Will Gardner is Dead - The World Mourns

So far, it’s been a very traumatic year in my TV viewing life. First came the news that my daily lunchtime fix, the courtroom show Judge Alex, was ending; then Harvey Specter found himself a girlfriend in Suits (she will, quite simply, have to go); and, last week, The Good Wife killed off Will Gardner. That’s three of the men in my life suddenly out of reach.

   

Tears were shed over Judge Alex; spitting blood was more the case with Harvey; while with Will, I have entered a depression so deep, we are talking coma.

   

How the cast and crew kept Will’s death (I can hardly bear to write those words) a secret for a year is, in itself, a small miracle. Josh Charles, who plays him (utterly brilliantly) . . . I should say played now, I suppose . . . will undoubtedly go on to do other great things; but that doesn’t lessen the devastation on the part of fans of this terrific show.

   

You will notice a common theme here – all the above-mentioned shows relate to the law in some way. I have always been, and am, fascinated by the law. At one stage in my life, I was going to train as a barrister, but on reflection I think I would rather play a lawyer than be one: fewer exams – and you may get to see Gabriel Macht (Harvey Specter) with his kit off.

   

I put it all down to doing The Merchant of Venice at a very early age. Durham Road Junior School in Newport started its kids young with Shakespeare – I was eight, to be precise. I recall the horror when the money lender Shylock set the bond of a pound of flesh, should Antonio fail to repay his loan (I was, and remain in adulthood, happier about the idea of borrowing money you will never be able to afford to pay back). 

But then I was even more horrified when Antonio got out of the deal on the grounds that Shylock could have his pound of flesh, provided that he did not shed a drop of Antonio’s blood when taking it. Even aged eight, I knew that this was some smart defense lawyer (apologies to British readers for my having adopted US spelling; I am an attorney now, you know), but I felt that it was a very unfair loophole. Call yourself a Christian, Antonio? At least Jesus took death on the chin like a real man.

   

I’ve always thought that being a defense lawyer must be a lot tougher than being a prosecutor. If they’re in court in the first place, they must be guilty, that’s my instant reaction (Guilty until proven more guilty, in other words). In defense, you have to come up with so many more ridiculous excuses. Take the televised trial of Oscar Pistorius case going on in South Africa at the moment. He claims that he accidentally shot his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, mistaking her for a burglar on the other side of the bathroom door. Neighbours claim to have heard her terrified screams; Pistorius’s defense lawyer is arguing that the athlete screams like a girl. 

Frighteningly, I think the judge (there is no jury in the case – how weird is that?) might go for it, not least because the defense lawyer, Gene Hackman lookalike Barry Roux, has cut a rather impressive figure. “Teeeellll me,” he says, in his thick South African accent, “how keeeen eeeet beeee. . . ?” And off he goes with his absurd, unbelievable concoction of stories about cricket bats and gunshots and men who scream like girls when they’ve just committed murder. “Eeeeet keeeennnnnnnot beeeee!” he insists, at every turn; and, for a moment, you sort of believe him.

  

Then, reality hits home, and, quite frankly, I’m not buying into the girlie screaming defense. If you can win an Olympic medal with a couple of blades strapped to the leg stumps you’ve had from birth, I imagine you done all the girlie screaming you’ll ever need in one lifetime. Let’s get Oscar on the stand, poke him with a very hot stick, and let’s test that screaming is what I say.

   

Alas, the case has been halted because one of the two assessors who accompany the judge has been taken ill. If she can’t return, the whole case will have to start again from scratch; I suspect Barry is already clearing a space on his mantelpiece for that Oscar he undoubtedly deserves – in both senses of the word.

   

Anyway, back to the lovely Will Gardner. Will is – or, rather, was – a very good defense lawyer. In fact, it was defending his client that got him shot, when the man grabbed a police officer’s gun and went berserk in the courtroom. I still haven’t quite worked out why one of Will’s shoes came off in the fracas, but then I haven’t seen Sunday’s flashback episode yet, which might explain why a man so fastidious in his work can’t tie his shoelaces properly.

