TVSquad

(S01E16) Incredible. I don't mean that as a compliment. First we are supposed to believe that 16-year-old Julie is able to keep her DWI arrest secret from a parent for an extended period. Even with Isaac covering for her, I don't buy it. Even the media finds out before Stark! And what kind of person is Isaac? He doesn't call Stark that night? Isaac is an adult, and he's keeping secrets with his friend's kid? Well, he is the guy who recommended the world's lamest bodyguard for Julie recently, so maybe I expect too much of him. All I know is Det. Baldwin Jones would never have messed this up

This isn't done because it makes sense however, but merely to set Stark up for a big feeling of betrayal to mirror the one he's going to get from this week's case...

Stark engages in a cover-up for his good old friend. Said friend was inconvenienced by a dead girl in a hotel suite. Stark, after perfunctory cajoling, tells the friend to skip out the back, go forth, and sin no more. Housekeeping will find the body in the morning, Stark says. The girl is dead so what's the big deal if her corpse lays there abandoned and rotting all night?

Sebastian, by the way, knows his friend is willing to skirt the law. The friend help Stark hide some gambling debts or something, and that's given as his strong motivation for helping the friend now. But wouldn't it also cause him to question his friend's story a little more?

And more than that, hasn't Stark been watching Shark? Doesn't he know by now, what a shady, murderous lot his circle of acquaintances is? Isn't he even a little suspicious that his old friend might have more to do with the dead girl than he's admitting? Come on, the guy is even played by Gary Cole!

In future, Stark should leave the crime scene cover-ups to Alan Shore, and the other legal eagles of David E. Kelly World. Such an fuster-cluck of shenanigans is better suited to a black-comedy like Boston Legal.

The the body is moved and dumped at another location, making the calling of Stark to the hotel pointless in the first place.

Okay, now I will say something positive. If you can accept all the absurdities up to this point, there are so powerful and well-acted scenes to follow:

After Isaac discovers Stark's fingerprints in the hotel suite (gee, nice job with the cover-up, Stark) Sebastian confesses to the team, thereby making them all accessories, before nobly ordering them all off the case. The secondary cast members then get to play what is probably their meatiest scene in the series to date.

The sole hold-out to putting their careers (and freedom) on the line is Raina, but soon she succumbs to peer pressure. They go back to work, and Stark acts all grateful, playing it off like he hadn't planned it that way all along. Next he snows Jess Devlin right under too, with a speech about being proud of what he does in the D.A.'s office.

Cut to non-surprising reveal of who the real killer is.

Cut to Stark manning-up in court, the judge suspending him from the bar. Stark faces criminal charges, is disbarred, disgraced, and serves one year for obstruction of justice. The dead girl's family wins a civil judgment, gaining possession of the Stark Mansion, the Stark-mobile, and custody of Julie. The end.

Not quite. Jess Devlin creates a fiction that Stark was undercover as part of an ongoing federal sting and spins that tale to the judge. The judge buys it, or course, because we are almost forty-minutes in. No time to muck about with loose-ends now! Jess, by the way and "luckily" for Stark, actually has a friend in the Treasury Department and the investigation is real. She "called in a favor" as she tell it. Aha, it all comes full circle. Everything is peachy, if you've got friends willing to lie and hide your mistakes for you. Now Jess says Stark owes her one. Isn't this called the Old Boys Network? There's probably a good show, maybe even a great one, in the concept that a major urban D.A. office is corrupt and run by real-politik opportunists not much better than the criminals they prosecute. This isn't that show.

If Stark is supposed to be an anti-hero, fine. Then, however, the occasional consequence to an action, like in real life, would be nice. Or if not like in real life, then at least like on cable.