TV Review: ABC’s ‘The Deep End’ is Shockingly Shallow

CHICAGO – “The Deep End” is yet another legal show about young stars in their field trying to do what’s right within the system and keep their heads above water at a high-powered firm. To say we’ve seen the set-up of ABC’s “The Deep End” a dozen times before would be a massive understatement. The question is what the writers and cast do within the tried-and-true structure. The answer is nothing at all.

Television Rating: 1.5/5.0

From scene one, as the stars (referred to at one point as the four musketeers) are introduced via the interviews they gave straight to the camera to get a job as a first-year associate as techno music bounces on the score, “The Deep End” is trying WAY too hard. It practically screams “Aren’t we hip? Aren’t we clever? Aren’t we sexy?” Nope, far too rarely, and I guess but so are a lot of TV stars, respectively.

The Deep End
Photo credit: Greg Gayne/ABC

When lead Dylan Hewitt (Matt Long) arrives ten days late for his first on the job, he’s told that the incorrect information may have been purposeful because “Half of what they do here is keep you off-balance. That’s how they keep control.” How ridiculous. It’s just one example of the overwriting on the first episode “The Deep End,” a script that does nothing without an exclamation point and an underline.

The Deep End Photo credit: Greg Gayne/ABC

To be fair, the young cast of “The Deep End” is occasionally effective even if they are laughably cliched in their set-up. It’s as if they came out of a computer program designed to create a legal show to tap into the “Grey’s Anatomy” audience - start with an earnest lead (even referred to as, no I’m not kidding, “a boy scout with a savior complex), add a more suave friend played by Ben Lawson (introduced with his pants around his ankles and a secretary under the desk), and find a sexy blonde (Leah Pipes) and a cute brunette (Tina Majorino). Make the light-haired one confident and the dark-haired one dorky. Add a redhead in the office as a love interest. Mix and serve lukewarm.

None of the men and women cast as the four musketeers are bad but they’re all such two-dimensional stereotypes that they can’t get past the cliches. More interesting are the more experienced cast members, most notably Billy Zane as the senior partner who enjoys torturing the newbies (nicknamed “The Prince of Darkness”) and has to deal with the partner (Nicole Ari Parker) he happens to be married to and an appearance by the great Clancy Brown as someone who might be the only principled elder at the firm. Zane should have been a movie star and might still be a TV star, but probably not on this show. Brown is always great.

Even worse than the cliches are the manipulations of the script of the pilot, one that uses a woman in child in legal jeopardy before the first commercial break. Not enough? Wait for the senility subplot in the second half. I’m so exhausted by writers that use plots as blatantly emotional as children in danger and problems of the elderly as devices to add depth to characters that don’t have any. ‘If we can make the audience cry, they’ll like the show.’ With a great legal drama that focuses on character like “The Good Wife” winning awards, why should we put up with such paper-thin manipulation masking as actual writing?

Ultimately, everything about “The Deep End” feels not just like something we’ve seen done better before but something that was canceled for a reason. It’s as if the producers were tasked with finding “the legal Grey’s Anatomy,” recognized the cliches of the young lawyer genre, and consciously decided to wallow in them instead of avoiding them. Add a 2010 fashion sense and soundtrack and maybe no one will notice that they’ve seen it before, right? Someone should sue.

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com