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Girls Club or, Charlie's Angels Graduate
from Law School, Get Their First Jobs and Lose All Common Sense
by Christine Corcos
David E. Kelley's new "lawyer
drama" Girls Club debuted on October 21. If you are
interested, tune in soon. It will probably not be around for
too many episodes.
 Three
recent Stanford Law School graduates, the fairly conservative
Sarah Mickle (Chyler Leigh), the resolutely tough Lynne Camden
(Gretchen Mol), and the relentlessly adorable and mature Jeannie
Falls (Kathleen Robertson), share a lovely apartment and brand
new careers at a conservative, highbrow, San Francisco mega-firm
run by Nicholas Hahn (Giancarlo Esposito) and his cohorts: a
sleazy sexually harassing type ("Spencer Lewis," played
by Brian Markinson) and a "tough broad" type ("Meredith
Holt," played by Lisa Banes). These young women desperately
want to be part of the "club" that runs the legal system,
the club that does not value "girls." The question
is, how desperately? Desperately enough to disband their own
"club" (i.e. to abandon their sisterhood)? Desperately
enough to play along with the law firm's unwritten rules about
accepting unwanted attentions from the male partners and clients?
Desperately enough to accept criticisms that may or may not be
warranted? Desperately enough to accept second chair (or second
fiddle) when they think they deserve better treatment?
David E. Kelley poses these
questions as part of a larger consideration of the treatment
that pretty, smart and relatively inexperienced women get in
the legal workplace. By itself this is an important issue, but
Kelley trivializes much of it. The sexual harassment that Jeannie
undergoes is now a cliché-The King of Queens satirized
it this week in an episode in which a partner's four-year-old
son repeatedly grabs Carrie's breasts while she is babysitting
him (at work, no less). Just as she gets up the courage to tell
the partner, the little boy switches his affections to another
secretary in the firm whose charms are more…um…pronounced.
In Girls Club, Sarah discovers that another associate
("Rhanda Clifford", played by Christina Chang) is out
to torpedo her: the associate convinces her that their supervising
partner likes things done a particular way, but this turns out
not to be the case. The cynical managing partner assigns Lynne
to a capital murder case, for which she is clearly not emotionally
or professionally ready, in order to "test her mettle,"
then causes her to doubt herself even more by revealing that
a predatory and manipulative (female) D.A. has complained that
she is "infatuated" with her client. The leading female
partner in the firm has the nickname "The Praying Mantis",
apparently because the associates perceive her as an intellectual
and professional stalker.
Indeed, the associates have
nicknames for nearly everybody, including their colleague Mitchell
Watson (known as "the Worm," apparently because he
busies himself trying to win over the partners-maybe "the
Weasel" would have been more apt), and the male partners
and senior associates, known as "dicks." This seems
to be the extent of their attempt to avenge themselves on what
they perceive to be the general unfairness of the system at Hahn,
Lewis and Holt. And it indicates the major problem with the show,
which is that it portrays women who were smart enough to get
through Stanford Law successfully and be hired by such a firm
as not smart enough to understand that a lot of things in life
and the workplace are unfair, and that very few people, even
those with enough power and influence to stand up to the wrongdoers,
will step up to the plate to right that unfairness. In addition,
has school taught these women nothing? Did they not check out
the reputation of the firm before they accepted offers? Where
did they learn that snapping back at hiring partners is acceptable
after a month on the job (if ever)? I have on occasion run into
students who think that disrespect toward their professors is
a constitutionally protected right-whatever academic dean in
charge of students at the time soon disabuses them of that notion
and whatever career services professionals are in the building
let them know that such behavior on the job leads not to a job
offer but to a pink slip.
The enduring problem that Mickle,
Camden and Falls face is a simple one: does one burrow into the
system and try to change it from within, or does one walk away
and try to change it from without, while maintaining the moral
high ground? These young women want to have it both ways: they
want to be part of the club before they have paid their dues,
and they want to change the club even though they are in the
minority and don't have the votes. They have, in effect, the
same attitude as does Ally McBeal, and they run into the same
problems.
Now, Lynne, Sarah and Jeannie
actually do have some engaging and attractive characteristics.
They are loyal to one another. They are committed to the practice
of law (even if they still haven't quite figured out how it squares
with the practice of life). They dress nicely (probably too nicely
for first year associates still paying off law school debt).
Of course some of the things
that happen in the first episode of Girls Club are both
ugly and realistic. Some associates do try to sabotage their
colleagues. Some male partners are unrepentant, testosterone-soaked
sharks who see every XX that comes through their doors as juicy
prey. Some female partners have developed carapaces and philosophies
that rival those of 100-year-old desert tortoises. Some partners
do set new associates up to fail. But all in the same law firm
within one month? Yikes. I don't demand absolute truth from my
television shows, but so much fantasy is off-putting. The deck
is so completely stacked against this trio of professional minnows
that they're unlikely to make it through another week in these
predator-infested waters, never mind the three or four years
it takes for a law firm to make back its initial investment in
a new associate.
