Rob Lowe, an actor, plays Dean Sanderson, an actor, who once played the role of Mitch Grinder, the star of the melodramatic legal television series, The Grinder. Known for his enterprising legal prowess, dramatic courtroom outbursts, and signature line, "Grinder rests," Dean has retired as the show ended its television run.

He moves back to Idaho to live with his brother, Stewart, who is an actual attorney working at the law firm their father started. Stewart, played by Fred Savage, is the straight-laced attorney driven mad by his brother's theatrical antics. Dean now wants to play a role in the law firm, because--well, he did play one on television, and he was quite good at it.

Dean constantly falls back into his role as Mitch Grinder, believing that he, and the American legal system, operate as if television were reality. The sheer self-awareness of the absurdity of legal fiction is enough to make Mitch Grinder this month's Fictional Attorney of the Month.