PILOT REVIEW: All Rise

ALL RISE

Starring: Simone Missick, Wilson Bethel, Jessica Camacho, J. Alex Brinson, Ruthie Ann Miles, Lindsay Mendez and Marg Helgenberger

Developed by Greg Spottiswood
Written for Television by Greg Spottiswood, Directed by Michael M. Robin

I read an article about ER recently (celebrating its 25th anniversary). It talked abut how revolutionary it was for a show to just throw the audience down in the middle of a busy hospital with a diverse group of patients and doctors. It's amazing how something that can seem so revolutionary in 1994 can seem old-hat now. All Rise, CBS's newest legal drama, has a very intense start and a diverse cast, but there's nothing at all that feels groundbreaking.

That's not to say that there's nothing to like in All Rise, a drama about the judges, prosecutors and public defenders in a Los Angeles County courthouse. There is a pretty strong cast here and it starts with Simone Missick. She seems very capable of carrying a drama like this and had a couple great moments (passing the tissues to Ruthie Ann Miles' Sherri Kansky was very funny). I am wondering if/when they will delve into her personal life because that surprisingly didn't happen at all in the pilot. It seems as though they wanted to establish her position in the workplace. I will say it was a relief to not have the typical "she's tough in the courtroom, but her personal life is a mess" trope.

The rest of the cast had some highlights, particularly Jessica Camacho and J. Alex Brinson. It seems like anytime a show wants a powerful and veteran female authority role, they're going to turn to Marg Helgenberger or Dana Delany. It's Marg's turn here and she is solid, but doesn't really bring anything different to the role. I was not particularly impressed with Wilson Bethel. He seemed like pretty much any other prosecutor in any legal drama.

Which, I guess, is really at the heart of why All Rise is fine and that's about it. After nearly a decade doing this blog, I have seen my fair share of cop/legal/medical dramas. Some of them I like and some of them I don't. I have long argued that a show doesn't need to be groundbreaking to be entertaining and certainly some of my favorites on TV right (the Chicago shows come to mind) are not breaking any new ground. But what those shows do have are good characters. It's hard to tell if that will happen for All Rise. Right now, even a good performance by someone like Missick or Camacho or Brinson doesn't mean there are good characters. They are stock characters through and through, some of them are played to a higher level than others. If All Rise is going to become a show I watch more than when the logline for the episode sounds good, I need to get more invested in these characters and soon.

WILL I WATCH IT AGAIN?
Probably at some point. Will I watch it next week? We'll see.