THE LAWYER'S TALE

Further legal adventures for Harry Cain (The Sunset Bomber, 1986), the supercharged L.A. lawyer who never seems to lose a case, no matter how guilty his clients are. This season's docket includes Consolidated Studios' suit against Harry and his client, director Joe Miletti, when a disagreement over who gets the final cut of Miletti's war epic The Last Battle leads to: the disappearance of the $40 million master-print from a Consolidated locker; TV star Tommy Bowers's attempt to blackmail Harry's old friend Pat Campbell into turning over her share of their production company to him by threatening to show her sexy diary to her elderly husband; and the defense of Fumiko Masami, accused of poisoning her husband, head of Nippon Motors. Harry repeatedly scatters his enemies like ninepins (pausing only for a few nutritious, low-cholesterol lunches), demonstrating a finely developed amorality that allows him to take Consolidated's newly fired president, Aaron Fernbach, as a client days after trouncing Fernbach in the Miletti case. But although Harry can pull endless strings, bullying and blackmailing the old enemies who want to keep his wife Nancy out of the country's foremost cancer- treatment programs, not all of his legal shenanigans can keep her alive in the end, and he's left alone with his memories—every one of them decked out with a dozen superlatives. Stricken Harry as a pinstriped Tamburlaine is too absurd to be very affecting, and the heavy-handed ironies of Kincaid's finale are eminently skippable—but the slash-and-burn courtroom tactics are as satisfying as a slice of rare roast beef.