Raising the Bar: The Complete First Season

Rating TV-14 Formats DVD Genre television series Starring Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Jane Kaczmarek Directed by Created by Steven Bochco Publisher ABC Studios External Links

Cable network powerhouse TNT has spent the last three or four years building a healthy catalog of original programming. With shows like The Closer and Leverage, they’ve been able to carve out a niche for themselves as the home for procedural hour-long dramas. Raising the Bar, the networks latest yarn, now see’s their first season make its way onto DVD. Is it worth your time?

The first thing you should know about Raising the Bar is that it comes from 10-time Emmy winner Steven Bochco, the brains behind Hillstreet Blues, L.A. Law, and NYPD Blue. Bochco is one of the more respected minds in television, and when I cracked open the DVD, warm memories of Sipowicz and Jimmy Smits still running in my head, I was excited. Unfortunately, that excitement quickly faded. The first several episodes of this show are awful.

We follow Jerry (Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Saved by the Bell), a cliched, warm-hearted public defender who’s only goal is to help the disenfranchised, as he struggles with the system, represented by shark-like Judge Trudy Kessler (Jane Kaczmarek, Malcom in the Middle). Unlike most courtroom dramas, which depend upon in-trial moments of discovery and confrontation, this show’s more about the personal lives of those involved, getting into the messy romantic circumstances the characters create for themselves while trying to get by in the rough world of lawyering. This is actually the biggest problem with the show, in that, in avoiding the more typical courtroom scenes, the show is mind-numbingly boring. After four or five episodes, when the exposition dies down, the pace picks up a little as more long term legal storylines play out, but even these feel old and recycled. I’ve just seen all this before.

What’s more, the cast is completely uninteresting. Gosselaar holds his own well enough as the lead, but everyone else flounders. Kaczmarek is very good at being mean, self-interested, and ruthless, but never blends into her character when we get into her personal life. We’re supposed to be interested in the duality of her character, cutthroat wench on one side, sad, remorseful lover on the other, but it never clicks, and instead you just end up seeing the mom from Malcom in the Middle yelling at lawyers (Because that’s how real judges act. Like baseball umps throwing out a manager.)

There’s also not much in the way of extras. The DVD comes in a three disk set, all kept in one normal sized case, with special features added on to the final disk. Like most dramas, the deleted scenes are mostly irrelevant, and were cut for a reason. Meanwhile, the gag reel might be the most entertaining thing on the disks. There’s also an interesting small feature detailing the life of a real public defender, as well as commentary by Bochco and cast members. For fans of the show, there’s not anything in particular you have to see in these extras, and there’s certainly not enough to draw in new viewers. My advice? Pick up a box set of NYPD Blue and see what good actors can do to a stale premise. Leave this one for a rainy day... or month.