In USA Today, Robert Bianco pleaded: “Surely NBC's joking. There's awful, and then there's atrociously, hilariously awful -- a line NBC and Jimmy Smits soar across with Outlaw.” He proceeded to describe the show's premise:
A gambling, womanizing, conservative Supreme Court justice who chucks the court to become a crusader for the outcast and oppressed? That's not a prime-time show, it's a Saturday Night Live sketch. We meet Smits' Justice Cyrus Garza as he's being thrown out of a casino for counting cards. Outside, he stops to debate a case he's due to decide with a pretty ACLU protester (because you know those justices, yak, yak, yak) -- whom he then beds. But her words move him, and he resigns to become a trial lawyer.Recognizing the commonality of TV shows that ridicule conservatives as hypocrites or people with dark and nefarious motives, Bianco asked: “Do we really need another show promoting another shadowy, conservative cabal, this one with tentacles in the Senate and the court and an anti-Garza agenda?”
The take from James Poniewozik on Time.com:
Outlaw -- sneak-peeking tonight before moving to Fridays -- starts in a direction of implausibility and keeps on going. The premise: Cyrus Garza (Jimmy Smits) is the most conservative justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, and the son of a famous and passionate liberal attorney. After his father dies in an accident, Garza re-examines his life and decides to embrace his father's beliefs. He further decides that the legal system he works in is flawed, in such a way that he cannot do any good as a Supreme Court justice [!]. So he quits the bench and decides to become a freelance lawyer, traveling and taking on highly controversial cases.In the second episode we'll get liberal guilt-tripping on Arizona, Bianco noted: “Friday, when Outlaw moves to its regular slot, the case involves racial profiling and Arizona's immigration law.”
NBC.com has posted an uninspiring four-minute trailer, which includes a scene with Joe Scarborough playing himself.