   

I’m going to have to wait a few weeks before seeing it, too, as I’m off traveling again (or travelling, as they say in the UK). I'll be going back to LA via New York, where I would love to meet Joey Jackson, the defense lawyer expert who regularly appears on Vinnie Politan’s On the Case show on HLN (Vinnie’s another hot lawyer, by the way – again, in both senses of the word; and he’s a prosecutor, to boot). With Judge Alex, Harvey Specter and Will Gardner out of my life, it’s my new fix.

   

I tell you: Joey could get Judas off on the grounds that he thought the 30 pieces of silver were chocolate coins. I’ve told him that if I’m ever in trouble, I want him heading up my team. 

And if he fails in his duty, let’s just hope it’ll be Judge Alex, Harvey Specter or Will Gardner putting me in the handcuffs.

   

My Oscar Winning Performance on Judge Alex

My life’s work is complete.

Yes, finally, I have made my debut on American television.

  

Harvey Specter’s love interest in Suits? Will’s love interest in The Good Wife? Judge Alex Ferrer’s love interest in Judge Alex?

  

You will notice in my list of hopeful projects that I have a certain penchant for law and lawyers. I always have. In fact, so enthusiastic has been my desire to fight for justice, my insurance company stopped supplying legal insurance because they found that the people who took it out were the most litigious. Well, one person in particular, to be precise. Faulty goods, stolen bicycles, bad repairs – there is very little in life that I cannot meet with a response of “See you in court.”

  

In Los Angeles, I took a landlady to court for withholding a ridiculous chunk of my apartment deposit. I won. My obsessive addiction to the court show Judge Alex had not been in vain.

  

At present, I am embroiled in heated discussions with a matchmaking agency who simply did not deliver what they said on the tin. I specifically said I wanted a tall man – I have never been out with anyone under six feet, despite being only five feet myself. I told them I wanted a man who could protect me from a bear. They hooked me up with a hobbit.

  

So, if and when I was going to appear on American television, it was inevitable it was going to be in court in some capacity, and hopefully not in front of Judge Judy when Judge Alex took out a restraining order against me.

And, at last, there I was, on Friday, on screen, in the front row of the audience at a taping of Judge Alex in Los Angeles. A Facebook friend posted a still of me, sitting behind a litigant. A very large litigant, actually, who kept blocking my view of my hero. My expression is all but screaming “Get out of my way, bitch!” although I managed to resist being thrown out for contempt of court, even though contempt for the orange eyesore is etched all over my face.

  

Alas, this is the last series of the show, so I feel I am now part of television history. Readers of this blog will know how upset I was when my iPad was stolen and I thought I had lost the interview I conducted with the Judge in Miami (actually, “conducted” gives me an air of respectability I recall not having had on the day; the interview I “drooled” might be closer to the truth), so the cancellation of the show was always going to be a hara-kiri moment. Every time I see the Fox logo now (it is they who have pulled the show), I spit blood.

  

Now, I’d like to tell you that my courtroom performance was an award winning masterpiece, but apart from the whiplash I suffered as a result of locking my neck at a 90 degree angle to keep the Judge in my line of vision throughout, I was strangely unmemorable. It was, however, a performance of sublime control. No rushing up to the Bench and trying to rip the Judge’s robe off; no trying to bribe Mason the bailiff to get me closer; no begging the litigant to swop places with me; no begging the Judge to handcuff me.

  

Maybe someone will spot my talent. Maybe Suits will call and hook me up with Harvey; maybe The Good Wife will get in touch, realising that Alicia should never have been Will’s love interest and that what he needed all along was a short, dark, Welsh TV critic.

  

Or maybe someone will offer me a role in a movie as a hobbit. If all that fails, trust me on one thing: this will not be my last court appearance.

I’m betting my bail money on it.

    

Judge Alex Finale - My Box Will Never Be the Same

The world as I know it has come to an end. 

Traumatised doesn’t even begin to cover it. Shocked, devastated, appalled, wrecked . . . I could go on . . . And will . . . Horrified, stunned, depressed.

   

After nine years on the air, the TV show Judge Alex has not been renewed.

   

Readers of this blog will be familiar with my enthusiasm for the courtroom show presided over by the world’s funniest and most handsome man (okay, Gabriel Macht is up there with him, but Suits, in which he plays hotshot lawyer Harvey Specter, is still on the air, so bear with me in my grief). 

