It's streaming on Starz in the US, though I've heard there are different scenes in the UK version.

I am mad. I try to avoid US law shows because they’re so wrong, and wrong in a consistently conservative direction, as if real-for-sure murdering/raping criminals get off all the time because of a “technicality.” Pro tip: a pedophile scheduled to die for killing one of his victims will not be released because the execution didn’t work, even if the execution “technically” went as planned.

He will not successfully sue the governor as an individual for his experience. His lawsuit, if any, will increase the governor’s popularity, because if it’s you v. murdering pedophile, you automatically look better. This situation will not put the governor at personal risk. The murdering pedophile’s threat to sue shouldn’t make a first-year law student blanch, much less an aide of sufficient experience to be delivering a message on behalf of the governor. (Yeah, if I were his lawyer, I’d file something, but it would fail, and “success” here is defined as resentencing, not as release. They are not going to parole a murdering pedophile even if he got a resentencing hearing scheduled. And they are not going to do it in two days, especially not while the rest of the world is falling apart.) And what the fuck was the word salad about “force majeure” in the bullshit explanation of why he was released? Contracts have force majeure clauses; criminal convictions do not. If you can’t create a sensible explanation of your plot point, that’s because it doesn’t make any fucking sense.

Jesus, American TV, find something else to be wrong about, okay? Because you’re really misleading people, and I’m sick of it, and it encourages the disregard for the real, live, far more limited, procedural protections that are there for really good reasons having to do with avoiding a state that can send you to jail just because someone powerful doesn’t like you.

I know for a fact Torchwood has some fantastic writers. If you want a pedophile/some people really need to die plot, have him come after the victim who successfully killed her way out of his grasp. Don't keep encouraging delusions about the law.
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copracat: Jack Harkness (Jack)

From: [personal profile] copracat


have him come after the victim who successfully killed her way out of his grasp.

That would have been cool and scary.

giandujakiss: (Default)

From: [personal profile] giandujakiss


I just got 10 minutes in to the episode and came immediately here because as soon as I saw that scene I knew this must have been what you were reacting to - I've ranted about this before and it makes me so angry that these myths just keep getting fed.
erotha_wills: (khaaannnnn!!!)

From: [personal profile] erotha_wills


Lawyer here. And a Brit. :)
And yeah, some of the legal stuff was a load of bollocks. But I was too busy wondering if this was going to be Torchwood lite to care.


Like your writing, BTW :) :)

From: [personal profile] stlscape


(Hi! I'm here via clicking friends links from LJ.)

I'm not a lawyer, but even I knew that Oswald shouldn't have been released. Thanks for your detailed post on it.

I do, however, work for the National Archives, and I can guaran-damn-tee you that Esther would NOT have been allowed back in the CIA Archives stacks to rummage through and shift boxes of old files around wherever she wanted. Makes me want to scream! CIA agents running all over the place yelling that they're with the CIA is rant-inducing as well. The CIA has an office in our building. It's identified only by room numbe; it's not got CIA plastered all over the door. r. The people in the office don't run around identifying themselves as CIA employees. CIA keeps a low profile, Rex. Maybe you need to re-read your CIA Agent 101 primer.

Also scream-making for me is Jack's new version of the RAF overcoat. (I sew, too. I need to find some way of obliterating that abomination from my screen. *Horribly* fitted.)

I really wasn't impressed by either the writing or the acting. Pity, because both those resources were available.


From: [personal profile] latxcvi

3rd time's the charm


Poor zvi had to listen to me lose my shit about the governor and Bill Pullman's character for, like, 15 minutes. I couldn't even, Rivka. I couldn't. even.
ahab: (Default)

From: [personal profile] ahab


Ugh, right? I think it made me black out when I watched the first episoe, because it was only during the second episode that I'd realized they'd actually used force majeure as the basis for freeing him (all I had processed was the bullshit lawsuit threat, which: wtf!). And then I headdesked so hard again that hopefully I'll forget that ever happened.

You're not watching Suits, right? For the love of god, stay very far away from Suits, because OH MY GOD the legal fail.
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