Ashley Williams | Through the Shattered Lens

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On this Monday, I will be reviewing Making It Legal, which aired once on ABC in 2007 and then never aired again.

Last Monday, I finished up Miami Vice. For the rest of the week, I was busy. This weekend, I was even busier. That’s a polite way of saying that I haven’t had a chance to settle on a new Monday series. However, I did find a show that only lasted one episode. So, let’s take a quick look at 2007’s Making It Legal.

Episode 1.1 “Pilot”

(Dir by Gary Halvorson, originally aired on January 31st, 2007)

At the high-powered law firm of Kolar, Dalton, Babbit & Leahy, Josh (Scott Wolf) and Julie (Ashley Williams) are the leaders of the Blue Team, one of the firm’s eight litigation groups. Both Josh and Julie are hoping to someday be promoted to a partnership. They’re friends but they also understand that only one of them can become a partner. Josh is a little uptight and tends to push himself and those around him too much. Julie is neurotic in the way that most professional women on network sitcoms in days immediately following Friends were neurotic. One night, after a long day of hard work, Josh and Julie gave in too temptation and made love all over the office. The sitcom picks up the morning after. Josh doesn’t want anyone to find out about their one night stand. Julie agrees and then tells her friend Elise (Ayda Field) who proceeds to tell paralegal Theressa (Kym Whitley)….

Meanwhile, Mr. Kolar (Robert Wagner) has hired Trevor (Ben Savage) and assigned him to work with Josh. Trevor is the son of a legendary attorney and he’s eager to escape from his father’s shadow. He’s neurotic because everyone on this show is neurotic. Josh doesn’t want to work with Trevor and he proceeds to give Trevor a huge amount of files to go through.

Meanwhile, Ethan (Geoffrey Arend), the weird guy of the blue group, continually does bad celebrity impersonations. I mean really, really bad. What makes it even worse is that I don’t think they’re meant to be bad. On a sitcom where every joke is telegraphed and all of the dialogue hits with the subtlety of a sledge hammer, no one mentions that Ethan’s impersonations are bad. There’s no way this show would have passed up the chance to point out that Ethan’s Christopher Walken impersonation sounds nothing like Christopher Walken.

Watching this pilot, it’s easy to see why Making It Legal didn’t become a regular series. The pilot is bad, sluggishly paced and not particularly engaging. Scott Wolf and Ashley Williams have no chemistry. Ayda Field and Kym Whitley are stuck playing characters who have no personality. Geoffrey Arend’s character is a bunch of quirks that add up to nothing. And then you’ve got Ben Savage, who has never been a particularly good actor but who at least knows how to deliver hackneyed sitcom dialogue. Unfortunately, Trevor still isn’t a particularly likable character. At one point, he falls asleep on a couch and misses the start of a very important meeting. Of course, a panicked Trevor runs into the conference room and promptly trips and falls to the floor. My reaction was that Trevor should have been fired on the spot.

The laugh track disagreed with me, though. This pilot has one of the most intrusive laugh tracks that I have ever heard. Every line of dialogue is followed by canned laughter. Whenever anyone steps into a room, we hear laughter. When people leave a room, we hear laughter. Nothing funny has been said. Nothing funny has happened. But if enough laughter is heard on the soundtrack, maybe we can be fooled into thinking something funny has happened.

Probably the only thing that really did work about the pilot was the casting of Robert Wagner. Wagner wanders through the action with a permanent scowl. He doesn’t appear to be in a good mood. It’s hard not to sympathize with him.

Next week, I’ll start reviewing a show that lasted more than one episode!

This is one of those Hallmark movies that has me scratching my head. Not because it doesn’t make sense. It does. Not because it is screwed up. I actually like this one quite a bit. What has me confused is the title. Yes, it takes place during October. Yes, the boy and girl eventually kiss, but it’s not like that is some central plot point. Oh, well.

That’s Poppy (Ashley Williams) running a yoga class when she invites another lady up to show something. Poppy notices that this lady is quite good and asks if she wants to run the class. She says sure, so Poppy leaves. We then see her leave another job. The point is that she seems to have a fear of committing, but it really isn’t quite like that. It’s more that she just hasn’t found something that truly makes her happy and is willing to quit something at the drop of a hat.

That’s when she stumbles into the job of being a temporary nanny for a couple of kids. She is going to be their nanny through Halloween since their dad is in the middle of the release of a new app he has been developing. He’s going to be busy and could use some help. Seeing as its only temporary and everything, she agrees to do it.

What do you know? She’s good at it. Williams is a delight in this movie. I hate when a review is this short, but there is really not much more to talk about. As she spends more time with the kids, she spends more time with their father.

There is a wrong girl, but she has class and steps aside. He decides he needs to spend more time with his family. She figures out that she’s found someplace and someone that doesn’t just satisfy her temporarily, but is something more permanent. It’s not a particularly original Hallmark movie by any stretch of the imagination. It’s just done well, which makes it an entertaining, but throwaway movie. That’s all a Hallmark movie really should be. There’s a reason they make so many of them. I just wish more of them could be like this and none of them be like A Country Wedding.