You understand what’s enjoyable? Watching legal professionals do lawyer stuff on TV. It’s definitely rather more enjoyable than coping with legal professionals in actual life, which is why the lawyer present has been a fixture of tv because the days of Perry Mason and The Defenders. It’s a proud and noble custom of storytelling that’s continued to the most recent entry within the style, Fits LA — a derivative of the USA Community collection Fits, that includes Stephen Amell and so many baffling decisions.
The primary episode of Fits LA is definitely the worst of the three shared with critics, largely as a result of it tries to do an excessive amount of directly. However the present doesn’t enhance a lot from there. Amell stars because the besuited Ted, who runs a high-powered legislation agency specializing in leisure legislation. Leisure legislation is a recent space of TV lawyering for a present like Fits LA to discover, and it provides the present’s producers a enjoyable alternative to solid people like John Amos, Brian Baumgartner, and Patton Oswalt as themselves. If solely that was all Fits LA was!
For these unfamiliar with the unique collection (or who solely found it throughout its now-legendary growth interval on Netflix), let’s do a fast historical past lesson: Fits premiered in 2011, on the peak of USA Community’s “Blue Sky” period, when the cable community specialised in hour-long procedurals that includes quirky people with distinctive professions, resulting in the distinctive catchphrase “Characters Welcome.”
The extra memorable collection from this time included Burn Discover (that includes a blacklisted spy in Miami), White Collar (that includes a con artist in New York Metropolis), Psych (that includes a faux psychic detective in Santa Barbara), and Royal Pains (that includes a flowery non-public physician within the Hamptons). The emphasis was on relationships over intense plotting, the kind of cozy tv it’s enjoyable to chill out with.
Fits was proper in step with that philosophy, that includes a high-powered lawyer (Gabriel Macht) who takes on an affiliate (Patrick J. Adams) who’s good however not technically a lawyer. Retaining the non-lawyer’s lack of legislation diploma a secret was a giant a part of the present’s narrative, however the focus was in any other case on an intriguing vary of circumstances being lawyered by a charismatic ensemble — a pleasing viewing expertise whether or not you had been watching week-to-week because it initially aired or as a binge.
After Fits grew to become massively in style on Netflix in 2023, USA Community guardian firm NBCUniversal requested Fits and Fits LA creator Aaron Korsh to reconfigure (or en-Fits-iate) an earlier concept about Hollywood brokers to suit throughout the Fits-iverse, which in the end landed at NBC. (This paragraph exists to reply the query “I believed Fits was a Netflix present! Why aren’t they streaming the spinoff?”)
So, take that fundamental method — engaging women and men in fits doing go well with stuff in convention rooms and perhaps the occasional courthouse — transplant it to Los Angeles, and add as many cameos as an NBC finances can afford. A easy method for achievement!
Sadly, Korsh and the inventive workforce went a unique means. All the issues with Fits LA are rooted in the best way the present diverges from the unique. Not as a result of the brand new components which have been added are totally different from what got here earlier than, however as a result of these new components, on their very own deserves, vary from pointless to nonsensical to deranged.
The actually deranged stuff can’t be mentioned attributable to spoilers, however one of many present’s greatest points is the selection to dig deep into the origin story of Amell’s Ted, particularly how a former prosecutor from New York ended up negotiating contracts for starlets in Hollywood. That is dealt with through an endless collection of flashbacks to Ted engaged on a giant mob case over 10 years in the past — a case that ended up having deadly repercussions for multiple particular person concerned. Whereas the flashbacks are clearly constructing as much as some huge reveals, they find yourself feeling like reheated gangster film leftovers, whereas additionally distracting from all of the potential Fits-ing that could possibly be occurring as an alternative.
Moreover, whereas Fits had a pointy eye for character relationships, Fits LA blows up almost all of Ted’s most private connections within the pilot, leaving him adrift. And whereas Amell could be a charismatic presence on display screen, Ted in any other case appears like a quip-generating cypher, whose solely fascinating bonds with others exist solely within the flashbacks. And once more, the flashbacks aren’t nice.
The ensemble has some potential, even when a personality like Erica (Lex Scott Davis), who’s combating to move the leisure division of Ted’s legislation agency, is outlined by two traits: Ambition and a lack of expertise about precise motion pictures and tv. (The present brings the latter high quality up prefer it’s a captivating quirk, versus an excellent motive for her to not head the leisure division.) Maggie Grace will get some restricted display screen time as Amanda, a professional bono protection lawyer who doesn’t technically work for Ted and thus can have non-problematic flirty pressure with him. Extra importantly, she not less than has some persona, although she isn’t round sufficient to make up for the deficits elsewhere.
All that being mentioned, whereas the pilot is the worst episode of the primary three, the second and third did appear to enhance on the primary — whereas nonetheless burdened by these flashbacks, the present-day sequences had some spark to them. It’s not unusual for a present to take a while to determine itself out, and a wise selection was made in balancing each single-episode storylines and longer-running plots: Whereas it may have been doubtlessly instructed in only one episode, an ongoing homicide case involving Alias’s Kevin Weisman was compelling sufficient for this humble critic, not less than, to be interested in the way it would possibly resolve.
If this present can shuck off its tiresome flashbacks in addition to its extra ridiculous twists (viewers who attain the tip of the pilot can have no query as to what not less than one in every of them is likely to be), there could possibly be one thing watchable right here. However Fits followers hoping for a West Coast-flavored version could wrestle to search out right here what they loved earlier than. Fits LA didn’t must be precisely the identical as the unique collection — however ideally, it wouldn’t have overlooked why folks watched within the first place.
Fits LA premieres Sunday, Feb. twenty third at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on NBC, and can start streaming on Peacock the subsequent day. Take a look at the trailer beneath.
