High Fidel

“I like the beard,” says Supreme Court Justice James Garner to “new boy” Joe Mantegna in the first episode of First Monday, CBS’s new ultimate courtroom drama. “It reminds me of Che Guevara.” (Interestingly, Mantegna played Castro in the 1999 TV movie My Little Assassin.) The free-market television economy -- O wonderful thing! -- has brought us this West Wing--inspired judicial fantasy, and, as so often happens, ABC has a Supreme Court show of its own, The Court, with Sally Field, coming in spring. Though First Monday‘s court looks from afar something like our real-life own -- there’s a woman, there‘s an African-American (vibe more Thurgood Marshall than Clarence Thomas) -- the four-four conservative-liberal split, with Mantegna as just-appointed, thinks-for-himself, moderate-liberal swing vote, is more likely a product of that wishfully thought parallel universe in which Martin Sheen is president. The West Wing is a sentimental fantasy, too, to be sure, but it masks its baser impulses with snappy dialogue, breakneck pacing and a cast made up of the kind of character actors who disappear fully into their roles. (Rob Lowe, even.) Garner and Mantegna and fellow justice Charles Durning are bigger than their parts; not for a minute do you believe they’re who they‘re pretending to be, or a single thing they have to say. In this, the writers have not helped them. Mantegna is “humanized,” or one might say “regularized,” in his opening moments via the cute old dodge of his not understanding his teenage daughter’s slang (wack is the word at issue -- didn‘t that go out with “23 skidoo”?); more originally, he goes off to work forgetfully in his slippers. Garner, as the conservative chief justice, talks a lot about sports, to indicate that he has a Life. Durning gets a wheelchair for breadth of character. The first episode dealt with the death penalty, the second with abortion -- school busing is next, I guess. I won’t hold my breath waiting for one about media monopolies. Underpinning it all are the sex drives, low plots and high ideals of the various court clerks, all of whom are actor-pretty, and act like they‘re on TV. From the creator of Jag.