Maybe that explains all the
whining. Sarah is upset when, rather than firing her over some
highly inappropriate and gay-bashing comments she makes to Rhanda,
Hahn sentences her to ten weekends of therapy and anger management.
She insists to her roommates that she is not homophobic-well,
perhaps, but anyone who uses a derogatory term referring to gender
in the context of a professional conversation (even an angry
one) loses the presumption of innocence. Lynne vows that Hahn
won't make her cry and she tells him so, leading with her brave
little chin. Does she think she is standing up to him, and that
he doesn't "get it"? Cute. And why is she standing
up to him? Yes, he assigned her to what he thought was a losing
case. But why, after rehearsing her opening for days, does she
panic and completely forget it? Lucky for her and Sarah, both
Hahn and Holt are grownups who won't hold their childishness
against them until there's simply no other choice.
Jeannie has a more significant
problem, and one that is not of her own making. One of the male
partners is harassing her, and making his desire for her extremely
obvious. Why does Jeannie fail to confront him? Far from demonstrating
her wimpiness, this failure actually shows that even though she
is surprised and upset, she, unlike her friends, has some political
savvy. Confronting him without having lined up some assistance
from other partners in the firm and some witnesses to his behavior
is just foolhardy. It is a career-ender. She would be fired.
No other law firm, having notice of the reason (and any other
law firm would certainly manage to uncover the reason), would
hire her. The presumption of innocence here is with the male
partner, not with her. How can she address the problem? Either
Meredith Holt or Nicholas Hahn seems to be the best bet to assist
with Jeannie's complaint. While Hahn might seem to want total
obedience and total silence from the associates, his subdued
and careful explanation of the death of Lynne's client indicates
that he is not a monster. Holt may seem tough as nails, but she
does offer the girls some useful advice: "close your door
if you're going to gossip"; "don't make enemies out
of people who bear you no ill-will"; and "don't call
your colleagues names." This is the kind of advice our mothers
have always given us, and even if Holt is not a den mother and
doesn't see herself as one, she still seems to believe that part
of her role as a name partner is to shepherd this clueless group,
who seem never to have heard of Betty Friedan or Simone de Beauvoir
or the fight they championed, through what remains of the social
and political land mines facing the feminist infantry.
That the heroines of the show
spend a lot of time writing briefs and doing research is realistic,
and I'm glad to see that the "grunt work" of lawyering
has some prominence. But a good deal of the plot is just weak,
and serves to put the women in peril for no other reason than
the custom that we apparently can never see capable and successful
women lawyers on television. Lynne is doing well with her case
until her supervising partner tells her of a nasty remark made
by the D.A. Assuming that he finds it necessary to tell her,
why doesn't he assure her that he doesn't believe it? Why doesn't
he sit second chair with her, once he realizes that the D.A.
is worried about losing, Lynne is rattled, and that this client
actually has a chance? It is a capital murder trial, after all.
Rainmaking is extremely important in law firms. If Sarah really
has brought in the client over whom she and Rhanda are bickering,
is it likely that the partners will fail to recognize that, especially
since the client may have something to say about his/her representation
at the firm? Her partner assigns Jeannie to an ugly and frivolous
suit against a hapless physician because the complainant is the
sister of another partner. Why not just take the case himself
and quietly dispose of it as a favor to his colleague (especially
since Jeannie could so easily have mishandled the situation)?
As I have noted, Sarah and
Lynne, and to some extent Jeannie, just "don't get it"--
unlike Mitchell Watson, who tells Sarah to "look for a lateral"
move before she gets fired. He sees the handwriting on her wall
and is generous enough to share it with her. I don't see any
ulterior motives in his frank assessment of her position. What
I see is political astuteness and some free advice. Here's my
free advice to David E. Kelley: either explain to us how such
relentlessly silly women got hired in the first place (their
looks can't totally account for that, and I am not convinced
by the repeated comments by the partners to these associates
that in spite of the criticism they actually are capable), and
account for the law firm's continuing success in the face of
such obvious mis-management, or give the Trendy Trio brain and
personality transplants. Get them with the program, or get them
to their own law firm, where they will sink or swim-very likely
the former, just like this show.
The official website
urges viewers to "join the club" and try to win a weekend
in San Francisco and a shopping spree at Saks' Fifth Avenue.
Silly. Bygones.
For more about the Praying
Mantis, see http://www.bartleby.com/65/ma/mantid.html
Posted October 25, 2002
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