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a Friday stinker
CBS copycats 'West Wing,' save for the substance
By Ethan Alter
From the opening credits, which feature inspirational music playing over an “Ain’t the government grand” montage, it’s blatantly apparent that the makers of the new CBS drama "First Monday" (Fridays, 9 p.m.) are begging to have their show compared to NBC’s powerhouse "The West Wing."
Okay, I’ll bite.
"First Monday" is exactly what "The West Wing" would be like if you took away its intelligence, good writing and solid cast ensemble and replaced them with dull characters, laughable dialogue and a first-grader’s sense of the judicial process.
That the show is doing well in its time slot is more a testament to the sorry state of Friday night television than to any quality on its own part.
Actually, the real reason "First Monday" is a hit is that it cannily pitches itself as combining the two most popular genres on the air right now: political drama and law-and-order intrigue.
It doesn’t do either of these well, but the concept of Supreme Court justices righting wrongs while dealing with their own problematic lives seems enough to lure unsuspecting viewers into tuning in for the first 15 minutes.
What keeps viewers watching past that point is anybody’s guess.
Television’s best hour-long dramas--"Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "The Sopranos" and "24," to name a few--deliberately start slow but ratchet up the emotional and narrative tension in the following acts.
In contrast, "First Monday" wears out its welcome early on and just gets worse from there.
Each episode begins with a short preamble that establishes the issue the justices will be debating about over the course of the program. From there, we catch up with our hero, Justice Joseph Novelli (Joe Mantegna), the most recent appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court.
A loving family man whose politics aren’t tied to any particular party, Novelli is the outsider whom the audience is supposed to identify with and use as a guide to the unfamiliar world of higher law.
Too bad Novelli's such a stick-in-the-mud.
As written, he is the only justice capable of processing all points of view on an issue, but the end result is that he has no apparent mind of his own.
Instead, he is forever echoing or reacting to what another character has said. With so little character to play, it’s no wonder Mantegna acts like he’s permanently on lunch break. The actor has turned in some terrific performances in the past--remember "House of Games"?
But he’s sleepwalking here and his somnambulate delivery only serves to make a bland role even blander.
Surrounding Novelli is the most diverse and therefore least plausible group of Supreme Court justices ever assembled.
We have the Jewish liberal (Camille Saviola), the straight-talkin’ Southerner (a slumming Charles Durning), the token black guy (James McEachin), and the WASP matron (Gail Strickland).
Lording over the proceedings is Martin She--…uh, excuse me…James Garner, who plays Chief Justice Thomas Brankin, a staunch traditionalist fond of starting sentences with the phrase “I remember when I was a young kid…”
Although he and Novelli frequently clash over decisions, Brankin feels some affinity for the new guy, possibly because they both suffer from an extreme lack of personality.
Novelli’s trio of clerks round out the cast, and its their job to engage in badly written conversations about the “stress” and “backstage politics” of the place, in an effort to convince viewers that they’re getting a behind-the-scenes look at the Supreme Court.
Not surprisingly, their scenes are the nadir of the show because the writers are working overtime to make the dialogue sound as authentic as possible. That means lots of pointless political jargon and rushed personal revelations that often make little sense. It takes real effort to cannibalize Aaron Sorkin this poorly.
While it would be nice to write "First Monday" off as a flash-in-the-pan success, it does look like it’s here to stay, at least for another season.
CBS was fortunate enough to release the show while America’s newfound patriotism is still influencing its viewing habits (how else could "Collateral Damage" have topped the box office this past weekend?).
If they’re smart, the show’s producers will try to ride that wave for as long as possible.
February 11, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
-Ethan Alter is a New York writer and a contributor to Media Life.
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