Raising the Bad

If you have seen the terrible previews on TNT for the new Steven Bochco law drama called Raising the Bar (Get it! It's a play on words because it's about lawyers!), you would've noticed Mark-Paul Gosselaar aka Zack from Saved By the Bell, in long, greasy hair and constantly looking as if he just jumped out of bed and threw on the first wrinkled buttoned-up shirt he saw crumpled on the floor. The show looks god-awful. From the previews, it seems as if they got all their dialogue from "How to Write a Law Drama 101". There's a lot of intense staring, pounding fists, and heated interactions with the characters. Also, MPG looks really out of place and way out of his league. He's not a particularly good actor. He's no Ricky Schroeder, who was actually decent in NYPD Blue. MPG is one notch above Mario Lopez and two above Dustin Diamond. And, I'm sorry, but I cannot take him seriously wearing that hairstyle. The previews looked like an SNL sketch. It made me yearn for the days of Blind Justice, which was a very short-lived show about a NYPD detective who is blinded in the line of duty, but he still continues to do his police work.
Al Norton from Two Tivos to Paradise summed it up best:

I am not sure what would posses anyone to think that Mark Paul Gosselaar is series lead material; Gosselaar isn't just a run of the mill bad actor, he's so bad that Andrew Shue would watch his performance and then call Crispin Glover to say, "wow, that guy is bad." Even putting his ridiculous hairstyle aside (he looks like he is competing in a Dawson Leery look-alike contest), and ignoring that his shirts go from presentable with a tie to unbuttoned and untucked in the blink of an eye, Gosselaar is simply not a good enough actor to be front man for a TV show. He trots out just about every acting cliché in the pilot, from clenching his fists to biting his lower lip to throwing his hands in the air, all in an attempt to convey a passion for his clients and the law that simply isn't felt.