I taped the first episode of this a few days ago and just finished watching it. The family lawyer of the wealthy, powerful Darlings (Donald Sutherland, Jill Clayburgh - I didn't even realize she was still alive - William Baldwin and four others) dies when his plane crashes/explodes (I missed the first minute or so). The man's son Nick (Peter Krause) is a good-guy lawher who grew up with the kids and felt neglected by his father who spent forty-odd years handling the business and keeping the kids out of trouble (Baldwin's running for state senator and has a transsexual mistress, Juliet's actress who can't act, Jeremy's a spoiled drunk, Karen's in love with Nick has been married three times and is about to marry husband number four, and Brian is a ruthless reverend who has a wife and children as well as a mistress and illegitimate child). The father (Sutherland) convinces Nick to become the family lawyer by offering him $10 million dollars a year towards a charity in his father's name and assures him that he can set his own hours since he's determined not to neglect his own wife and daughter. As soon as he agrees, he's bombarded with calls to get the children out of trouble (each one of their numbers is programmed into his cell phone with a different song ringtone). He quits after the first eventful night but then discovers that his father had been having a forty-year affair with Clayburgh which is why Brian hates him and may have arranged to have Nick's father's plane tampered with so at the end of the episode, Nick resumes his position as family lawyer in order to discover who killed his father.

Funny and fast moving, a lot happens in an hour (perhaps too much since we only get the shallowest cliched suggestions of depth for the supporting characters - the actress wants to make it on her own without daddy's help, the drunk is miserable and wants daddy's approval, Karen thinks men only want her for her family's money, Brian the priest comes off as simply not wanting to acknowledge an illegitimate son without any sense of a moral dilmemna). Only Clayburgh is up to making the most of hinting of her affection for Nick's father. Sutherland's character is supposed to be enigmatic so he doesn't do much beyond delivering his lines with ambiguity. Krause comes off best and given that he's the main character it makes sense that he's the most developed this early on but one wonders how much presence the wife (Zoe McLellan who doesn't make much of an impression in the first episode beyond affirming that Krause's character is a good guy) and child (Chloe Moretz taking a break from horror films) will have amidst all of these other characters.

One of my complaints is that the show has too many character's to juggle. I'm guessing that if it continues, all five of the kids won't be in trouble at the same time but I'm not sure how much the murder mystery element of the show will effect the comedy aspect. It would probably be more interesting if it turns out that his father wasn't killed and this is some kind of ploy to reel him in and keep him handling the family's dirty laundry. I know that addition of the murder mystery at that point after he's quit (the all seems hopeless part in those screenwriting outline models) is to get him to take the job again but its placement also feels so abrupt and contrived that one wonders if there's more too it.

I think this'll be the only new network show I'll be watching (I already thought MOONLIGHT looked like a dud and I sure as hell am not going to bother with that "cavemen" show which suggests that either the execs were on crack or have utter contempt for their audience. What's next, a Geico gecko family sitcom?).