so the kids aren't learning anything about law.

The professor has each member of the class take 60 seconds to offer their best theory for a defense to an actual murder case.  These are first year students who know nothing about law, certainly less than any actual member of the bar, yet she spends a couple of hours (it’s a large class) listening to their uninformed, half-baked ideas.  Ideas that they are given 60 seconds to present, so heaven forbid the explanation be the least bit complicated or require legal research.

The winners of the competition get a highly prestigious position at her law firm. Despite the fact they know nothing about law.  And aren't licensed to practice. And, again, know less than just about any person who actually had finished law school and passed the bar. And they work at her firm while maintaining a full law school work load (she makes it clear in the pilot she expects the students to ditch their other classes while working on her case).

The preposterousness of the premise is matched by the insipidness of the plotting.  One of the eager first year students gets a bright idea late at night and so goes to the professor’s house (which is inexplicably on the campus). He arrives at the dark house, rings the bell, and when no one answers he tries the door and finding it unlock walks in.  Who walks in to a strange house at night when no one answers the door? He walks in on the professor occupied in flagrante delicto with a hunky detective.  I guess they were too distracted to hear the doorbell or the student yelling “Professor Keating! I’m breaking into your house late at night because I have something important to say!”

For years now I’ve said the Lost episode titled “Eggtown” set the record for most boneheaded legal errors in a single TV show, but How to Get Away With Murder’s pilot may break the record; I can’t say for sure as I threw in the towel about 2/3 of the way through.  In Eggtown, a character was being tried in Federal court on California for state crimes committed in Iowa, the defense was allowed to call a witness before the prosecution (because the prosecution’s opening statement, which has zero evidentiary value, was “devastating”), the main witness for the prosecution was allowed to talk with the defendant before the trial, and the sole witness for the defense is someone who met the witness months after the crime took place and who was in love with her.  That’s a load of BS to top, but How to Get Away With Murder topped it in under 40 minutes.  Congratulations.

Heaven knows I know that any realistic show about the law would be as boring a watching paint dry. And yes, I watched Allie MacBeal faithfully as she filed lawsuits against God and sang karaoke instead of putting in billable hours.  But there is a limit to how far outside the lines you can color before you have to conclude that the show is science fiction, taking place in a parallel universe where human concepts of logic do not apply.

I like science fiction, but How to Get Away With Murder was just too far out there for me to buy into. I just hope the show doesn't inspire hordes of impressionable college students into thinking law school looks like a lot of fun.