Just like marrying your cousin, maybe movie stars shouldn't be allowed to marry each other

Like tooth decay, the Depp-Heard trial is somewhat preventable, but ultimately unavoidable.

The first couple of times I caught a reference to Depp-Heard I thought it was a comet. “Yes, Depp-Heard will best be seen in the evening sky by looking to the northwest just below the Big Dipper.”

Then I became aware it was some kind of courtroom setting, then — in episodic walks through the kitchen while the TV news was on — learned that Johnny Depp was standing trial for some sort of domestic abuse. Or so I thought.

Like many, I suspect, I knew of Johnny Depp, but I’d never heard of Amber Heard. Still, from the snippets I was picking up here and there, it seemed like an open and shut case. Guy’s guilty. Sorry Johnny, can’t do that kind of stuff, no matter who you are. May even be some jail time involved.

It wasn’t until some time later I learned specifically it wasn’t a criminal case, it was a civil case, and it wasn’t HIM that was on trial, it was HER. What? This sounded like the old third-grade joke about the car going up on the sidewalk and knocking a shopper 100 feet down the road — the police charge the pedestrian with leaving the scene of an accident.

But Heard wrote an opinion piece about domestic abuse and Depp — even though he was not mentioned by name — took offense and sued. For $50 million. Heard took offense to Depp’s offense and countersued for $100 million. So there.

And just when I thought things couldn’t get any more weird, I come to learn that everyone in the court of public opinion has taken the side of Johnny Depp.

Look, I know Hollywood is bizarroland, and that the rules of civilized society don’t always apply there. I also understand people naturally develop a slavish devotion to their favored stars, and affection they are unwilling to give up, no matter what the evidence might be. I kept defending Lance Armstrong years after it should have been evident that he was a skunk.

But … but. At the very least, isn’t there some fail-safe in our legal system where a judge takes one look at Depp’s case and rules that the court’s time would be better spent playing Wordle?

We have deadly drug pushers walking the streets awaiting a court date while a judge spends weeks trying to separate two movie stars, each holding recently uprooted hanks of each other’s hair, like a hockey referee at a game between the Oilers and the Flames?

And people on social media (naturally) have chosen sides the way female teenage Beatles fans used to declare themselves of John or Paul. And then (naturally) the details of their sordid relationship spill out into the public domain horrifying everyone, including Trevor Bauer.

The media, meanwhile, seem to revel in the she-devil narrative, showing the patrician, chin-in-the-air face of Heard, with that lone, sinister tendril of hair falling across her face, like it’s about to snatch a small child off the street so she can eat it.

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And they congratulate Depp’s conservative clothing choices which, they say, scream “Hey, look at me, I’m not drunk!” And her clothing choices have been similarly parsed and found to be wanting because she appears to be mocking Depp by wearing essentially the same outfit. Unless he’s mocking her. Entire magazine articles have been written about their dueling pinstripes. I’m entirely serious.

Most states have laws against marrying your family members, and I’m starting to think maybe California should pass a similar law prohibiting the intermarriage of movie stars. It just never seems to work out.

They don’t always make it to trial, but when they do, it feels less like the documentation of two troubled lives than it does just another movie. And this one, I’m only giving one star.

Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Johnny Depp, Amber Heard trial a descent farther into bizzaroland