Strip Law, a new animated comedy on Netflix, boasts Adam Scott and Jenelle James as its two main voice actors. They play a lawyer and a magician who try to make legal cases in Las Vegas look more like a show than a trial.
STRIP LAW: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A courtroom in Las Vegas, where attorney Lincoln Gumb (Adam Scott) is questioning an Austin Powers impersonator.
The Gist: Lincoln keeps losing his cases because he essentially acts like a regular old, boring lawyer, and juries in Vegas — as well as the judges — want some showmanship. That’s what made his mother’s old partner Steve Nichols (Keith David) such a success — the jingle for “Nichols & Gumb” ads are stuck in Vegas residents’ heads.
After Lincoln’s mother died, though, Nichols decided to fire Lincoln, which he continues to tout in his ads months later. Lincoln set up his own firm, with his teenage niece Irene (Shannon Gisela) as the investigator and his disbarred family friend Glem Blorchman (Stephen Root) as… well, we’re not sure. The firm is failing so bad that Lincoln has been in his office listening to Dave Mathews Band and coffin shopping online.
A male stripper comes in with a case, but he can’t pay; he and others at the club where he works have been forced to eat customers’ keys as part of a promotion and it’s making him sick. The problem is that the trial is the next day.
Lincoln takes on the case, but is despondent. As he gets drunk walking around the Strip he encounters Sheila Flambé (Janelle James), a street magician he recognizes from the jury of the last trial he lost — she’s the one who had a flask that looked like a cell phone. He likes her showmanship, and they decide to hang out for a night of Vegas drinking, pain-pill-taking and other debauchery, to the tune of “Cleveland Rocks.”
One thing she tells him is how boring he is, and that like everything in Vegas, his presentation needs some pizzazz. At the end of the night (which is actually the next morning), Lincoln — dressed as a giant baby — offers Sheila a job as the firm’s “marketing director.” Her first task to help him sway the jury during the “Stripper-eat-keys-even-though-don’t-want-to-gate” trial, where Nichols is representing the strip club.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Strip Law, created by Cullen Crawford, feels a bit like other chaotic adult animation series on Netflix, like Inside Job or Captain Fall.
Our Take: The best thing we can say about Strip Law is that it has potential; the first episode had some funny moments and its overall absurd tone fits the show’s setting pretty well. But we’re not sure if the show is going to go beyond being a series of “Vegas is crazy” gags.
One of the issues is that, while in theory it’s fun to see Scott and James playing off each other, the use of celebrity voice actors backfires here. Adam Scott sounds like Adam Scott and Janelle James sounds like Janelle James. It’s as if Ben Wyatt from Parks And Rec and Ava Coleman from Abbott Elementary are sharing scenes instead of Lincoln and Sheila, and that can be a distraction.
At the very least, we know that Stephen Root can do actual voice acting in his roles, which makes him blend into his character more. But, at least at the outset, it’s hard to separate Scott and James’ voices from their more famous roles.
But the other issue we have with the show is that it lays on the Vegas shtick a little too heavily. Sure, a lot of those gags hit and made us laugh. But if that’s what the show is all about, with Lincoln and Sheila fielding silly cases in front of a silly judge and using all sorts of silly gimmicks to keep the attention of the judge and jury, the show will get old in a hurry.
Performance Worth Watching: Janelle James’ character, Sheila Flambé, thinks that the Vegas magic-industrial complex has been against her because she’s a woman. It’s one of the more interesting parts of her character that we hope gets explored more.
Sex And Skin: Well, the case is about strippers who are forced to eat keys.
Parting Shot: We see an ad for Lincoln’s firm, devised by Sheila, that takes place in a cemetery, features the “ghost” of Lincoln’s mother, and a half-topless Sheila dressed as Lady Justice.
Sleeper Star: Keith David turns on the charm and smarm as Steve Nichols, who we’re pretty sure will be Lincoln’s opponent in almost every case.
Most Pilot-y Line: A very meta post-trial joke that is punctuated by a courtroom-sketch version of the trial we just saw goes on for too long.
Our Call: SKIP IT. While Strip Law has its moments, it’s most a loud, gag-heavy comedy that doesn’t really take its time to make its main characters into real people.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.