We know what you are thinking: you are lawyers; you are way too serious for something as frivolous as a recap of Utopia. But, that is where our absurd expansion plan to become a Bitter Empire comes in. Let us help you… by bringing utter and pointless fluff right to your desktop. Or smart phone. Or pebble. Whatever, we’re completely off topic now. Just trust us, you’ll love it.
The first episode of Fox’s new reality teevee show, Utopia, makes us wonder if the name Drunken Dystopian Hellscape was already taken. Just seconds into this show, it was apparent that the casting directors had their own agenda, bent on proving the old adage that hell is other people. Well played, casting department, well played.
The premise of Utopia: Plop 15 people on a farm with many cameras, feed them booze and tell them to create a new society — for your viewing pleasure.
Is there a lawyer among them? OF COURSE THERE IS A LAWYER AMONG THEM.
While staring intently at a green screen, the utopianites are informed by pretend hologram that the space they inhabit has apparently ceded from the United States, as they now have neither laws nor culture. What could go wrong?
Let the inevitable homicides begin! Who will be first? Our money is on naked chicks swimming à la every horror movie ever made. We assumed that the perpetrator would be the self-proclaimed hillbilly who proudly declares he can fix anything, but he can’t fix stupid. He also can’t acquire dentures.
Pro-tip: in a real Utopia, people will have teeth.
We were wrong about the naked ladies being killed first. The first casualty was a chicken. How exactly did these fools manage to kill one of their chickens in three days? Chickens are basically dinosaurs. They’ll eat bugs and grass if you simply leave them be. You have to work HARD to kill a chicken that fast.
We’re not even sure if the dead chicken was actually real. While being handled by everyone in the group dead chicken looked a little…taxidermied.
Besides the toothless wonder and interchangeable naked chicks swimming, who else have they cast to create the new world order? Well, we have a woman who advocates hand yoga (it is TOO a thing, you guys) and is a prepper. We’ve also got a libertarian who seems to want a world full of guns, without the added pressure of, you know, being able to aim or control his firearm.
Also appearing, Dedeker and Hex: Renaissance Festival rejects with made up names. Dedeker brings no useful skills to the show, unless we count belly dancing, which we do not. Hex, who dubbed herself the huntress, already had to leave the set because she cannot hold her liquor. In her defense, Hex does appear to have quite the aim with her bow and arrow — which might be why the producers returned her to the compound.
It’s all fun and games until a drunk, half-naked huntress terrorizes her cast mates with a compound bow, and then it’s MUST SEE TEEVEE.
Oh, loyal lawyer audience. Did we forget about you? No we did not. Allow us to tell you more about Mid-town Manhattan Mike Esquire, hair felon extraordinaire and attorney to…well apparently no one, since Mike can drop out of the assistant attorney rat race for an entire year with no repercussions. Initially, Mike was pretty quiet, letting his hair do the talking for him.
But soon Lawyer Mike found a time to shine. Because, you see, Utopia apparently includes some sexual harassment right out the gate.
Case Not-Hypothetical: The cast mates decided that their Utopia is getting white-girl wasted, and so the vast majority of them proceeded to do so. Pretty much immediately after entering the compound. Josh, who developed a faux-Swedish drunk accent, waved his junk in the demure Utopian ladies’ faces and then engaged in butt-pinching and sneak attack kissing of Hex the Huntress.
Ladies were less infatuated with Josh than he thought, and so he got taken down high-school wrestling style by Dave, convicted homeless felon, who is also a free spirit, and VERY MAD AT DEMOCRACY. (No, we don’t understand that part either. YOU go watch two hours of this show and see if you can figure it out).
Attorney Mike got his moment in the sun. Because Mike knew exactly what to do: he liberated his gavel.
No, really, In the tiny crate of prized possessions that they were allowed, a crate where most normal human beings would have put a change of clothes, or vital medicines, or a keepsake photo, the lawyer brought a gavel.
There was a lot of yelling about how everyone just keeps talking. But that is okay, because Attorney Mike knows a lot about governing. He told us so in his preamble and then demonstrated it with his sweet, sweet gavel action. He didn’t seem to be able to make anyone shut up, and we’re really not sure what happened with the “trial” he was conducting…probably because we stopped caring.
We think Josh is now on Utopia probation for his sexual harassing ways, because Josh is not allowed to drink for 90 days and has been VERY STERNLY WARNED not to make any further unwanted sexual advances. Tough court you run there, Attorney Mike.
You may think it is horrifying that this is all on prime time, network television, and it is. Really, it is. We’d tell you to grab Kleenex, while you cry for the innocence of the Real World, but no one brought Kleenex to Utopia. There was so much sniffling into the spring break pukka necklace-reminiscent microphones that we are tempted to see if Amazon could use one of their fancy drones to airlift the gang some tissues and allergy meds.
While some of us here at Bitter Lawyer are obsessed with reality TV train wrecks, this train wreck features too much wreckage even for the truly hard core reality TV fan. But that is okay, because no one is going to watch this show.
This leads us to the ultimate and inevitable question: when this show gets cancelled mid-season, couldn’t we just seal the gates and leave the contestants on the compound? Let them all sort it out Lord of the Flies style or via the mad gavel skillz of Attorney Mike. Either way, we’ll never have to hear from any of these people again.
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