Archive for April, 2008
April 22nd, 2008
So this isn’t the way I pictured Eli Stone getting “rid” of his brain aneurysm but that’s why someone else gets paid to write the show while I just watch it. Religiously.
This past week’s show (April 17) begins with everyone at Stone’s law office treating him gingerly. Being that he’s about to get a dangerous surgery to remove a brain aneurysm, he thinks he’s being given special treatment. Especially when the main partner, Jordan Weathersby, surprises Stone by naming him junior partner, in charge of the firm’s new pro bono division.
Of course, Eli accuses Weathersby of giving him preferential treatment, and Jordan just blows it off, as does everyone else. That’s when I knew something was up with this episode.
You see, Eli has already had the surgery, only he doesn’t know it as we come to find out later. Meanwhile, a client, played by the brilliant Richard Schiff, known best as “Toby” from the West Wing, hires Eli to defend him in a trial in which his wife is trying to get him declared incompetent. Schiff’s character, David Green, has cancer for the third time after beating it twice and wants to forgo chemotherapy treatments while his wife wants him to fight for his life.
Green tells Eli that the reason he is giving up on chemo is because God told him to die in peace. This, of course, interests Eli, who has been having prophet-like visions himself.
Throughout the trial, Eli changes his mind on whether or not Green should die a couple of times, in the end, seeing his clients point of view. The case ends with the judge ruling in Green’s favor and Green dying in the hospital.
Meanwhile, we find out that Eli has already undergone the surgery and is in a coma.
This presents a serious problem because in the prior episode, Eli had a colleague draft a document stating that he does not wish to remain in a vegetative state should something happen in the surgery.
And that’s when Dr. Chen, Eli’s guide throughout this whole season, wakes up in the middle of the night and realizes Eli doesn’t know he’s in a coma and needs time to fight to live. He makes this plea to Nathan Stone, Eli’s brother, who is set to carry out Eli’s legal wishes.
Nathan gives Eli 48 hours and Eli fights to live. But not before having a “white light at the end of the tunnel” moment featuring … George Michael? Relax, George Michael *isn’t* God. It’s just another Eli Stone musical number.
And in the end, Eli wakes up.
Posted by ginavergel | in Culture Forum Blog | No Comments »
April 10th, 2008
Our conversation on April 9th at the Time Warner Center offered yet another stimulating and fun evening at the Forum. Here are some highlights:
We learned, in advance of the public announcement, that Adam Liptak will soon be taking on Linda Greenhouse’s position as the Supreme Court correspondent for the New York Times.
There was much stimulating conversation about what makes the legal system so newsworthy. Our guests agreed that the aside from the legal system at work, there are individual stories of people who are affected by the law, compelling stories with great human interest, and it is these stories, more so than the machinery of justice, that drives the public’s interest in the law. Dahlia Lithwick pointed out that the public is always interested in crime and its relationship to the law, and some of what passes for the public’s appetite for the law is really just a fascination with crime, rather than the decisions in Supreme Court cases.
Jack Ford spoke of his experience in having to bring the law to life in the time span of a sound bite. Jan Crawford Greenburg agreed that it is more difficult as a TV journalist to tell the story of the law in such shortened time segments, and both Jan and Jack longed for the space and freedom to write longer pieces as print journalists. Jan had once been a print journalist, and she lamented the fact that fewer newspapers around the country dedicate a full-time reporter to the coverage of the law, in contrast to TV news coverage, in which legal analysts abound. Jack, however, decried how ill-informed some of these analysts actually are. He also feared that daytime TV courtroom programs, in contrast to TV news coverage, gave the public a false impression of what “real” courtroom judges actually do: “They surely don’t yell and humiliate the parties after a commercial break.”
Dahlia Lithwick felt that the amount of blog activity on the Web, specifically written by judges and law professors, was a healthy sign of the democratization of the law and the ability of legal experts to expand the range of ideas outside the confines of newspaper and print journalism.
