It's not a good strategy because it's playing a bluff on the jury. You can't present anything in a trial that's a roll of the dice, you only say stuff where you know what the outcome will be.

The second point is coming at it from a more reddity/social justice view point I feel, whether he went through with it or not or should have is irrelevant to the central notion of if he was an accessory, and this is just conjecture essentially.

It has the opposite problem of Lois and Clark- a show I love but he never punches anyone or does anything super heroic besides stand around posing, so the stakes are too low and it devolves into silliness by S3.

In Smallville, there's too much action too soon in this one same small town, so it becomes over-the-top ludicrously absurd. Just the idea that he coincidentally meets all the villains and Justice League when they visit the town, yet he still isn't Superman, just became too stupid to bear after awhile. So if you like anything with emotional realism, then neither. If you just like Superman, neither are particularly faithful to the character. You'll probably like it.

It reminds me of the verdict in A Time to Kill, but that's a whole other can of worms (but that's another where he committed the crime he was accused of, and everyone says let's let him go, we like this guy!)

I also don't really get why it was a demerit against him that they keep bringing up "he wanted to kill his own son!" Uh, you're saying he didn't do enough to stop him. By making it clear that he intended to kill him, it asks every one to put themself in his position and realize, yes, he did enough. This would vindicate him in the eyes of the public and the charges would quickly be dropped.

After watching episode 2 as well I'm starting to see what the problem with this show is. I thought it was going to be a rotating celeb each week and you don't know if they're guilty, and all we see are the trial aspects to determine their guilt. After the verdict we find out who they really are.

This show is going in a much lamer direction. The 'crimes' they're accused of are so toothless, and everyone so far is an innocent do-gooder besieged by annoying assholes. But if they're all done in one episodes, who cares? Certainly we can milk more from "This week, Lous CK plays an accused date rapist. Is he guilty?" (Verdict: Yes)

The writing is also not very good. I'm convinced that the adage that there is no bad writing, just bad actors, is simply not true. Chiklis is a great actor and he is playing it as if he sincerely believes every thing he has to do. But it's such cliched, hokey NBC sitcom-levels of decisions being made that you can't take it seriously.