Harriet's Law and Fine Shoes

Grant Writing Success

Manolo Blahniks and Kathy Bates?

Go together like David E. Kelley and his prime-time television hits.

Series Creator and Executive Producer, David E. Kelley has done it again!   I’d love to sit at his Gucci feet and watch him spin his million dollar web of prime-time entertainment for our viewing pleasure.  

 

 I just watched the first episode of David E. Kelley's new legal series, Harry's Law on NBC, and I have to say ... this shines like another winner.  I’d change the name to Harriet’s Law and Fine Shoes, it has a nice ring.

Harry's Law steps out of the law/criminal forensics television box, introducing something unexpected.  Really unexpected ... a welcomed surprise.  A gray-haired Kathy Bates as a gun-toting lawyer with a storefront practice that happens to also sell shoes.   Not just your run-of-the mill, Average Joan shoes ... but your designer shoes for fussy fashionistas.

This comes about after a college student tries to commit suicide by jumping off a roof and instead, ricochets off an awning and lands on Harriet (Harry) Korn aka Kathy Bates who just quit her corporate law firm, knocking her unconscious.  He survives to become her first client on her own.

You see, he has a drug problem and was charged with possession, but his rehab center closed and he slipped back into using and the cops are using him to go after the big bad dealer ring … blah, blah, blah.   But the story pulls at the heart, because he’s a good college kid, who made a mistake and got caught up in the downfalls of life.  He doesn’t deserve hard time, he just needs a little help.

 

He admits to Harriet that he was trying to kill himself, but she broke his fall and there’s a reason he landed on her.  He needs a lawyer.  She’s supposed to be his lawyer.  This miracle will give him another chance at life.  One problem, she’s a patent lawyer not a criminal lawyer.  That fact changes nothing for him.  

I call this a Holy Set-up.  She saves his life, and he in turn, gives her life a purpose.

Yes, everything happens for a reason.  That’s the underlying theme of this fascinating show.  So here we go again.  After she’s patched up at the hospital, (the same day the kid falls on her) she stumbles across an abandoned store for sale or rent.  Right then and there, she decides to start over with a new practice, and she wants her new life to begin at this storefront.

 
 JIMMY CHOO Drake Black Glitter Sandals 41

Just as she steps off the curb heading for the abandoned store, a speeding sports car plows into her.  I kid you not.  No, it’s not a cartoon.  This is supposed to be real life.  Just stay with me.  Behind the wheel is a lawyer she worked on a case with and not-so-lovingly referred to as, well … I don’t remember, but it was like, “little weasel.”  Once again, she survives to the doctor’s amazement.  Her sidekick assistant responds, “She just has a lot of cushion.”

When Harriet and her sidekick assistant, Jenna, move into the store, they discover piles of shoe boxes filled with designer shoes left from a previous tenant.  Now that's even more farfetch, but fun to watch.  There’s Prada, Jimmy Choo,  Manoloe Blahniks, Kate Spade etc.

For me, those sharp designer shoes give the show an extra appeal. I'm like a kid's face pressed against a candy store window, as Jenna pulls out these fabulous shoes.    

 
JIMMY CHOO Ronit Black Embossed Zip Sandals 41 

Of course, Kelley has to pull the heart strings tighter with the college kid’s mother showing up at Harriet's law office.  Stunned by her surroundings, she says:  “You really are  practicing shoe store law,” or something to that effect.   

 

By the end of the show, that’s exactly what it looks like.  The shoes are arranged on shelves and tables, there are chairs where you can try on the shoes and bookshelves full of law books and shoe displays, and desks for the lawyers (Harriet and the Weasel) to work on their cases.  Oh yeah, he weasels his way into a job at her new practice.  

She also hires the exonerated college kid as her paralegal, who was sentenced to probation and community service.  In the last scene, three thugs come in and show her a contraption they use to steal cars.  They’re tired of getting arrested, and now want to go legit by getting a patent, so it can be used by law enforcement agencies.

 

Shoes, law and a funny, gun-toting, graying, lady lawyer with a blonde sidekick assistant, who knows her designer shoes … are the makings of a shoe-tapping hit!