When Art Imitates Life

  by Kait Carson

Are you a true life junkie? I am. My idea of a good time is kicking off my shoes and watching a show that purports to depict real life. I’ve watched Miami Vice, Bloodline, Cops, Boston Legal, LA Law, and currently, Matlock. Okay, including Miami Vice on this list is a stretch. It couldn’t have been further from the truth of real-life cops, but hey, Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas. Who cared! Besides, it was funny. I’ll forgive a lot for a good laugh. 

Bloodline was the same. I had great hopes for that show. It was set in the Keys, my old stomping grounds as they say, and in the first season featured some of the biggest legal bloopers I ever could imagine. It was more a drama about a family with secrets falling apart than a legal drama, but still. The mistakes were so glaring they were funny. I was a probate and litigation paralegal, had been for fifteen years at that point. When the plot of an early show had to do with the consequences of not timely filing the recently drafted will of a living testator, I roared. I can’t say if any state requires testators to file wills while they are alive, but I know Florida doesn’t. 

Cops sort of got it right. At least the episodes that were shot in South Florida. Although seeing former sheriff Nick Navarro at a takedown. Well, as I said, I’ll forgive a lot for a good laugh. 

Boston Legal was fun. I don’t think it was meant to be anything else, so if their law practice was off, I was fine with it. Same with LA Law, but they got a lot of things right. When it was at the height of its popularity, I was working for a law firm that specialized in tax law as it pertains to estates and trusts. One character delivered a eulogy referring to the decedent as someone who exemplified the meaning of fiduciary—dry matter, I know—but the writers hit a bullseye on the target. In fact, they described my boss to a tee. 

Matlock—the Kathy Bates incarnation, I never watched the Andy Griffith version—started out with a bang. Their courtroom scenes, although fictionalized, were close enough to the truth that I felt at home. This season, though, they’ve ventured into dramatization land. It’s a television show. I know, but poor old Maddie Matlock would be practicing from behind bars in real life. Of course, it wouldn’t matter, most of her colleagues would be disbarred. I felt betrayed when the tone shifted. I’ll continue to watch, but not with the same relish. 

It’s important that movies, television, and books get it at least sort of right. Every reader has an expertise in something. It can be law, cat care, cooking, or gardening. No one expects writers to be one hundred percent accurate. The point of fiction is entertainment, not instruction, but readers and viewers have a right to expect some level of truth. It keeps you in the story. 

Readers, do you notice errors in the details and does it bother you? Writers, do you take pains to check the facts of your story?

Kait Carson writes the Hayden Kent Mysteries set in the Fabulous Florida Keys and is at work on a new mystery set in her adopted state of Maine. Her short fiction has been nationally published in True Romance, True Confessions, True Story, True Experience, and Woman’s World magazines. Her short story, Gutted, Filleted, and Fried, appeared in the Falchion Finalist nominated Seventh Guppy Anthology Hook, Line, and Sinker. She is a former President of the Guppy Chapter of Sisters in Crime, a member of Sisters in Crime, and Guppies. Visit her website at www.kaitcarson.com. While you’re there, sign up for her newsletter.