Call it the ”Coach John Thompson” school of programming. Viewers are facing a full-court press, video style, across the country, with three syndicated courtroom shows, each purporting to enhance our understanding of the American legal system, taking up a significant daily chunk (90 minutes) of TV shelf space: ”Divorce Court,” ”People`s Court” and ”Superior Court.” Shakespeare got it wrong. It`s not the lawyers we should kill–it`s the judges.
The time has come for a dissenting opinion on this injudicious programming trend. Not only is justice ill-served by ”Divorce Court” and
”People`s Court” (”Superior Court” is the exception), so, too, is civilized discourse. Despite some self-serving trappings of legal legitimacy, a preponderance of evidence suggests that, at their core, ”Divorce Court”
and ”People`s Court” are nothing but simple-minded and fatuous freak shows aimed at titillating their audience with one exceedingly cynical message:
Be glad you`re not as dumb as the people you`re snickering at in the courtroom.
”Divorce” was a dirty word when ”Divorce Court” made its TV debut 30 years ago. It`s not anymore, of course. Except on ”Divorce Court.”
There, in Judge Keene`s time warp of a courtroom, lying, lascivious litigants play the same shameful game they played on TV 30 years ago. In
”Divorce Court,” now seen in more than 150 markets (in Chicago it airs at 3 p.m. weekdays on CBS-Ch. 2), we watch spattin` ex-sweeties snarling at each other over sexual infidelities, making idiots of themselves as they fight over marital assets. A diaper-service routeman doesn`t see this much dirty laundry in a month.
Nor is he likely to hear as much sexual word-play, even in a lockerroom. On ”Divorce Court,” where the issue at hand is invariably sex, witnesses nearly always use vocationally derived puns and euphemisms to describe the act in question.
Farmer: ”They were plowing away, but it wasn`t the north 40.”
Banker: ”I caught them in the vault, naked. And it wasn`t her safe-deposit box she was opening.”
Not only are the cases fabricated on ”Divorce Court,” they`re obviously fabricated by the same person.
The ultimate crime committed by ”Divorce Court,” however, is an even more flagrant bit of perjury. According to expert testimony, Judge Keene`s show doesn`t come close to depicting the truth about the typical divorce proceedings in this country. Not by a long shot.
”`Divorce Court` is designed to entertain, not educate,” said Philadelphia attorney Phyllis Albert, who recently taped an appearance on the show. ”What you see on the show is accurate procedurally, more or less,”
Albert said, ”but what isn`t accurate is the most important thing–the subject matter.”
According to Albert, most divorce proceedings are not about establishing
”fault.” Rather, they`re about economic issues such as the equitable distribution of property. ”This is dry stuff,” Albert conceded. ”If the producers stuck to the truth, the only people watching would be accountants.” According to Harvey Levin, legal consultant to ”The People`s Court,”
his show has performed a worthwhile civic function by ”educating viewers about the existence of small claims court, while entertaining them at the same time.”
But even the most loyal of ”People`s” fans would be hard-pressed to assert that there`s anything high about the drama in Judge Wapner`s courtroom. On the contrary, ”TPC,” now airing on 170 stations and six foreign countries (in Chicago it airs at 4 p.m. weekdays on NBC-Ch. 5), presents the most unrelenting litany of banality to be found anywhere on television.
Botched paint jobs, dented fenders, icy sidewalks, pets who went to the grooming shop for a trim and got scalped instead, plus every conceivable mishap involving a dry cleaner–these are the issues requiring Solomonic edicts from Judge Wapner.
Take a recent case–like all of them on ”People`s Court,” an actual litigation brought before a California small-claims court–in which a laborer bought a can of beer to go with his lunch, drank part of it, then realized it was flat. The deli he bought it from wouldn`t give him his money back, so he took a day off from work, spent $6 to file a suit and $14 more to have papers served on the defendant.
All this for a 75-cent can of beer.
But watching fools go to foolish lengths to make an even more foolish
”point” is only part of the problem with ”TPC.” Small-claims courts around the country are reporting a 30 percent to 50 percent increase in their workload, a rise they attribute to people inspired by the final piece of advice proffered daily on ”People`s Court”: If you have a dispute, don`t take the law into your own hands. Take it to court.
Even worse, these judges complain that Wapner`s permissiveness–in the name of ”entertainment,” he allows a significant amount of commotion in his courtroom–have made controlling their real-life courtrooms that much harder. Surprisingly, there actually is something superior about ”Superior Court”: It doesn`t pander to its audience.
Instead, ”Superior” (in Chicago it airs at 11 a.m. on CBS-Ch. 2) takes issues raised by actual cases, none of them involving divorce or dry cleaning, and airs them, without inappropriate histrionics, before a retired judge.
This simple formula served the show–and its viewers–especially well two weeks ago. In a tribute to the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution,
”Superior Court” used five prominent jurists–among them, Hon. Rose Elizabeth Bird, former chief judge of the California Supreme Court–to preside over a week`s worth of cases involving major constitutional issues ranging from censorship to affirmative action.
But if one out of three is fine in baseball, it`s not in television. And, to be sure, the success achieved by ”Superior Court” merely underscores the failure of will and spirit embodied by ”Divorce Court” and ”The People`s Court.”
