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Twenty-Five Years in the
Future: Is Century City More of the Same, and If So, Is
that Bad?
by Taunya Lovell Banks
Perhaps the only thing really
new in CBS's latest entry in the lawyer drama genre is its setting
twenty-five years in the future. Some things have changed in
Los Angeles 25 years in the future, blurring legal boundaries
(who is human and who is not; what constitutes rape) - real futuristic
ethical issues. Yet other things remain the same. Law firms
function in essentially the same way and lawyer clothing seems
virtually unchanged. To remind us that we are in the future there
is the occasional high-resolution holographic projection, paper
thin computer screen and seedless fruit. Nevertheless, courtroom
tricks are what keep lawyer series popular, and which may ultimately
determine whether this series survives the season.
Century City is populated with many old lawyer
stereotypes, some in new clothing. The law firm of Crane, Constable,
McNeil, & Montero has a former prosecutor, Lukas Gold (played
by Ioan Gruffudd), who CBS describes as an "earnest, self
critical" associate trapped in an early marriage. Next
there is the slimy sexual harassing but brilliant litigating
partner Darwin Mc Neill (played by Eric Schaeffer but not as
deliciously as James Spader in The Practice). In a slight
twist, the intellectual blonde female first year associate, Lee
May Bristol (played by Kristen Lehman), is beautiful, genetically
enhanced and sterile, an interesting combination that also says
a lot about technological imperfections. Evidentially Lee May
had a summer fling with Lukas leaving a lot of unresolved sexual
tension and a door open for in-house romance.
In an interesting bit of casting
Latino Hector Elizondo plays an Anglo lawyer, Marty Constable,
the grey-haired balding experienced partner brought back into
the fold after bouts with alcohol and too many young blonde wives.
Crane, Constable, McNeil, & Montero also has two non-white
law partners. Nestor Carbonell, whose father is Cuban, plays
the Mexican American partner Tom Montero. Montero is no traditional
Mexican American stereotype. He is an assimilated upper middle
class Ivy League educated Mexican American and a former congressman,
who is the firm's chief rainmaker. There are people like Montero
in the real world, so it should be no surprise that they finally
appear on the television in the world of 2030. More significantly,
Montero's Stanford Law School classmate, Hannah Crane (played
by Viola Davis), a black woman, is the founding partner. Unlike
many non-whites portrayed on television today, Montero and Crane,
the daughter of an old civil rights lawyer, are well educated
children of professional parents - much like what we would expect
of Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable's adult grandchildren in 2030.
Unfortunately, Crane does not
see much real lawyer action in the first episode. One hopes
that she is more than a mother figure. All Crane seems to do
is look weary like Eugene Young (Steve Harris) on The Practice
now that he is the senior partner. Also notable in the first
episode is the special guest appearance by Law & Order:
Special Victims Unit's B.D. Wong. Wong plays U.S. Attorney Matthew
Chin. Other than Lucy Liu on the now defunct Ally McBeal,
Asian lawyers are rarities on television lawyer shows. Wong
represents the government in a case involving a confiscated "pre"
embryo. The law firm represents the father (David Paymer), a
widower whose dying 7-year-old son was born with a defective
liver. The father clones his son's cells to develop a baby who
could donate a portion of its liver to save the son. We learn
that cloning now is illegal in the United States. So the father
smuggles the cloned cells into the United States from Singapore,
where cloning is legal, but his future embryo is confiscated
at customs. Now he is suing for its return.
We later learn that the son
is a clone of the father - making the child and father brothers,
and the child's grandparents, his biological parents. This plot
line sounds like something leftover from Ally McBeal.
The father's liver is not compatible because he contracted hepatitis
as a teen. If this plot is suppose to be futuristic then the
creators of Century City need to get a new science advisor.
Given the work being done today on organ regeneration and growth,
it is highly unlikely that someone in 2030 would need to clone
a person to get a liver for transplantation. But then the story
would be less compelling if the writers stuck closer to reality.
There were other misconceptions about the science of cloning
and stem cells, but they can be overlooked as artistic license,
after all, this is entertainment television.
The other case in the first episode is also Ally McBeal
like. It involves an old rocker (Anthony Zerbe) who refused
to undergo plastic surgery and take experimental drugs to stay
young. He is suing other members of the rock band, all in the
60s and 70s, for refusing to let him join them on their road
show. The Firm represents the band members. When a youthful
looking 70ish band member dies of a stroke, the band ultimately
reunites at the funeral where the old rocker dances around like
a twenty-year-old, obviously the work of a body double.
At best Century City
is a less slick version of L.A. Law set twenty-five years
in the future. At its worse, the show is a serious version of
Ally McBeal with some of its silliness. If Century
City continues to rely more on futuristic technological gimmicks
rather than hard hitting story lines, I suggest you tune in to
The D.A. instead. Although this show lacks Century
City's racial and gender diversity, the story lines seems
to carry more punch.
There may be hope, however.
The second episode of Century City involved what the
lawyers called a virtual rape. The male partner of the woman
was given something that allowed a third-party to feel all the
sensations of the male partner during sexual intercourse with
the woman. The third-party could replay this sensation over
and over. The legal question raised was more challenging, was
the action a privacy issue, rape or neither, especially if the
male partner consented? This plotline seemed a more realistic
example of the kinds of legal problems future technological advances
might present.
In a later unaired episode
parents choose to have the "gay gene" removed from
their child, thus eliminating homosexuals. This action raises
many interesting questions. If parents chose to make their children
heterosexuals to make life easier, would parents do the same
for race? The same consequences would occur if the genes that
control race are modified. Thus one wonders whether racial differences
would persist in the near future. After all, the parents in
film Gattaca chose "white" as the racial designation
for their genetically enhanced embryo. It will be interesting
to see how Century City handles this issue.
Posted April 7, 2004
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