Bad Judge is pretty butt. The premise of a trainwreck municipal judge would be kind of funny, but a) she's not a trainwreck because besides the fact that she looks like a mess she appears to have no problem doing her job, and b) the show gives us visual or written reminders every 15 seconds. Look, she's a mess! She drinks! She sleeps with dudes! She doesn't behave like a judge! She's hip! She's not very classy! Most of the jokes are kind of just zingers, the kind of thing that if someone said in real life you'd politely chuckle because you know they were making a joke, but they're not really funny. The pilot is also a mess because most of it focuses on the Judge's relationship with a black kid that she helps out, and he's clearly supposed to be a supporting character, but I guess he didn't test well so now the pilot has no connection to the rest of the show. The municipal prosecutor is also a tool, so I'm hoping he's written off as well. Ryan Hansen plays Ryan Hansen. Can't see myself watching another episode.
Madam Secretary is just OK.
I watched episode 2. The first thing I noticed is the show's politics are increasingly clear; establishment Democrat. The episode wrestled with the way in which progressives make pragmatic compromises in order to govern. Madam Secretary is forced to call in a private military group to protect an embassy after an intransigent congressman and an unhelpful White House Chief of Staff refuse to fund government troops. As an academic, she had written some pretty unkind things about private military groups. Stuff goes south as a protest attacks the embassy, and it seems like the private military guys fired on civilians unprovoked... but then in a twist they were professionals, they saved the ambassador, and the only casualty was a poor private military contractor
See, you liberals thought the private military guys were bad guys, but they aren't. I'm not sure this was a nuanced or interesting take on the subject.
Also, the show utilizes ends-justify-the-means thinking. Both of the major cases of the week have demonstrated Leoni's character's competence by saying "look, her strategy worked, even though everyone else disagreed with her!" rather than questioning the process that actually led to the decision-making to begin with. We can't possibly believe that everyone else is incompetent only because they grumble, they're men, and they're not the main character.
The family soap is OK. The husband seems like a bright guy, but it's not clear what actual role he plays. The new, older daughter (besides being a funny post-pilot retcon) seems like a decent actress and character, but I can't help but feel like we've already seen the story in other, better shows. Her part in this episode was that she was protesting a policy change by her university, while the family tried to encourage her to quiet down lest she attract the public eye. It was a plot on the West Wing, in the pilot even, and then later on again.
It's definitely a better show than Commander-in-Chief, but it's not there. I'll maybe give it another episode or two and hope it pulls up.
