Warning -- for those of you looking forward to FOX’s new
lawyer show, Rake, let me tell you: You have seen this show
before. Greg Kinnear plays the affable, disheveled,
anti-hero, lawyer, Keegan Deene with addiction issues and
unhealthy relationship habits. Except for the affable part
(and the lawyer part) this characters sounds a lot like
House -- and this show looks a lot like House as well, but
its Kinnear’s portrayal of Kee that will save this show, if
it is possible to be saved. Kinnear plays Keegan as a
troubled, although optimistic, character which everyone else
seems to think is terribly charming and magnanimous. It
remains to be seen if the audience will fall in line with
this characterization or if we’ll just have to take the
other folks’ word for it.
Bordering on a procedural legal drama, Rake shows Kee taking
on one hopeless case a week, becoming more and more bizarre
and unwinnable as they go along (the pilot features a
suicide/cannibal storyline that was far-fetched, to say the
least). Each week we are meant to see Kee, an
underappreciated, misunderstood underdog himself, represent
the dregs of society and prove to the audience that no one
is beyond redemption. It is a very thinly veiled metaphor
for Kee’s personal life that is in such dysfunctional
disarray that almost 80% of the show is cringe-inducing
(imaging Kinnear playing a character that gets punched by a
friendly bookie, develops an unhealthy crush on a
prostitute, and receives free counseling from his ex-wife).
It is hard to watch, and not always in a good way.
Although I just spent the last two paragraphs making a case
about why you shouldn’t watch this show, I feel like you
probably should watch it anyway. For one, it has Greg
Kinnear. Can he do anything wrong? He is endearing, and
self-deprecating and this show is trying so hard that it
seems a shame not to give it a chance, even if that chance
hinges upon it being a one-man show. So watch it… at least a
few times, and then decide that it is far too derivative and
sentimental for what it is, and then you can thank me for
making you a far less misanthropic television viewer.
You’re welcome.
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Page updated 12/31/13
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