All Rise (2019) s03e08 – Lola Through the Looking Glass

I never watched “Ally McBeal,” but is a dream episode something it might have done? I wonder if it was better suited for the diversion than “All Rise.”

Though… even when “Rise”’s cast has been wanting in terms of performances, they’ve always been amiable, so having them play various absurd roles in Simone Missick’s dream is entertaining. The episode begins with no resolution to the elevator cliffhanger, where Missick and law school beau Sean Blakemore find themselves trapped. But they don’t kiss and canoodle or decide never to kiss and canoodle, which makes the cliffhanger even cheaper than before.

This episode opens with Missick getting an invitation to a prestigious law event. It turns out Blakemore’s the hosting lawyer, so it seems like he’s trying to get her away for a conference weekend at a resort. Before falling asleep and having her wild dream, Missick argues with her still primary caregiving husband, Christian Keyes, about childcare stuff. Then she and Wilson Bethel fight about him giving her relationship advice. As in, stay away from Blakemore’s resort invitation.

The dream has Missick giving up the law to marry Blakemore and living the good life. They’ve got three kids, who don’t figure into the story at all, and Missick’s trying to get elected national chairperson to a Black women’s legal society. She and Bethel are on the outs; he’s the judge now and apparently… gay and married to J. Alex Brinson. Jessica Camacho (who’s fantastic) is their brash, brassy, slutty, drunky surrogate. Lindsey Gort’s her doula.

Missick’s attraction to Blakemore is retroactively completely reasonable once he’s got his shirt off, which the dream sequence leads with. Keyes is also around, married to Ryan Michelle Bathe, now Missick’s nemesis. Missick stole Blakemore from Bathe in law school and ended up with Keyes, who had some kind of attraction with Missick back then. Now Keyes wants to leave Bathe and Bathe’s going to destroy Missick in the legal society election….

And there’s a law school reunion, where everyone gets together. Almost everyone. Marg Helgenberger’s cameo is short, ditto Samantha Marie Ware and Roger Guenveur Smith. Ian Anthony Dale, however, displays unseen comic chops as a horny drunk, while Lindsay Mendez and Ruthie Ann Miles get to sing.

Some things work better than others—Brinson’s a tad broad–but shaking things up does liven the cast. Only for it all to turn out to be filler; stay tuned for next episode and the actual resolution. Maybe.

“All Rise” has let the Blakemore subplot entirely dominate the second half of the season, and it’s getting nothing out of it. Such strange, constant missteps.

All Rise (2019) s02e07 – Almost the Meteor

There has to be someone else who notices all the “All Rise” retcons; not just the little ones where it seems like someone’s going to be disgusted with being part of the carceral system but—and here’s a perfect example—the back and forth on whether or not Todd Williams is moving to L.A. to help wife (and ostensible lead) Simone Missick with their new baby.

Last episode she said he was already there and his transfer had come through, two episodes ago he wasn’t there yet, and this episode he’s just there for a bit before he leaves, no talking about the transfer at all. Despite Williams being profoundly useless on the show, this episode is easily his best, even if showcases why the show doesn’t need him. Even with a new baby.

This episode also goes out of its way to close up a bunch of outstanding subplots, like Wilson Bethel vs. lying, shooting civilian cops and Missick trying to find the girl who lost her backpack at the George Floyd protests. At least the Bethel one feels like they decided they couldn’t afford Anne Heche for a guest spot and rushed her out (ditto Williams, who the show seems to be dangling as an almost regular).

The stuff with Bethel and the cops doesn’t really work (mostly because they also drop the main cop villain who’d been around since before Heche) and doesn’t provide Bethel with any actual character development. The show goes out of its way for guest star Gabriel Cordell—the guy shot by the cops—to tell Bethel off about it, which is totally justified but also very strange Bethel thought he’d “done enough.”

The most successful—but no less cloying—story in the episode has J. Alex Brinson trying to get a youthful offender and victim in a healing circle when the victim (Coy Stewart) doesn’t want to testify in court. While it’s way too aspirational and Brinson seems way too naive, Brinson’s really trying with the acting and he’s got excellent support from Jessica Camacho (who’s basically a guest star at this point instead of third lead) and—for maybe the first time—Reggie Lee as his boss. Lee and Brinson click in a way Lee never does with Bethel.

Admittedly, a socially distanced, locked down, lead on maternity leave on the show (Missick), whatever’s going on with guest star budgets… “Rise” is still holding it together but just barely. It’s forgotten how to leverage Missick and Bethel, but has also downgraded Camacho as her acting has improved. For seven episodes into a sophomore season… it’s rough.

All Rise (2019) s01e16 – My Fair Lockdown

This episode of “All Rise” has this super juicy white man part for guest star Ben Browder. Survivalist holds courtroom hostage; the cops came to kick him out of his home, which is apparently somewhere in the County of Los Angeles but remote enough you don’t see people and no one pays attention when you don’t pay your property taxes for twenty years. I mean, California’s big. Sure, let’s go with it. Let’s even go with Simone Missick at one point telling Browder, who doesn’t believe the court has any jurisdiction over him, he’s going to get a chance to “speak his truth.”

Of course, Browder’s truth is objectively false and if he really hadn’t been off the farm for twenty years or whatever, he’d be in for astounding culture shock and be suffering from that problem too but… whatever. Don’t like the dismissive use of “truth” there. Not cool.

But then all of Conway Preston’s script is bad. The dialogue, the plotting, all of it. The only things wrong with the episode he’s not responsible for are the casting and the direction. David A. Harp’s direction is fine except the opening when he tries to do this lengthy fake tracking shot of Lindsay Mendez coming into work and walking past all the regular cast to introduce the episode’s ground situation. Worse, it’s peppy and upbeat while the episode is anything but. It’s a tonal bait and switch and “All Rise” isn’t worth a tonal bait and switch. Regardless of me preferring the latter tone to the former. The peppy stuff is obnoxious. The downbeat stuff isn’t great or even good, but it’s not obnoxious.

Though it’s not like the show challenges its cast. Actually, “All Rise” is a bait and switch in and of itself; here’s this great opportunity for Missick and Wilson Bethel and the show wastes them. They get less so Jessica Camacho gets more, even though she’s not part of their dynamic best buds duo (which is missing from the show, almost as obviously as Missick’s husband, Todd Williams on FaceTime, who’s either dying or cheating by the end of the season). But then Camacho gets a truncated part this episode so everyone else in the supporting cast can get more.

It’s a mess. The show’s got way too many regulars and not enough for them to do. It really needs better writers. And better guest stars. I didn’t think Browder had done anything. I thought they couldn’t get anyone to play such a poorly written juicy white man part—seriously, if well-written it’d be Emmy-bait—but Browder was actually the lead on “Farscape.”

Note: continue hesitating to watch “Farscape,” regardless of Henson Company involvement.

There’s a really solid moment or two for Paul McCrane in this episode though. The action takes him out of his regular—well, it doesn’t actually take him out of the courtroom—basically, it’s a new way to see McCrane. He gets to act opposite Bethel and J. Alex Brinson and talk about Brinson dating Camacho and you realize how great it’d be for McCrane to really get good material and not a souped-up caricature for once.

The show also wastes a Jason Dohring guest spot. I seriously don’t understand how Dohring can’t get a shot outside “Veronica Mars” projects. Though maybe it’s better to be on the periphery of “All Rise,” out of the middling’s blast radius.