Another tiresome, "poetry-laced" tale from Silliphant, which would have benefited tremendously if he would have just TOLD THE STORY and left most of the "ART" out of his script. CASE IN POINT: at the close of Act 2, Barry Sullivan, having just been told by the duty-bound County Prosecutor that his (Barry's) daughter will not receive favorable treatment in her trial, gets into the Corvette---and instead of saying to Tod "Let's go, kid" like any normal person would do, says "Tell me, boy---WHO IS BORN FREE? [What??? How???? WHY????]
The plot is strong, and much of it works very well. But what's with the Warren Stevens character? WHO NEEDS IT, and all of the screen time it takes up?? And what's with the local couple and the wife's little dalliance with Stevens? WHO NEEDS IT, especially when all it does is distract from the main story?
The drama would have been FAR better served without these three useless characters, plus a couple of intense scenes INSIDE the courtroom in addition to all of the bustling and running around outside of it. I know....yes, I realize, Mr. Silliphant...that this would have produced a more standard, ordinary, run-of-the-mill, less "relevant" show for slow-witted viewers like me, who just can't seem to get the hang of your artsy, abstruse, stream-of-consciousness dialogue and plotting.
I am reminded of many of Joe Stephano's OUTER LIMITS (Season 1) scripts, which usually cluttered up the narrative with soulful, tortured characters who were undergoing a personal crisis and needed 50 minutes (with monsters and aliens tossed in) to achieve some sort of emotional catharthis. Sometimes it worked, but most of the time the writer's need to burden his characters (and us, the viewers) with this sort of stuff blunted the thrust of the drama and made the viewing experience much more tedious for us common folk.
Vivian Blaine's "show-biz" acting style seemed somewhat out-of-place with everyone else in the show, but maybe that's the reason the producers felt she was right for this particular part. Unfortunately, due to the unnecessary, pointless characters I've mentioned, even her role seemed underdeveloped and gratuitous.
I realize Silliphant and crew were accomplishing a seemingly-impossible task in producing this hour-long series in different locations every week---but, if you can create an artsy, flowery, unnecessarily contrived script under these conditions, you can certainly produce a more direct and cogent one. LR