I have a new favorite TV lawyer, or had, I don’t think he’s going to be around very long. Gerald Watkins Mayfield (played by Geoffrey Owens – perfectly). He’s in HBO’s new series Divorce.
Divorce is the story of a successful business woman, Frances (Sarah Jessica Parker) and her not quite as successful husband, Robert (Thomas Hayden Church) living in Hastings-on-Hudson NY, a pretty, upscale town on the Hudson River an hour or so north of New York City. The town, by the way, is pretty much a character.
Obviously, they have marital problems. Just as obvious, as the show has been renewed for a second season and we’re only 6 episodes into the first, they are divorcing and it’s going to get ugly.
Last week’s episode saw Robert – well on his way to being the most annoying character on TV, cable and network – bagging mediation and deciding to hire a lawyer. That would be Gerald Watkins Mayfield and he is everything I’ve been writing about for the past year and a half.
In what is easily the funniest scene in the show thus far, Robert meets Gerald in his home office and ‘interviews’ him.
“So, you do mostly divorces?”
“Nope, mostly wills, trusts, estates.”
“You do some divorces?”
“You know what, Robert? Basically, it’s all law.”
That’s it, in a nutshell, perfectly put by a great character. ‘Basically, it’s all law.’
It’s not, of course, but clients still buy into it. As Robert does. Disastrously. I’ll leave it to you to watch the show to see just how disastrously it is.