Slings and Arrows and Lawsuits

 “Goliath,” Seasons 1,2 & 3 out of 4, 2016-2019

This LA noir kind of legal drama is the West Coast version of The Wire – showing the corruption of various players in L.A. and California through the lens of one pugnacious and alcoholic lawyer – Billy Bob Thornton, aka Billie McBride.

At the Law Office

Season 1 (2016) centers around a large criminal ‘defense’ contractor whose illegal weapon kills one of their engineers, aided by a top-end tassled-loafer law firm that covers for them.  Season 2 (2018) takes on prominent real estate developers and a Latina running for mayor of Los Angeles, all involved with a Mexican drug cartel.  Season 3 (2019) is like a re-run of the film Chinatown, this time involving billionaire growers in the drought-stricken Central Valley, their water theft and the support they get from the newly elected mayor of L.A.  Season 4 (2021) is set in San Francisco and the target is a Big Pharma opioid producer.

The obvious parallel here is a “David” and his small raggedy band of allies – two female paralegals, one hilarious female lawyer, one solicitous daughter, one neutral ex-wife, one FBI agent and a grizzled, short investigator – against various ‘goliaths’ of U.S. capitalism. One of the paralegals is a heavyset woman who actually works, while the other is a beautiful ex-prostitute and fuckup who still has a crush on Billie.  Billie’s secret investigator is a brilliant former lawyer who now lives in a shabby trailer like Rockford.  His co-counsel is Patty, a loud, aggressive DUI/real estate lawyer who becomes a perfect ally for him, while getting some of the best lines.  Her refusal to date the FBI agent is classic.  She looks at him and just says “No!”  Women flock around Billie in this series, even when he’s an asshole, just like the 6 marriages Thornton’s had in real life.

The immediate setting is Santa Monica, where McBride lives in motel rooms near the pier and beach, while drinking at the darkened Chez Jay, a real bar next door to his motel.  You can’t get any more noir than having your office on a barstool. Scenes of him downing whiskey as the troubled lawyer, while sitting against the life guard stand near the pier are frequent.  He drives a red convertible Mustang to make the retro angle complete.  Scenes on the famous Santa Monica pier or in Venice, outside the Capitol Records roundhouse, up at the Griffith Observatory, at the downtown courthouse and the Gehry concert hall remind one you are in Los Angeles. 

Unfortunately Goliath Usually Wins

There Is A Season

The 1st season’s story concerns a law firm that McBride helped found, now helmed by a crazed boss, Donald Cooperman, who lives in a darkened office wired for secret video surveillance.  Cooperman hates McBride, especially for burning half his face long before.  Cooperman is a lawyer who is aware of the crimes of his war-profiteering ‘defense’ client, but does not report them.  He recruits a hungry, mousy lawyer to his bed and finally as first defense counsel, fighting a lawsuit McBride brings against the weapons manufacturer for helping kill one of their employees on a boat.  They claim the man committed suicide, using as proof what seems like suspicious suicide notes. They use patriotic ‘war on terror’ rhetoric in court to hide the specific facts.  Cooperman is aided by a thug who kills witnesses, intimidates Billie through a bought-and-paid-for cop and sets up other witnesses with drug raids.  Cooperman’s lead, a vicious careerist lawyer, has the job of slinging personal mud at any surviving witnesses and McBride while back-biting the mouse.   

The 2nd season’s story is about Marisol Silva, a look-alike clone of  Penelope Cruz who is running for mayor of L.A.  When she finds out Billie is representing a young Latino protégé of hers falsely accused of a gangland murder, she literally gets into bed with him.  However she is intimately and secretly tied to a notorious Mexican cartel which is backing her mayoral bid, along with two large real estate developers in L.A.  A hit man for the cartel was actually behind the killings, while two cops cover up the actual murderer.  One of the real estate moguls, an overly-talkative twit dressed in ugly leisure wear, reputedly built ‘half of downtown’ and has the most twisted sex predilection ever…something that is so repulsive and cruel I question whether they should have included it.  If Silva wins, they will be able to operate freely in the city. These murderous scum hide behind her pretty face and vapid community concern rhetoric, but she’s in on it too.

Let the Desert Bloom

The 3rd season’s story takes a surreal turn, perhaps copying The Big Lewbowski.  The tipoff is a casino lounge singer belting out “Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In,” a song that accompanied the Dude’s dream sequence in Lebowski. Aggressive crows, mysterious grinning adopted sons, blackouts, weird dreams and drugs follow. It involves a cabal of opium-smoking almond farmers in the parched, dusty landscape of the Central Valley.  This time McBride takes up residence at the local casino after being comped a room by Blackman, the largest grower.  Blackman’s sister is illegally pumping water out from under other’s lands, including Federal Land, similar to the oil ‘straw’ in the California film There Will Be Blood. This bunch controls the local county water board and have lowered the water table under a whole town and outlying houses, so bottled water has to be used to replace the ground water. (This is the actual present  situation in Teviston, CA.) The town is a company town where most of the jobs hinge on the water-stealing growers.  Another consequence of ground-water pumping is the settling of the soil.  A woman has died in a sinkhole and this sets off the case.

One of the themes is that ‘relationships,’ especially romantic ones, are deceptive and serve more as opposition research. McBride himself gets in the face of his enemies or reluctant witnesses, as he shows up to talk up front.  But behind his sometime geniality he doesn’t claim to be their buddy.  The other theme is that the 'bad guys' lose - which happens rarely in real life.

The film industry hasn’t been included as one of the local ‘goliaths’ – perhaps because they produced the series and that wouldn’t be prudent.

This is a legal drama that has to go somewhat by the rules of the court system, but shows prejudiced judges, obnoxious court behavior by attorneys, obvious missing evidence and facts, flawed witnesses, prison and police corruption and jack-shit rulings.  It makes you question the legal system, given it is actually part of a bigger ‘goliath.’  The role of attorneys in U.S. law is not to find ‘the truth’ but to defend their clients no matter what.  Mostly the legal system, FBI, prosecutors and even judges come out looking good in the end. After all, McBride believes in the law.  Though its so bad in a state court in the Central Valley that he has only one alternative.

So far this series is a piecemeal but excellent attempt at looking at various goliaths, without seeing the larger Goliath behind its plagued manifestations.  Los Angeles or California itself might be the goliath in this series, much as Upton Sinclair saw society and Chicago as The Jungle or as David Simon’s The Wire identified Baltimore.  Viewers could put the whole picture together, but odds are this is just more entertainment, not affecting politics at all, just verifying that there are definitely “some bad eggs out there!”  

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 14 year archive, with these terms:  The word “streaming” for prior streaming series political reviews or: “Ozark,” “American Made,” “Drug War Capitalism,”  “Vulture’s Picnic,” “The Latino Question,” “Los Angeles Stories”(Cooder); “Camino Real”(Williams); “In Praise of Barbarians”(Davis); “War is a Racket” (Butler); “The Wire,” “The Jungle,” “Oil / There Will Be Blood.”    

The Kultur Kommissar

December 20, 2021

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