(no subject)
While I've been enjoying it enormously, something's been bothering me about Suits and it took til the latest episode to put my finger on why.
The characters are lawyers at a large, expensive, private firm. That's fine. But each episode manages to avoid the sort of moral dilemma that should be inevitable in these companies. Lawyers sometimes have to defend the indefensible and ruin the innocent. That's not some sort of judgement I'm laying down; it's just the way it is. Yet at the end of each episode, somehow, the big corporate lawyers were on the side of good. They defended the "perfect" sexual harassment victim pro bono. They cleared the name of the innocent stock trader (also a beautiful woman). They fought on behalf of cancer victims. They championed the honest, working-man engineer to be CEO. When they had to fire an otherwise good man for having faked his qualifications, they discover that actually it was all a conspiracy! By an eeevil company! Wait, what's that? They are the ones representing those evil companies? (The man was fired anyway, which added an interesting and unforeseen layer of complexity, but I find it to be the exception to the rule).
I'm not saying the show should portray lawyers as soulless money-sucking machines. But I think it's a disservice to the plot and the characters to never allow them to face moral dilemmas that don't conveniently reduce to a morally clear ending. I'd like the characters to have to make hard choices.
The more disturbing flip side to Our Heroes Are Always On The Side Of Good is the general treatment of public servants in the law. In the second episode, there was a judge who completely violated impartiality for petty personal reasons. In the latest episode, there are two public defenders, both of whom are portrayed to greater and lesser degrees as villains.
To anyone who doesn't watch Suits, don't get me wrong, I still recommend it. I wonder if this trend will continue into the second season...
The characters are lawyers at a large, expensive, private firm. That's fine. But each episode manages to avoid the sort of moral dilemma that should be inevitable in these companies. Lawyers sometimes have to defend the indefensible and ruin the innocent. That's not some sort of judgement I'm laying down; it's just the way it is. Yet at the end of each episode, somehow, the big corporate lawyers were on the side of good. They defended the "perfect" sexual harassment victim pro bono. They cleared the name of the innocent stock trader (also a beautiful woman). They fought on behalf of cancer victims. They championed the honest, working-man engineer to be CEO. When they had to fire an otherwise good man for having faked his qualifications, they discover that actually it was all a conspiracy! By an eeevil company! Wait, what's that? They are the ones representing those evil companies? (The man was fired anyway, which added an interesting and unforeseen layer of complexity, but I find it to be the exception to the rule).
I'm not saying the show should portray lawyers as soulless money-sucking machines. But I think it's a disservice to the plot and the characters to never allow them to face moral dilemmas that don't conveniently reduce to a morally clear ending. I'd like the characters to have to make hard choices.
The more disturbing flip side to Our Heroes Are Always On The Side Of Good is the general treatment of public servants in the law. In the second episode, there was a judge who completely violated impartiality for petty personal reasons. In the latest episode, there are two public defenders, both of whom are portrayed to greater and lesser degrees as villains.
To anyone who doesn't watch Suits, don't get me wrong, I still recommend it. I wonder if this trend will continue into the second season...