Summary: USA begins new legal comedy series, benched.
USA’s new television series, Benched, a Legal Comedy, premiered last Tuesday, with plenty of sitcom clichés to thwart expectations of a fresh new series. Nevertheless, the cast works, and though many of the scenes are familiar, they have a freshness too.
Eliza Coupe, who had former roles in “Happy Endings” and “Scrubs,” stars as an ambitious lawyer who despite expecting to be named partner is picked over by her less-qualified, more physically endowed, friend. She has a subsequent meltdown in which she tells off her coworkers, landing her in the true setting of the series, her demotion to a position as public defender.
She struggles to fit into her new role, holding obvious disdain for it when she describes the systems as “A slow-motion hate crime” and feels further put out when her ex-fiancé Trent (Carter Macintyre) shows up as her opposition. Also, though the two broke up just three months prior, he is already engaged to somebody else.
The first episode gave glints that the characters might develop into something interesting.
“It doesn’t happen overnight,” said Benched creator/executive producer Michaela Watkins, as TVLine reported, “but we do see her settle in. As her material world starts to decline, her personal evolution will incline.”