Capsule review: Boston Legal
I caught the debut episode of Boston Legal, David E. Kelley's spinoff from the late, lamented The Practice, last night. Observations and opinions follow.
As I feared, this one reeks redolent of Ally McBeal right from jump street. Kelley's already gone down the "law firm where everyone's a mental or emotional freak" path twice, with Ally and the latter seasons of his first series, the quintessential legal sudser L.A. Law. By now, the concept looks disturbingly threadbare. The reason The Practice worked so well for so many years lay in the fact that, while many of the cases handled by Donnell, Dole, Young, Frutt, et al. were indeed bizarre, the recurring characters were reasonably grounded in reality. The reason Ally McBeal burned out so quickly was that all of the regulars were nutjobs, which (a) gives the average viewer no one with whom to identify, and (b) is a difficult pitch to sustain for any length of time.
James Spader's Alan Shore made a refreshing addition to The Practice in its sign-off season because his amoral and sociopathic character played in contrast to the more normal types populating the rest of the cast. On Boston Legal, Alan is just one whacko in a roomful of whackos, and the effect simply doesn't work as splendidly. That Kelley and Co. recognize this was suggested in a line of script that found Alan observing, "In this firm, I come out on the sane side." That's not a good place for this character to be, and it doesn't bode well for the show as a whole.
Kelley is also making an unwelcome return to the kind of out-of-the-blue stuntwork that characterized Ally's descent. In last night's episode, Al Sharpton and his marcelled 'do interrupt a hearing during a civil case in which a young black girl and her mother are suing the producers of a revival of Annie — the girl didn't get the lead role because she wasn't white. In real life, even a former candidate for President wouldn't be allowed to interfere with a courtroom proceeding by delivering a grandstanding speech without even being called as a witness. This sort of silliness only serves to jar the viewer out of any semblance of suspension of disbelief that might have held sway before that moment, and makes the show look stupid and crass.
Not all is lost, however. Mark Valley, late of the delightful but short-lived Keen Eddie, makes a fine addition to the cast as the one reasonably normal member of the firm. (This was the function of Australian actor Vince Colosimo in the preview episodes from last year's The Practice, though Colosimo was playing a different character. I'm not sure what prompted the casting change, as Colosimo was very good also.) And Kelley has managed to find ways, at least in the first episode, of better integrating William Shatner's pompous Denny Crane into the flow of the story and making him less of a cartoon. (The stuntcasting of comic Larry Miller as a firm partner even loopier than Denny helped.)
James Spader as Alan Shore was the most watchable presence on TV last season. I'm still hoping that Boston Legal will continue that presence in even more watchable ways. At this point, though, my optimism's flagging just a smidge.
As I feared, this one reeks redolent of Ally McBeal right from jump street. Kelley's already gone down the "law firm where everyone's a mental or emotional freak" path twice, with Ally and the latter seasons of his first series, the quintessential legal sudser L.A. Law. By now, the concept looks disturbingly threadbare. The reason The Practice worked so well for so many years lay in the fact that, while many of the cases handled by Donnell, Dole, Young, Frutt, et al. were indeed bizarre, the recurring characters were reasonably grounded in reality. The reason Ally McBeal burned out so quickly was that all of the regulars were nutjobs, which (a) gives the average viewer no one with whom to identify, and (b) is a difficult pitch to sustain for any length of time.
James Spader's Alan Shore made a refreshing addition to The Practice in its sign-off season because his amoral and sociopathic character played in contrast to the more normal types populating the rest of the cast. On Boston Legal, Alan is just one whacko in a roomful of whackos, and the effect simply doesn't work as splendidly. That Kelley and Co. recognize this was suggested in a line of script that found Alan observing, "In this firm, I come out on the sane side." That's not a good place for this character to be, and it doesn't bode well for the show as a whole.
Kelley is also making an unwelcome return to the kind of out-of-the-blue stuntwork that characterized Ally's descent. In last night's episode, Al Sharpton and his marcelled 'do interrupt a hearing during a civil case in which a young black girl and her mother are suing the producers of a revival of Annie — the girl didn't get the lead role because she wasn't white. In real life, even a former candidate for President wouldn't be allowed to interfere with a courtroom proceeding by delivering a grandstanding speech without even being called as a witness. This sort of silliness only serves to jar the viewer out of any semblance of suspension of disbelief that might have held sway before that moment, and makes the show look stupid and crass.
Not all is lost, however. Mark Valley, late of the delightful but short-lived Keen Eddie, makes a fine addition to the cast as the one reasonably normal member of the firm. (This was the function of Australian actor Vince Colosimo in the preview episodes from last year's The Practice, though Colosimo was playing a different character. I'm not sure what prompted the casting change, as Colosimo was very good also.) And Kelley has managed to find ways, at least in the first episode, of better integrating William Shatner's pompous Denny Crane into the flow of the story and making him less of a cartoon. (The stuntcasting of comic Larry Miller as a firm partner even loopier than Denny helped.)
James Spader as Alan Shore was the most watchable presence on TV last season. I'm still hoping that Boston Legal will continue that presence in even more watchable ways. At this point, though, my optimism's flagging just a smidge.
SwanShadow was randomly pounding the keyboard at 11:18 AM
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