David Tennant has, of course, left his role as the fucking awesome Tenth Doctor on Doctor Who to move onto brighter pastures, avoid typecasting, and to “bow out when it’s still fun.” Ok, sure. He won’t actually find a better part, but whatevs, I’ll go with his logic.

No matter what, an NBC pilot is not a brighter pasture. It was announced last week that Tennant will play the titular role in Rex Is Not Your Lawyer. Per the Hollywood Reporter, the pilot focuses on “a top Chicago litigator who begins suffering panic attacks and takes up coaching clients to represent themselves in court.” Words fail me, because mostly what comes to mind is “Gag.” And yet, somehow David E. Kelley is not to blame.

The rant:

  1. NBC has basically abandoned drama: see giving away 10:00pm, see just not airing Southland, see limply promoting and second-windowing Friday Night Lights, the only good show on this network. I mean, really, you can see how much television I get through in a week and the only NBC show on this list currently airs on Direct TV.
  2. The premise of Rex Is Not Your Lawyer blows, as does this freaking long title.
  3. Avoiding typecasting? Playing a guy with panic attacks certainly won’t resemble any sort of stammering characters that Tennant’s done before.
  4. Filming 22 episodes in 8 months when you’re used to filming 13 in that time frame will not, in any way, be fun.

The best possible outcome here is that Tennant gets a nice payday, even NBC decides they don’t want to watch this crap, and no pickup occurs.


  1. jayandbronwenwatchtv posted this