STRONG OBJECTION
Talented cast handcuffed in Fox’s ‘Proven Innocent’
There are a lot of good, talented people on Fox’s new series “Proven Innocent.” Perhaps instead of watching the show, we set up GoFundMe pages for them while they look for more satisfying work.
In this legal drama from executive producers Danny Strong (“Empire”) and David Elliot, people who should know better, a woman who was wrongly convicted of murder devotes her life to saving others from false imprisonment.
Madeline Scott (Rachelle Lefevre, “Under the Dome”) and her brother Levi (Riley Smith, “Frequency”) spent a decade behind bars for the killing of her best friend before their convictions were overturned. She went to Yale, earned a law degree and is now partners in a firm with the attorney, Easy Boudreau (Russell Hornsby, “Grimm”), who saved her. They call themselves the Injustice Defense Group, which actually sounds as if they support wrongdoing and is just one of many oddly named things, people and places here.
Madeline’s legal adversary, the Hamilton Burger to her Perry Mason, is the man who put her away, District Attorney Gore Bellows (Kelsey Grammer, “Frasier”), so named because Dastardly McEvil was too subtle. He apparently has decades of shoddy convictions to his record and only Madeline is paying attention. In the opener, Gore decides to run for state attorney general, which prompts Madeline to vow to expose him.
“Are you sure you want to poke the bear?” Easy asks.
“No,” she replies. “I want to rip his heart out.”
Helping her and Easy is investigator Bodie Quick, played by “Mad Men’s” Pete, Vincent Kartheiser, and I don’t know, maybe Kartheis- er is here because health insurance is so expensive. Anyway, Bodie practices swinging a katana in the office as we all do and starts a relationship with an undercover cop. The firm’s communications director, Violet Price (Nikki M. James, “The Good Wife”), runs a truecrime podcast and any scenes she’s in are terrific reminders to check your laundry. It’s not going to clean itself, people.
In fairness, Fox only made two episodes available, the first and the fourth, odd choices for a show so heavily serialized.
In Friday’s episode, Madeline takes on the case of a woman who confessed to set- ting a fire that killed her son. She later defends a Muslim woman convicted of murdering her prematurely born baby. The latter case mixes Islamophobia with anti-abortion outrage and features a judge who apparently never heard of Roe v. Wade.
Madeline is feisty. When Gore plays to the courtroom and reminds everyone that prosecutors are also human beings, she says, “Objection! Assumes facts not in evidence.” Grammer is suitably sinister in his scenes. In a blinkand-miss-it cameo, “The Walking Dead’s” Laurie Holden plays his equally ambitious wife. Later, he becomes involved with a Nancy Grace clone. Nancy should sue for defamation.
In flashbacks, oh, yes, so many flashbacks for a murder mystery that is not remotely compelling, young Maddy (Clare O’Connor) and her brother come off like “Riverdale’s” Blossom twins.
Watching “Proven Innocent,” you might be reminded of a saying from TV’s No. 1 judge, Judge Judy: “Beauty is temporary. Dumb is forever.”