Every weekday afternoon, from 3 to 4:30, Rogers Park and Palos Heights time, there is a nonstop electronic massing of men and women living lives of not-so-quiet desperation.
One day, the meek may inherit the Earth, but for now, they are persona non grata on midday television. Besides the soaps and the come-on-down shows, other games are being played out there, friends, and the object for the most part is not to turn the other cheek but to sue someone else`s behind off.
The players are plaintiffs and defendants on that triptych of syndicated programs known as ”Divorce Court,” ”Superior Court” and ”The People`s Court.” Collectively, they are a veritable La Brea Tar Pit of litigation.
More and more the local network affiliates are escalating their strategy of, well, courting viewers (a little daytime-TV humor there) to try to lure them into their early newscasts with all their attendant prestige and lucre. Scoff though we might, it works.
”The People`s Court,” since being taken away from WMAQ-Ch. 5 by WBBM-Ch. 2 a while back, has doubled the Nielsen numbers brought in by the previous occupant of the 4 p.m. time slot, ”Donahue.” In the May ratings sweeps, Judge Wapner and Co. tied ”Eyewitness News” on WLS-Ch. 7 for first place, establishing itself as a strong lead-in to Channel 2`s ”First Edition” newscast at 4:30.
Obviously feeling the effects of the departure of ”The People`s Court,” Channel 5 in early October will be picking up a family-court drama, ”The Judge,” which, according to its syndicators, was a smash hit for 12 years in Columbus, Ohio.
In addition, to pep things up, ”Superior Court” (3:30 on Channel 2)
will give the hook to its real-life retired judges in mid-September and bring in actor Raymond St. Jacques, who will be known as Judge Clayton Thomas.
(Because he resembles Bill Cosby, the producers originally wanted to name him Judge Huxtable, but fittingly were afraid of a lawsuit. Inexplicably, they also considered naming him after Isiah Thomas of the Detroit Pistons.)
What we have here are cases of packaged, drip-dry justice, devoid of reality-based legal machinations-or even drama. These are jammed, Procrustes- like, into the 22-minute syndicated trash compactors. You want the complexity of an ”Anatomy of a Murder”? Sorry, you`re getting the inanity of ”The Case of Doing In a Door.”
The three programs, at the moment, are in summer reruns, but no matter. Tackiness and titillation, it should be obvious, never take a vacation.
The newest is ”The People`s Court” (b. 1981). It features, of course, Joseph A. Wapner, playing the same pop-culture judicial role in the `80s as Andy Hardy`s father did in the `30s and `40s. At times gently reproving, at others unilaterally grumpy (no wonder), the workmanlike, avuncular adjudicator has parlayed his Solomon-like decisions on dry-cleaning mishaps and ripped convertible tops into an autobiography and guest lectures at Harvard and Yale law schools.
Experiencing ”People`s Court” is not only like watching paint dry, but watching a tug-of-war over which party bought the paint. Small claims, small minds. There are no actors here, only litigants direct from the California municipal courts, who afterward are interviewed by reporter/host Doug Llewelyn about the binding decision. (”She`s a fruitcake,” one disgruntled defendant barked about the plaintiff. ”And Judge Wapner is probably a fruitcake, too.”)
Unlike its counterparts, ”People`s Court,” like the participants themselves, is rough, not slick. Plaintiffs sue defendants for amounts such as $250 and $128.80 over matters that most people would take care of with a shrug or stomping of feet: missing sectional sofas, garage-door-opener sabotage. On a recent afternoon, a woman sued a friend for failing to return a ponytail hairpiece used for a Boy George Halloween costume. Characteristically, the producers assign cutesy names to the litigation; a plaintiff suffering from claustrophobia was a participant in ”The Case of `I Vant to be Alone.` ”
The most serious-and bland-of the three, ”Superior Court,” is a potpourri of dramatizations of California civil and criminal cases that range from lottery winnings to murder, date rape to false imprisonment. Recent defendants included two police officers charged with wrongful death, and a reputed con man accused of posing as a symphony conductor, priest and restaurateur (he claimed he was the son of Chef Boyardee).
Retired and low-keyed judges preside, and actors play litigants and attorneys. For all the potentially compelling cases, it is a curiously formulaic, follow-the-dots kind of show, full of feeble, forced humor, with a periodically prescribed naughty word.
And then there is ”Divorce Court” (3 p.m. on Channel 5), which had an initial 13-year run starting in 1957 and was resuscitated, or whatever, four years ago, demonstrating that the ”sleaze factor” isn`t limited to such prime-time rollers as Meese, Deaver and Biaggi. Watching ”Divorce Court” is like walking into a filthy living room in the late afternoon, as the rays of sunlight search out the errant fur balls under the couch. One feels messy by the time the last bleach commercial unfolds.
Filled with weepy wives and indignant husbands and accusations of
”completely rotten sex,” the show ignores the divorce process, which is basically a matter of bean counting instead of whether someone ”did it” on a mechanical horse. The proceedings, one is told, are based on cases ”raised in the family courts of this nation,” but the individuals are really from the back pages of this nation`s newspapers. Blondie vs. Dagwood. Nancy vs. Sluggo. The cartoonlike couples are played by actors, while their attorneys are actual lawyers who shouldn`t give up their day jobs, seeing as how they blow their lines more often than their cases. Considerably smoother is the alternately bemused-and-amused Judge William B. Keene, formerly of the Superior Court of California, though he tends to make pithy pronouncements such as declaring that the major cause of divorce is a lack of communication. In one proceeding, a husband accused his hair-stylist wife of being a marijuana addict, an accusation backed up by her mincing boss, Mr. Pierre, who testified that she gave a client a crew cut after first getting stoned in the back room. Another day, a woman filed for divorce on the ground that her inventor husband was depleting their savings on such ”crackpot” schemes as ant-farmlike ”cockroach condos” and a redesigned putter for exclusive use in miniature golf.
Then there was the real estate agent who objected to his wife`s dressing up like a 16-year-old punk rocker and panting to make love to heavy-metal music. She, in turn, said that he would turn on the video shows to watch ”the teenage bimbos,” adding that when she bought sexy leotards, ”I shook everything I had for him, but he`d laugh-or snore.”
In another episode, a witness for the wife said that she saw the guy and his secretary/mistress naked. ”He was sitting in her butterfly chair, and she was sitting on top of him. The monarchs had certainly come to roost there.”
At the last minute, the mistress confessed that she was a lesbian, and the judge, before rendering his decision, quoted Jonathan Swift.
After a while, on all these programs, a certain tedium and sameness set in. What, then, is their appeal? Maybe just that: Familiarity breeds content. Certainly one is not drawn by the acting, which, on the shows that use professionals, is generally of the Debra Paget/Rory Calhoun school. Obviously, there also is a chunk-of-the-courtroom voyeurism at work here, and a sense of viewer superiority. We may be bored, but these folks are bananas. Or maybe it`s just because, for many afternoon aficionados, the thrill has gone out of ”The Love Connection” and ”The Newlywed Game.”
So what`s next? A medical show in which three patients are shown every half hour confidentially discussing their symptoms and prognoses with their physicians?
Well, yes.