I religiously watch Judge Alex live when it airs on weekdays and, last year, had the privilege not only of being in the show’s audience, but of meeting Judge Alex himself. Several times. I didn’t get to where I am in life by being a shrinking violet. 

I’ve eaten judges for breakfast (No munching jokes yet, please, this is serious stuff). In one fell swoop, my lunchtime handcuffs/de-robing fantasy life has been wiped out.

   

It is astonishing, given all the Kardashian, Real Housewives, Bachelor/ette crap around, that Fox is ditching the smartest, funniest and most brilliantly edited show on TV. It provides an endless source of entertainment in an arena where Fraggle Rock meets Sesame Street in its vast array of litigants; it provokes laugh aloud humour not only through Judge Alex’s quick witted repartee and stern commands, but his relationship with his bailiff, Mason; it is far and away the most compulsive courtroom show and, let’s not deny it, the best deliverer of eye candy for the female population (on the Bench, not in the witness box, that is).

   

So why, why, why, oh why, Fox? I am sure that the reasons for the decision are, as they always are in TV, about money, but it still hurts. Judge Alex has millions of viewers and a massive social networking following, although I can’t help feeling that if Fox had put as much publicity gusto behind the show as the fans have, we might not be in this position now.

   

Just when I’d perfected my stalking map and got myself a personal trainer to keep up with the Judge’s movements (not to mention my having gathered millions of Air Miles, should the Judge suddenly have had a massive change of plans and emigrated to Australia – you can never be too careful), this has to happen. Could the network not have put my needs above their own commercial interests for once? Selfish bastards.

   

So, what next for Judge Alex, I wonder? 

I would love to see him present a talk show, or a satirical current affairs programme. Or he could turn to acting, perhaps. Couldn’t they find a role for him in Suits? Then I could save on stalking time and pursue him and Gabriel Macht as a double act. 

Who knows, they might end up fighting over me; I might become a Trophy Stalker. I feel there’s a movie there somewhere. With his fine dress sense, I could see him in politics, too. I am already a little tearful in case he takes that path and gets assassinated. What would I wear to the funeral? No, no, I couldn’t bear it. I’d have to be burnt alive on the coffin like they do in India. Sometimes, I think I have an over-active imagination.

   

With his intelligence, humour, talent, drop-dead gorgeous looks and great personality, I am certain he won’t be short of offers and, if he’s really stuck, I am currently looking for a new cleaner. Pinny provided, your honour. Just a pinny.

And, by the way, I really can eat judges for breakfast. 

Okay, you can start on the munching jokes now.

Catching up with the Angel Gabriel - in a Suit

And so, I am finally up to speed with Suits.

My broken heart at having had to delay my trip back to LA was finally mended yesterday when I sat down to watch the four episodes of Suits I had missed when in the UK.

  

There is nothing quite like the excuse of jet-lag to enable you to don a dressing gown and lounge on the sofa with a glass of wine in one hand and the remote in another.

  

The fabulous Patrick J. Adams, who plays Mike Ross, appears to have grown a foot, and now spends more time kissing than talking, which is a good thing for viewers, although less good for the firm, I suspect.

  

Gabriel Macht is even more beautiful than I remember him. The hair and the suits of his character, Harvey Specter, are perfect, every follicle and stitch a tribute to the make-up and costume departments who make this faultless specimen of manhood possible.

  

Then there’s Harvey’s hunger for power – never more impressive and sexy than when his back is against the wall (which brings me to another fantasy, but enough dribbling for one day. But gosh, he is beautiful).

 

It is, quite simply, fabulous TV, and now I will be living for Tuesdays for the foreseeable future. So don’t call, don’t drop in, just leave me to my angel.

  

I’ve also been catching up on Mistresses, which is as laughable as Suits is brilliant. And yet it is strangely addictive. Quite why Joss (Jes Macallan) has chosen to be a lesbian with the clingy Alex (Shannyn Sossamon), when she had a bloke who could get her bra off in one flick of a light switch movement, is anybody’s guess, but she’s still my favourite.

  

Savi (Alyssa Milano) has good taste in necklaces, but why do her eyelashes permanently look as if they are trying to do a runner from her face? Give them a visa and they’ll be off, I’m telling you.

  

April (Rochelle Aytes) is prettiest of the bunch, but it’s a bit of a bummer that her dead husband turned out not to be dead, after all. Still, she should have been grateful for the extra customer in the shop. Has she sold ANYTHING since the series began?

