An American CBS Law Procedural Short-Runner starring James Belushi and Jerry O'Connell as two lawyers from Las Vegas who go to great lengths to defend their clients.
The show also starred Jurnee Smollett and Tanya Fischer in the series.
The show ran from September 22, 2010, to March 11, 2011.
Not to be confused with The Defenders (2017) or The Defenders (1961).
Tropes for the series:
- Accuse the Witness: Sort of referenced when Nick knows that his client's alibi witness is the real killer, but can't tell anyone. He says that the jury never buys "the other guy did it", even when the other guys did it. And this is enough for the real killer to confess to Nick, knowing he would just lie on the stand if asked. Then Nick pulls out a tape recorder.
- Amoral Attorney: The titular duo themselves are considered this by their opposition, despite doing everything they can to get the truth out of their clients and get the best win they can get for them, i.e. getting a week in jail compared to six months.
- Army of Lawyers: One episode has the villains use their army of lawyers as a blatant show of force. There are so many of them that when they sit down at their ridiculously long table they need two rows of chairs.
- Bluffing the Murderer: While pursuing a wrongful death lawsuit against a construction company, Nick gets a developer to fess up to bribing city safety inspectors by painting a group of audience members (actually stage magicians they consulted for Pete's Case of the Week) as members of the inspection department.
- Controversy-Proof Image: The trope is Played With in one episode, coming to an aversion. A rapper is suspected of killing a rival musician, and it doesn't help his name is "Killa Diz". The next day while performing on stage, he raps about how he killed the guy. The police accept that as a confession and take him in.
- The Gambling Addict: One episode has Pete defending one who has lost millions.
- Hands-On Approach: A client of Kaczmarek does this when describing how she had to wrestle with a customer. It has more intentions than that: she's actually a petty thief, and wants to lust her way from Katcsmerek not taking her case.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The episodes are named after cases ("Las Vegas v. Reid", "Nevada v. Rodgers", etc.)
- Persecuting Prosecutor: The more commonly seen prosecutors seen.
- Thomas Cole never sees anything positive in the defendants, doing everything he can to get the most out of their guilty verdict.
- A female prosecutor seen in the first few episodes is called out on it when she tries to get a full guilty verdict on a client that she knows is not guilty.
- Sexy Surfacing Shot: In "Nevada v. Doug the Mule", Nick and Pete track down the Honey Trap Villainess of the Week that seduced his client Doug to a pool club and their and the audience's introduction to her is a slow-mo scene of her climbing out of the pool in a tiny blue bikini, with several close-up shots of her body, followed by her Shaking Her Hair Loose (also in slow-mo).
- Unfortunate Item Swap: A two-part episode played this for drama. A woman dies (temporarily) and a high school football player is left brain-damaged due to two bottles of epinephrine being labeled too similarly. (They were of different potency.) They ended up suing the pharmaceutical company that produces the epinephrine and exposed the danger by having Kaczmarek intentionally trigger his shrimp allergy.
- Las Vegas: Where the show takes place.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: The show is loosely based on real lawyers, Michael Cristalli and Marc Saggesse.
