8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
well worth watching!, February 16, 2008
When can we get more?
I don't even own a television set anymore because there is so little out there that's even entertaining, much less worthwhile. I downloaded the first few episodes of The Practice because I got hooked on Boston Legal, although I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that in public. BL is well-crafted and often hilarious, but I would have to call it a high grade of low entertainment, often relying on crass sexual references for a laugh. Real often. Don't get me wrong, I can't wait for the next season of BL either, but The Practice is much more serious-minded without ever being dull.
The Practice often deals with issues that are far from glamorous, such as defending petty thieves. The personal lives of the lawyers are interwoven skillfully with their work, and are as interesting as the professional side but seldom take center stage, because these are men and women whose careers come first. And one thing that's refreshing is the portrayal of major female characters who are not really conventionally attractive. It is TV, so inevitably, some of the women are stunningly beautiful. Several of the men aren't exactly hard to look at, either.
But it's rare to see women in a TV show who really are not very pretty, and who are portrayed as competent and intelligent. I've heard a saying that goes something like "Hollywood's idea of an ugly girl is a pretty girl wearing glasses". As an aside, I've seen trailers for a show called "Ugly Betty", and the lead character seems to be a rather attractive young woman who dresses funny. Ellenor Frutt is not really ugly, but she doesn't have the type of face or figure that inspires lust or envy. She could easily be made better-looking with lighting and camera work, but instead, we are treated to moderately unflattering shots that allow the pores on her face to show, making her seem even more like a real person. Lindsay Dole is quite pretty but the camera, again, treats her like a regular person and sometimes catches her at a less than flattering angle.
Although the personal stuff is not neglected, the show really does revolve around the cases. It explores the feelings that come up for Eugene Young, a tough guy who is also a very decent man, when he repeatedly finds himself defending (and often freeing) rapists and child molesters. Lindsay is also the victim of her own success when her defense of a drug dealer begins to attract other clients in the same line of work--and she finds herself referred to matter-of-factly as a "drug lawyer". I am probably combining material from seasons one and two in this review, because I downloaded them all and watched them every chance I had. I would be glad of the chance to download the rest of them, although I would much rather buy them on DVD.
I gave five stars because this is a review of the show, but I have to say something about the "Amazon Unbox" experience as well. The software you have to use to download the episodes is annoying, and takes a certain amount of patience. I work as a PC support technician, and I'm used to arguing with software and working around its limitations, so I had only a limited amount of trouble watching these episodes. Many of the people I am called upon to assist every day--and these are intelligent, educated professionals for the most part--would not manage it without some help and would grow very frustrated in the process. First, the Unbox software purports to be able to play the episodes, but when I tried to do that there was a lot of distortion, rather like what you used to get when you tried to watch a cable TV channel that you don't subscribe to (maybe that still happens, I don't know, I only use cable for my internet service these days).
Rather than messing with my video drivers (which have never given me any problems with anything else I was trying to do) I found the downloaded file, which was in .wmv format, and played it in Windows Media Player. Not difficult if you know your way around your PC, but many people do not. And when I bought Season 2 as a package deal, the software tried to download all the episodes... found that there was not enough room on my hard drive for more than 3 or 4 of them... and hung there indefinitely, "checking for disk space". I had to delete all of them, restart the software, and select individual episodes for download. There were other times when the software hung or did not display any episodes, and I had to restart it or reboot the PC, which is very stable in general (running XP service pack 2).
Even after getting past the limitations of the download utility, I was irked when I tried to bring an episode to another location to watch it on a different PC and was prevented from doing so by DRM. In theory, I was entitled to 2 licenses and was willing to use up the other one. Media Player asked me if I wanted to acquire the license, I said "yes" and was asked for my amazon.com credentials, which I supplied. Sounds promising, right? Unfortunately, that was as far as I got. It just... hung there, acting like it might do something for me but never did. I might have been able to download the episode again in order to watch it, but unfortunately, I did not have access to a high-speed internet connection at that location.
Another thing I don't like about the Unbox thing is that I have to use up hard drive space to store the episodes (OK, I'll admit it--mine isn't very big). And if I reformat my system partition and reinstall Windows, which I do periodically, I'll have to argue with their software some more if I want to watch the show again. Of course, some of these problems could be circumvented if I were willing to go to the time and trouble of running the video files through some software that re-record them in unencrypted form. Let's face it, people, ways can be found to get around your DRM. The people you are harming are your legitimate users, and consequently, your bottom line. I find the whole Unbox business cumbersome enough that I would not bother with it for a show that was only moderately interesting, but I'll admit it, for this one I would. More episodes, please! Preferably on DVD.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192250339_.gif){kind=small}