  

And then there’s Karen (Yunjin Kim), who stares into the middle distance while speaking in a voice that is so tiny, it could send a tiger into hibernation. Will they ever manage to excavate a personality? Will she ever get her fringe cut? Will she ever manage to get another patient, now that the only one she ever had is dead?

  

There is not a man in Mistresses to compete with Gabriel Macht, alas, and Dominic (Jason George) is the best of a very mediocre bunch.

  

But he and Savi work in a very odd law firm that is not a patch on Harvey’s Pearson/Whatever-that-English-bloke’s-name-is-in-the-second-half-of-the-title.

  

They never have any clients, never do any work, and have all their mates and spouses popping in at all hours for casual chats.

  

Apart from Savi and Dom’s quickie, there’s no office sex there, either, whereas in Pearson Thingummy, you can’t even go into the photocopying room without ending up with someone else’s sticky DNA on your hands.

  

British actor Max Beesley has now joined the cast as “fixer” Stephen Huntley for a few weeks and he is ALWAYS in the photocopying room. Let’s just say he never emerges with anything in his hands. Not papers, anyway.

  

And here’s the really confusing thing – Gary Cole, who plays Harvey’s nemesis, Cameron Dennis, in Suits, is also ballistics expert Kurt McVeigh and on-off lover of Diane in that other great legal drama, The Good Wife.

  

Anyway, Suits is back, and that’s all I care about.

My Angel Gabriel is flying high once more.

The Angel Gabriel

For months, I have been waiting.

Months of longing, tears and frustration. Months of checking the TV schedules in magazines and throwing them across the room when it failed yet again to materialise.

Then, a few weeks ago, the TV announced that it would be returning on June 16^th.

  

I stayed in. Waited again. More longing in my heart and loins. Then, I discovered that the return date was July 16^th. I was a whole month early. More tears.

  

But this week, it returned. Suits. The brilliant, fantastically produced, stunningly written, Suits. Even repeating the word thrills me. Suits.

  

Gabriel Macht in a suit. A handsome, sexy man playing handsome, sexy lawyer Harvey Specter. In a suit. Gabriel, my angel.

  

And all would have been well with the world, had I not been in the UK. I would never have booked that flight, had I known the television trauma I was about to endure: awake at 5am in my UK bed, unable to sleep, knowing what I was missing thousands of miles away on the other side of the world.

  

My flight schedule meant that when I returned to the US on Wednesday, I would have had two episodes to watch. Delayed gratification is good, I reasoned. But I have had to change my flight again, as I have the chance to interview Eva Longoria in Spain at the beginning of August.

It was a tough call – the world’s most beautiful woman versus the world’s most beautiful man. Eva won out. By the time I return to the US, there will be five episodes of Suits to catch up on. I just hope that the delayed gratification doesn’t kill me before I get my hands on the remote.

  

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love Suits, which is also perfectly cast, with not a glimmer of a weak link in the chain. Macht is, quite simply superb. When I recently bumped into E L James, author of 50 Shades of Grey, I begged her to get Macht cast in the lead role of Christian Grey.

He really would be perfect. Please, please, please. He’d be great. On and on and on I went. Alas for her, flying at 35,000 feet, she had no escape route. I just pray it lodged somewhere.

  

Specter’s sidekick, Mike Ross, played by Patrick J. Adams, is the maverick turned good guy to Specter’s mean and bad.

And Rick Hoffman’s Louis Litt is a character with barely one redeeming feature, and whose attempts to be a better person are always doomed to failure as a result of his weaknesses – namely, paranoia and insecurity. But it is those weaknesses with which the audience identifies, and that is why we still like him.

The USA Network is my favourite station  - my other big worry at the moment is the date of the season premiere of White Collar; I am very worried about what is happening to Peter in jail. Maybe that, too, has already returned, and, when I finally get back to the US, I will be able to spend an entire week in my dressing gown, catching up.

In the meantime, Twitter people, stop giving the game away in Tweets before the rest of us have had chance to view. I may not be a fan of delayed gratification, but at the moment it’s the only thing keeping me going.

Well, that and the fact that I’m going to meet Eva Longoria.

