BAD JUDGE on NBC, premiering tonight at 9/8c, has a title that tells you all you need to know. Kate Walsh plays a JUDGE (who, from the looks of it, even if she’s drunk all the time, does understand the law); the show itself is pretty BAD (BAD + JUDGE, ya know?).

It tries to be a workplace comedy, but it falls short on the comedy, with Walsh trying way too hard at playing the Honorable Rebecca Wright, a young, hip, party-girl who falls into bed with everything (but really, maybe just Ryan Hansen’s Gary, played initially by a more-age-appropriate Mather Zickel), while somehow managing to be a decent judge.  She’s up for whatever the writers throw at her, which is great.  The problem is that they just throw too much at her, so she ends up looking insane.

Rebecca also cares too much about the families of the people she puts in jail; in the pilot, and likely throughout the series (however long it lasts), that family is a young boy she has to help out of a few jams and while he’s charming, not much else is about the show is.

The second pilot (with the recasts and different story than what was initially shown to critics) is better than the first, but I wish they had gotten a chance at a third. In short, Kate Walsh, Ryan Hansen, and Tone Bell deserve better.  Skip it!