Raining Jane

“Jane Kaczmarek, the twisted Mom from Malcolm in the Middle, a JUDGE?! Are you SERIOUS?!”

That was all I could come up with when TNT announced the new series Raising the Bar.

To hear the writers (namely Steven Bochco of NYPD Blue, LA Law, and other easily consumed court dramas) of Raising the Bar tell it, the justice system never even comes close to getting it right. And in this universe, the people who screw it up the most are women. The second episode of the series, September 8’s “Guatamala Gulfstream,” sees the exceptionally slimy bureau chief Nick Balco (Currie Graham, who seems to be making a career of playing easily-hated bosses), tell prosecutor Michelle Ernhardt (Melissa Sagemiller) that the biggest problem with women lawyers is that… they’re women! “You’ve all got this chip on your shoulders about playing with the boys. Makes you dumb.” As this remark is made to a woman who has just done everything in her power to prevent a defendant from getting his constitutionally guaranteed fair trial, it’s hard to feel too bad for her, even after we’ve watched her be blatantly sexually harassed by Mr. Balco himself. This week’s weak attempts to humanize Melissa by showing her watching forlornly as her ex-boyfriend Jerry Kellerman (Mark-Paul Gosselaar)—who she broke up with to scheme against his client freely in “Guatemala Gulfsteam”—flirt with the sassy new defender from Brooklyn, Bobbi (Natalia Cigliuti)—whose client she just railroaded—does little to make us feel bad for her. The character most representative of the difficulties some women still face in the workplace happens to be one of the most unlikeable on a show full of unlikeable characters.

Which brings us to Jane, who plays Judge Trudy Kessler, a public defender turned prosecutorial activist judge. NO ONE likes Trudy, whose decisions seem to be based solely on her ambition to become the District Attorney for Manhattan. Her judgments support only public opinion—she literally rewrites the law to be sure that she always comes out in the best possible light. Since in this courtroom the public defenders never seem to bend the rules, no matter what the unscrupulous prosecutors may do, Judge Kessler’s zeal to give the public what they want—more convictions—makes her ambition the very gateway enabling injustice to run rampant in the system. We hate her for going after what she wants.

It’s a bleeding heart series designed specifically to make us hate the system. But it doesn’t just make us hate the game—it makes us hate the players, and on this show, the best of those are women.