  

    

     

Overdosing on Judge Alex, Zimmerman and CNN

Is it possible to overdose on Judge Alex? Is it possible to overdose on court TV in general? Do I really need to know the minutiae of Florida law, when I live in California? Am I really a closet criminal/juror/lawyer? Am I just finding more reasons for avoiding the work I should actually be doing?

   

These, and many questions like them, have been occupying me this week as I have sat down to watch the minute by minute coverage of the George Zimmerman trial. For those not in the know, he is on trial for the murder (Second Degree) of 17 year old, unarmed Trayvon Martin, whom he claims he shot in self-defence – or defense, as I now have to write it (along with color, favor etc. . . . but that’s another story). 

So far, so relatively straightforward. But here’s the crux: Zimmerman is white Hispanic, Trayvon was black. And the black community is up in arms over what they perceive to be a racist killing.

    

Actually, up in arms is putting it very mildly. They have taken to Twitter declaring that Zimmerman will be raped and/or killed if he goes to jail, and certainly killed if he “walks” and tries to resume normal life.

   

I am gripped. I am gripped by everything. 

Why George has put on so much weight (he hasn’t just eaten all the pies, he’s eaten the factory that made them), for example? Why is the Prosecution  fielding witnesses that help the Defense (more of that anon)? Why had the Prosecution’s “star” witness, Rachel Jeantel (who was the last person to speak to Trayvon on the night he was killed), not been coached beforehand (“You listenin’?” she aggressively asked Defense Attorney Don West)? When the judge announces that the jurors’ lunch has “arrived”, what is it?  

   

In my office, during the day, I have the live feed from Fox 35 in Orlando, where the trial is taking place. In my living room, I have the trial live on CNN, but with intermittent analysis. At night, I watch HLN and Fox, and Anderson Cooper and Piers Morgan on CNN.

    

Judge Alex Ferrer, whose courtroom show Judge Alex entertains me every weekday at 2pm, has been on everything. He seems to be the only person who is up to speed on Florida law (such as the reasons behind the prosecution having to field witnesses that potentially damage them) and the legalities of a case that has “experts” responding emotively, rather than delivering unbiased opinion. Women with big hair and tombstone teeth shout at frightened men with glasses as they all try to second-guess what the jury is thinking (six people – allowed under Florida law. 

You see? I am learning, so it’s technically work).

    

The women’s dress sense varies according to age. The younger ones go casual, like Sporty Barbie; the older ones look like Norma Desmond after a night on the tiles. Judge Alex looks like an ad for Savile Row: impeccably dressed, perfectly ironed (or “pressed” as I now call it over here), shirts and exquisitely chosen matching ties. He is by far the best looking expert and stands out as a Greek god in the Fraggle Rock of men before us, so, naturally, I agree with everything he says.

    

It’s not hard to do that, though, when he applies reason and the law to the evidence. But although I have always been in favour of cameras in the courtroom, what worries me with these big, publicity generating cases, is that viewer access spawns a level of hysteria from people with preconceived ideas (long before they have heard the evidence) that I suspect, with Zimmerman, will end in violence – not least because, so far, the prosecution (to me) is not proving its case, and he looks likely to go free, or, at most, have the charge reduced to manslaughter.

    

The hatred and aggression appearing on a second by second basis on the Twitter feed that accompanies Fox 35, is truly disturbing. If they had to weed out this kind of prejudice during jury selection, small wonder that it took them so long (interestingly, the jury is made up of six women). These are not people who want to pass judgment when presented with the facts of the case; they are vigilantes who, in reality, are mimicking the very vigilante behaviour of which they accuse George Zimmerman. This probably says more about the nature of social networking than it does about the pros and cons of cameras in court, but in this case, the ethics of the two seem inextricably linked.

    

The public is nevertheless fascinated by the workings of the law and, as Judge Alex points out elsewhere, if the public is allowed into the courtroom (which they are in the UK, as well as the US), all the cameras are doing is making the proceedings available to a wider audience.

    

Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher’s 1986 series LA Law ran for eight seasons on NBC in the US and was picked up, to huge critical acclaim, in the UK (I have every episode on videotape – remember videos? They were those bricks you started to chuck out at the turn of the Millennium). Dozens of law-based shows, on both sides of the Atlantic, have followed. I reckon I have seen every episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit at least half a dozen times.

