Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Well, I Guess It Would Be Nice...
By Couch Baron | Season 1 | Episode 1 | Aired on 01.30.2008
So, apparently humiliating himself in public is enough for Eli to make some changes to his belief system. Yeah, that sounds about right. Specifically, he's gone to see Dr. Chin, and he's already got several needles in his head as Dr. Chin muses that Eli told him George Michael has great meaning to him. Eli protests that that's not what he said, but Dr. Chin thinks that's at the root of the visions. He says he'll help Eli remember, and taps a needle into Eli's forehead...
...and then we're in a flashback, as a geeky/cute, bespectacled guy of about twenty is making out with a girl on top of him. She stops for a moment to inquire if this is his first time, and whether it is or not, I'm sure he appreciates the timing of the question even more than the content. Upon determining that he is in fact a horny virgin, she gets up in order to forestall any premature ejaculation...er, "because they need some music." She finds -- surprise surprise -- a George Michael album, and gigglingly asks what he's doing with it. Because...he's too butch for George Michael? Okay, we'll go with that. She starts to put it on, but Eli says he can't lose his virginity to George Michael. The girl suggests they just make out, then. Eli: "Or, it could even make the whole experience more memorable." Hee, but...apparently not. Maybe it's a minor point, but with George Michael popping up every few hours all of a sudden, I find it a little hard to believe that Eli needed help retrieving this memory. And given some of the courtroom stuff that's coming up, any problems with my suspension of disbelief are bad signs indeed. Anyway, she puts "Faith" on, and I know music rights are an issue, but I'm starting to feel anvilized here. I mean, "I Want Your Sex" might be a little on-the-nose, but we're taking about a college boy losing his virginity. It's not a time for subtlety. The girl tells Eli that he hasn't bloomed yet, but by the time he's that lawyer "changing the world," he'll be hot. Half right. Anyway, there's smooching...
...and then Autism Mother opens her door to find Eli. Apparently she is the girl from "UCLA, 1991," and was going by "Lizzie" then instead of Autism Mother...er, "Beth." He asks why she didn't tell him, but she makes the valid point that it's not like he remembered her. "Come on, Eli, we were stoned on pot brownies and had a random college hookup." Honey, I was in college in 1991 myself, and pot brownies with actual pot in them don't lead to conversations about blooming and saving the world. They lead to you moving from the couch to the floor in an effort to get as perfectly horizontal as possible. Anyway, their little snit-fest is interrupted by a sound from inside, and they go in to find Beth's son Ben making an ambitious large construction with blocks. He doesn't look up as Beth introduces Eli, and then Eli stammeringly starts to ask if Ben is his. Beth: "Yeah. I was pregnant for eight years." That's a funny line, but is Eli...kind of dim? I'm just not seeing that he's so incredibly bright, and I don't know why it's necessary for him to be, like, the bestest lawyer on the West Coast if it's not going to be believable. Beth kneels next to Ben and tries to get him to say hello to Eli, and when that fails, Eli kneels down: "So you like blocks, huh?" I take it all back. The man is a genius. Ben says he actually likes words, and there are over five hundred thousand of them in the English language, not counting names. I know a little bit about autism, and this case is manifesting as really pretty mild. Eli seems to see something affecting as he looks at the blocks, and says he'll ask to take the case. Beth tells Eli she doesn't want him to do it out of pity or sympathy, to which I say: Give me a fucking break, hon. Eli, seemingly non-sequiturishly, quotes Ben's line about words and names to her and leaves, but we see the reason for it when we pan over to the wall of blocks, on which we see the names "George" and "Michael" spelled out. I would have enjoyed this development more if, underneath, we'd seen "Community" and "Service." Not that I'm giving George Michael shit -- that scene he did in the Extras series finale is still making me laugh just thinking about it.
In case we've already forgotten where we are, we get some Dirty Sexy Money-esque reminder shots of San Francisco, and then we're in the firm's boardroom, where Victor Garber (yay!) is acting deliciously deliberately puzzled about Eli's wish to switch sides in the case. Tom Amandes (double yay!) then steps in over Eli's confused babbling to point out that in situations where firms have represented conflicting interests, they've done so on behalf of actual paying clients. I have to mention, though, that both Garber and Amandes seem not to know what a Chinese wall is, which is beyond ludicrous, given that it's Law Firm 101. Maybe they can be forgiven since it doesn't remotely apply in this situation. Eli then hears a bell, and if I were him, I'd take that as my mind's editorial commentary on the wisdom of Tom Amandes's comment. Eli at least shows the good judgment not to tell everyone about the ringing, as they obviously think he's crazy enough already. The jerk lawyer from earlier (since he's a regular, I'll mention that his name's Matt Dowd) pipes up that he's redecorating Eli's office in his head. Gay! Victor Garber (Jordan Wethersby) informs Eli that normally, they offer nuisance money to get "quixotic plaintiffs" to go away. Really? Just out of curiosity, exactly how quixotic does one have to be? Anyway, as gladly as Jordan seems to suffer fools, he asks Eli to get to the point, which is why he should allow Eli to potentially upset big client Beutel for a case that's "a complete and utter loser." Eli argues that the publicity of pro bono work will help the firm in terms of PR and will contribute to the bottom line. So let me get this straight: Big, rich company has never once considered the idea of offsetting its shark image with pro bono work, even though it's basically de rigueur in the legal industry. But now that Eli has put the idea on the table, it's so brilliant that they have to act on it this second with this particular case, despite the fact that they could get a billion other cases in five minutes if they wanted to, and Beutel would be absolutely insane not to fire and probably sue them immediately. I mean, I know Jordan ends up having an ulterior motive here, but no one else knows that and they're still going along, so...do you see why I didn't want to tackle the medicine here?