My Thoughts - Night Court: All You Need is Love (1984)

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Synopsis: In this series debut, the Manhattan Criminal Court receives a brand-new judge, Harry Stone (Harry Anderson). His quirky nature quickly results questions about his competence, especially when he orders an attempted murder suspect (Peggy McCay) to try to work things out with her victim/husband (Joseph V. Perry) over lunch.


My Thoughts -

The lack of diversity in the original cast is noticeable. I suspect one of the main reasons why the show pivoted from Sheila Gardiner (Gail Strickland) to Liz Williams (Paula Kelly) at public defender after just one episode was to address this.

Though, to be fair, I think it was a good change regardless of the reason. Obviously, one 30-minute episode isn't a big sample size, especially since Harry Stone was the focus. However, I could say the same about everyone else in the courtroom and they all managed to establish their characters to some degree while Sheila was mostly just there.

On that note, I need to just take a moment to pay my respects to Selma Diamond. Her character, Selma Hacker, set the standard for courtroom bailiffs on television sitcoms and she died way too soon.

I know Lana Wagner (Karen Austin) is supposed to be high-strung but wow. She was Harry's court clerk for what, an hour or two, and declared him someone she couldn't possibly work with. Talk about not giving a guy a chance.

That said, I think Harry was lucky it was a slow night. Court is called into session, and he almost immediately calls a lunch recess. It's called back into session again and, after resolving the one case he has presided over, calls another recess. Could you just imagine being someone else on that docket waiting for your case to be heard?

Final Opinion: It's not a perfect episode but it does a decent job establishing both the series premise and the main characters. It's probably not the reason the show lasted as long as it did, but it laid a good foundation.

My Grade: A

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Here are some similar entries:

My Thoughts - Star Trek: Arena (1967)

My Thoughts - Season 1 of The Traitors

My Thoughts - Young Sheldon: Future Worf and the Margarita of the South Pacific (10/6/2022)

My Thoughts - Gilligan's Island: The Big Gold Strike (1964)

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