    

The truth is, that all human life can be seen in a courtroom - love, jealousy, sex, death, prejudice, empathy, hatred – and when several of these factors come together in a big case, it is as if we are united as an audience in the very essence of life’s daily dramas, but magnified a thousand fold.

   

I’ve missed my daily Zimmerman dose today, as the trial is off air for the weekend. But the week’s appearances of Judge Alex are still stored in my Time Warner Cable box, so my legal fix is never more than a click away on the remote. Yes, I’m afraid I really am that sad.

Or just someone who really cares about nice laundry.   

    

Matthew Rhys, Nudity and Rims

Dressing gowns could have been invented just for watching TV. 

This week, having seen just two episodes of The Americans in the UK, I bought and downloaded the other 11 in LA and, over two days, watched the lot. In my dressing gown.

    

A couple of weeks ago, I bumped into one of its stars, Matthew Rhys, on a Virgin flight from London to LA. Matthew’s family lives just a couple of miles from me in Cardiff, yet it was only in LA three years ago that I finally got to meet him.

    

He is an extraordinary actor. His performance as gay lawyer Kevin in Brothers and Sisters was genius; no less so is his undercover Russian spy, Phillip Jennings, in The Americans. And he's always getting his kit off. Always in the name of is art, of course.

    

While The Americans is not yet a box set, increasingly viewers have turned to these packages to view shows they have missed. More than anything, it saves time. No ads, no having to remember to set your Sky Plus or TIVO – you just slob out on the sofa for 12 hours with an Indian takeaway and a bottle of Rioja and forget to shower as you become immersed in the story.

    

I watch way too much TV. There are episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and Cold Case I have seen several times over. My daytime fix, the courtroom show, Judge Alex, at 2pm, is programmed into my Record list, and I am currently watching repeats of shows I first saw just weeks ago. 

Judge Alex is like a favourite cartoon: no matter how many times you see it, it’s still funny. I was hugely entertained this week by a case involving heavy discussions about rims, which means something entirely different in the US (think cars, rather than body parts). Call me easily amused, but hearing Judge Alex say “rims” just made me giggle. A lot. Like I said. Easily amused.

    

On Tuesday, two of my favourite shows, Suits and Covert Affairs return to the USA Network. Now, here’s my dilemma: do I watch them live on the night because I would not be able to bear waiting (nor everyone telling me on Twitter what has happened before I have seen them), or do I wait a few weeks for a dressing down day when I can watch non-stop (and, in the meantime, totally avoid Twitter)?

    

At least if I opt for the latter, I will avoid the American ads, which are many. I always lose weight when in the States because these ads make me feel so ill with their surfeit of food – all of it orange. Orange prawns, orange chicken, orange bread – no amount of colour adjustment on my set transforms these disgusting beds of fat into anything other than a floating sea of orange cholesterol.

    

I imagine that men are as put off sex as I am food, with ads that put the fear of God into you with the products’ side effects.

    

You can get your sex drive back, but be warned: this product may cause sweating, palpitations, liver damage, kidney damage, headaches, nausea, brain tumours, blood clots. Then there’s the dastardly warning; please see your doctor if you have an erection lasting longer than eight hours. I imagine after hearing about the possible side effects, you’d be lucky to get one at all.

    

The box set saves you from the side effects of consuming too many commercials, and if you download them, they also save you from having your shelves cluttered up with these monstrous cardboard bricks.

    

Practically the whole of my life runs through the computer now. I have systems that enable me to watch UK TV in the US and vice versa. My laptop is plugged into my TV so I can run everything through my 50 inch screen. I suspect that in a few generations, nobody will have legs, as humans will have lost their need ever to use them.

    

But as it’s Sunday and there’s not much on the TV, I’m going to do something revolutionary and take a hike up Runyon Canyon. I may take my iPad with me, just in case I get withdrawal symptoms and need to watch repeats of The Americans when I’m there.

    

Then it’ll be back home for supper and taking my dressing gown out of the wash ready to start another TV viewing week.

Tomorrow, on Judge Alex, the defendant Richard says he took his Bengal cat to Kismet for breeding and to sell Bengal kittens, but was devastated when Kismet told him his kittens had died. 

Oh, please say pussy, Judge Alex. Just for me.