Jan Crawford Greenburg, Adam Liptak, and Dahlia Lithwick spoke about the coverage of the Supreme Court, and the way in which the judges themselves insist on maintaining their privacy, which is one of the reasons why the Supreme Court is so mysterious, and why the coverage of the Supreme Court does not include humanizing the individual justices. We simply don’t write about them, or learn about them, as if they are presidential candidates or legislators–even during confirmation hearings. Each of our guests shared stories of the natural limitations involved in the coverage of the Supreme Court; and there was also one funny story of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor being blithely asked by a tourist to snap a picture of her before the Supreme Court building, not realizing that the photographer was actually a justice of the Supreme Court.
Jack Ford spoke about how the public’s knowledge about the law, and the quality of legal judgments, too, would benefit from more cameras in the courtroom. Everyone agreed that the public’s interest in the law dictated the news relevance of the stories, that editors and producers do not force stories onto the public for purely education purposes–hence, Anna Nicole Smith’s case in front of the Supreme Court provided both news relevance and commercial appeal for a public endlessly interested in all things legal, and all things salacious and entertaining, such as a fashion model’s claims under a will contest.
Jack Ford talked about the need to often sell the law, exemplified by on-air legal analysts wearing makeup in filing their stories.
And there was also some lively discussion about the way in which the public believes that they already understand the law from having watched Boston Legal, Michael Clayton, or in reading Scott Turow novels. Jack Ford said that prosecutors all over America find themselves having to warn juries that the case under review will not include the kind of DNA disclosures that are commonly found on the CSI series, because juries come to expect that DNA evidence is always plentiful and available.
Posted by Thane Rosenbaum | in Culture Forum Blog | No Comments »
April 7th, 2008
San Francisco lawyer Eli Stone has a brain aneurysm. The malady has left him with an “annoying” side effect: a few times a day, he’s struck with prophet-like visions or wacky daydreams, depending on how Stone feels like classifying them that day. For better or for worse, these visions give him an idea of what cases he should take on.
But the condition, and its pesky side effect, have completely transformed Stone’s life. He dumped his former fiancee and colleague, Taylor, to spare her from the possible pain of losing a lover, although she was willing to stick by him. He’s also on shaky ground with his boss and lead partner for the hot-shot firm that Stone works for, Jordan Wethersby — whom also happens to be Taylor’s father.
Recently, Stone found a surgeon who is willing to remove the aneurysm. Though he hasn’t gotten the surgery yet, it’s been a couple of episodes since he found a surgeon willing to do it, it’s not entirely clear whether he’ll actually go ahead with it. His acupuncturist and confidante, Dr. Chen, doesn’t think he should do it. He’s getting the visions for a reason, he tells Stone. Stone’s brother Nathan, a cardiologist, however, says he’ll support whatever decision he makes.
This past week’s episode, Matters of the Heart (April 3, 2008), Stone’s visions lead him to learn more about Nathan. Stone keeps getting visions in which he actually is his brother 10 years ago. Back in reality, Nathan asks Stone to represent him as he is being sued by a widower,who claims that Nate made a biased decision when he passed over the man’s wife for a heart transplant. He has good reason to believe that there was foul play involved, as his wife was an alcoholic, and everyone seems to know that Eli and Nathan Stone’s father was an alcoholic.
Stone’s visions ultimately reveal that it was his brother, Nathan, who made a decision 10 years ago to deny their dying father of a sorely needed heart transplant. Nathan explains that since their father’s alcoholism was such a source of anxiety, depression and love/hate, he ultimately decided the heart in question should go to someone more deserving.
In the end, the jury sides with Nathan, the defendant. It’s a win for Eli but Nathan is visibly torn.
In other “matters of the heart,” Eli finds out that cute, young attorney Maggie, whom Eli has an undeniable chemistry with, is recently engaged and that his ex, Taylor, slept with another attorney in the office. Bottom line, this season could get a lot more interesting.
Posted by ginavergel | in Culture Forum Blog | No Comments »
