It’s the same reason that people believe that the music they grew up with is the best and everything since sucks - nostalgia, generally speaking.
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(I enjoyed it as well.)
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So… the 5th season of Better Call Saul just dropped on Netflix… and I was thinking something about the show. It’s hardly the first lawyer show on TV, but it seems to me that it gets the most in-depth on what lawyers actually do? Maybe that’s because it mixes a variety of different kinds of law…
It seems to me that most lawyer shows are all about the big court room moments - the clever arguments they whip out, the shocking revelations elicited by clever defense attorney or DA, and sometimes the investigation, which usually includes debates with the cops… but I fee like BCS actually gets into the weeds of what a lawyer actually does more than any other show I’ve seen… I can’t say that for sure, cause the only time I’ve really dealt with lawyers was for things like buying a house… but it seems to me that’s true… thoughts?
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I’m a bit confused about this, season 5 came out early 2020? Season 6 doesn’t start until April 18th.
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Netflix has always been a season behind for this series.
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Filibus, The Mysterious Air Pirate (1915)
“Filibus is the most exciting, witty, feminist, steampunk, cross-dressing aviatrix thriller you will ever see!”
And for once the reviews don’t lie, although I have a minor quibble with “steampunk”.
Available on Kanopy.
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Tatiana Maslany has moved on to She-Hulk, in which she plays all the Marvel characters.
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Yes, hence my shrugging at this. I mean, I am not opposed, but don’t see the point. She was that show and it wrapped up nicely already. It seems like beating a dead horse (and I note that someone from Fear The Walking Dead is involved which exemplifies necro-horse-violence)
ETA: dammit! What you did there, I just saw it. I would totally watch that and I am sure she would be great in every role
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Does it show mindnumbing amounts of paperwork, lots of wheedling clients to try to get them to actually pay for the work they asked to be done at the rate they agreed to pay and constant requests for payments on account?
Do clients frequently say “All you did was write a few letters, I could have done that” as an argument as to why they shouldn’t have to pay their bills?
Are there pointless meetings at which people are expected to have meaningful opinions about whether to change the firm’s name from ‘Shyster, Flywheel & Co’ to ‘Shyster Flywheel’ or ‘SH & Co’? Or should it be ‘S H and Co.’? Expect hours of debate about the full stop.
All while cancelling adverts in the local paper because at $500 a year, it’s just too expensive…
Do people turn up with what they claim is an idea that will rake in billions and balk at the idea of paying a few thousand for the paperwork to actually turn that idea into a thing?
Any of those would put it way ahead of any other legal drama in the realism stakes.
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I don’t have cable or the AMC streamer, so I’m watching it on Netflix, which as @teknocholer said is a season behind.
Yes… there are several episodes where one of the characters has to do doc review, which seems like something you give new hires? I’d never seen that before in a lawyer show.
Maybe not that, but this involves a high end corporate firm that works with expensive clients for much of the show. There are times where they do have to negotiate with clients over costs, so that does come into play…
Maybe not so much that, but the main clients are either high end corporations, old people Jimmy is doing wills and the like for, and criminal defendants…
There are debates about the name of the company and lots of meetings…
There is stuff on advertising…
No.
But there is a great deal of paperwork, research, spending time getting clients, making copies, the aforementioned “doc review”, etc,… the stuff Kim does in the show seems especially tedious. She takes on the work of an entire bank after leaving the high prestige law firm to start an independent business, takes on a side client who needs help over some oil fields, and ends up working so much she nearly kills herself in a car wreck.
I’m not a lawyer, but they avoid the super-lawyer aspect you get in crime dramas. Even the times when Jimmy is acting as a public defender don’t seem to involve much court time. Just standing in front of a judge after spending 10 minutes figuring out what happened, and then usually him running into the prosecution in the bathroom and negotiating over the case…
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Sounds like they’re doing a good job then…
Those are often the worst. See Trump.
Ah yes. The photocopying. I have/had a theory that most of legal education was/is set up to give prospective lawyers plenty of practical experience in the care and feeding of photocopiers, scanners, etc. along with opportunities to learn the most efficient techniques for copying vast amounts of needless paper.
Nowadays, I suspect a lot of that is now scanning and pdf-creation.
My favourite ones are some of the UK ones where you can tell they’ve taken a US idea, filed the serial numbers off and set in a UK “law firm” - with no understanding of how the practice of law in the UK works, the difference between a barrister and a solicitor or sometimes apparently even the fact that there is a difference.
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Thanks!
I’m sure they get stuff wrong, but it just seemed to me that the show gets into the weeds of what it’s actually like to be a lawyer more than most lawyer shows…
I’ve wondered about that too!
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I see and acknowledge my confusion, we don’t have AMC in the UK so Netflix UK stream it close to broadcast. I’m anticipating your reaction to season 5, @anon61221983!
I would say that clients in the show (both big and small) do sometimes try and go their own way to the protestation of Jimmy and Kim - Kim especially has to deal with this.
As a layperson to law with even less knowledge of the US system than the UK it feels like they do include a lot of the drudge work within reason, particularly with Kim I think.
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Kind of, yeah. There was a bit where a desperate-for-work Saul got a job offer to do what would have doubtlessly been a gargantuan amount of legal work for a rancher who wanted to make some kind of sovereignty case—only to realize that said rancher intended to pay using the worthless currency he had printed up in expectation of running his own imaginary micronation.
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Oh yeah! I had forgotten about that storyline! That was hilarious.
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Well the potential client who wanted to patent a potty training aid was pretty close to that, I’d say. But Jimmy’s skepticism killed that opportunity before the question of billing came up.
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Yeah… that whole thing where he’s trying to drum up business was full of that stuff… so there ya go!
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If it’s any indication the lawyer of LegalEagle YouTube fame really seems to love the show and has done a few episodes where he does analysis of legal arguments put forth in the show and how they mostly get it right.
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Thanks! I was thinking about looking to see if he did a video on BCS. I’ll check this out later on.
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