TVSquad

(S01E15) Tim Matheson guest stars as a judge and charter member of the Los Angeles Stark-Haters Club, an evidently very large and influential organization. He's also a careerist and a hypocrite. Sebastian quickly realizes the judge is guilty of murdering his own wife, and with that you have your quintessential Shark ingredients. Matheson does a good job playing the self-righteously self-righteous judge, who early-on accuses Stark of going after him because of his tough law-and-order case rulings, and finishes-up accusing Stark of homophobia. Stark's consistent though. He goes after the judge, not because of any personal or political ax to grind, but, well, because of the whole murdering-his-spouse thing.

Early on, in at least one scene, Raina isn't too sure of Stark's motives. I enjoyed that. Even though, since Stark is always right in the end, it means that Raina has to end up always being wrong, at least she is her own person and stands up to the boss.

Whether it's the writing, the strong performance by actress Sophina Brown, or a combination thereof, as the weeks have gone by, Raina has become easily one of the more compelling characters on the show. By contrast: Jeri Ryan's character Devlin just gets to snap irritably at Sebastian, Madeleine is now only mildly interesting as a baby-shark who looks for ways to out-do her boss in skirting ethical guidelines, Isaac is mainly limited to chasing down suspects and jumping over fences, while Casey the boy-lawyer just -- well I don't know what he does on the show since that time he slept with Madeleine.

BTW, I really have to wonder about the respective investigative skills of Casey and Madeleine. They must have been in that bar (The "Nuts and Bolts") interviewing the barman five minutes before finally realizing they were standing in a gay bar.

However, not such a bad crime story in itself this time -- especially compared with the most recent episodes. Ileana Douglas returned as one of the sharper semi-regular defense attorneys. I mostly thought it was clever how the judge paid for his contract killing by using his influence to get the hit-man's cousin paroled early. Then killed the killer to cover his tracks. The planting of the murder weapon on CalTrans by the publicity flack where, the judge insisted "it was sure to be found," is more of a stretch, however, and before you know it we're right back in familiar Shark crazy-twist territory.

If only they'd left it to that. What is up with Julie and that whole bodyguard mess?

First of all, the Julie-threatened-by-Wayne-the-serial-killer-plot has apparently been shelved -- if not just out-and-out dropped. Apparently Stark has decided "enough time has passed" that he's no longer worried much about this formerly-major threat.

Stark should also have been worried about is this idiot bodyguard Neal. Neal, who has never acted the least bit professionally, or even demonstrated a remotely reasonable awareness of his surroundings, since he's been on the job. Stark seems clueless about that this week, even though last week he did look askance at how chummy Neil and Julie were getting. That turned out to be a passing moment, evidently not worth ever discussing again.

The "bodyguard" himself seems unaware his teenage client has a crush on him. Or if he does guess, then he's extremely wrong-headed in his handling of the situation. (That's a surprise.) He invites Julie to a party where she is the only minor present.

This is the same Neil, after all, who introduced himself to Julie last episode by manhandling one of her fellow high school student while they were talking about (if I remember correctly) a homework assignment or something. Now, Neil figures a party house full of his beautiful twenty-something actor/model/bodyguard/whatever friends in the section of L.A. where they shoot all the beer commercials is a safe area for her. After Neil introduces Jules to the girlfriend that he hasn't happened to have mentioned despite how chatty they've been, Julie is left to fend for herself. She ends up doing jello-shots with adults until she's ready to drive home drunk. The whole subplot has been outrageously ridiculous considering that, according to Isaac, Neil is supposed to specialize in "protecting young girls with stalker problems."

I hope we've seen the last of him, but they sure took the long way 'round if the only point of this subplot was to have Julie get a DUI. I'm not against a story direction which has Julie acting-out and getting into trouble, but the way this has been handled is too just too dumb.

At very least I would expect Stark to pull Isaac aside next week and ask him what he was thinking when he recommend this guy's services. I mean, what the hell?