David E. Kelley: Boston Legal

By Nicholas Stix
WEBCommentary

October 10, 2004

TV legend David E. Kelley is back with a new series. It remains to be seen which side of “Kelleyvision” the producer-writer will reveal.

A year or two ago, actor Chi McBride, then the star of the Fox TV series Boston Public (2001-2004), said that we needed a new phrase to describe the world of Boston Public creator-producer-writer, David E. Kelley: “Kelleyvision.” Though McBride meant the term as a compliment, it is a double-edged sword. “Kelleyvision” embraces the absurd, the magical, the love of love … and politically correctness, hatred of the law, talking heads drama, the limited attention span of the MTV generation and the reduction of even the absurd and the magical to paint-by-the-numbers hack work.

Well, Kelleyvision is back. Last Sunday, Kelley’s newest show premiered on ABC at 10 p.m. Boston Legal stars James Spader and William Shatner. A spin-off of The Practice (1997-2004), Boston Legal is the story of attorney “Alan Shore” (Spader), an acerbic, supercilious, saint in sinner’s clothing, at a high-powered, Boston law firm specializing in civil cases. The firm is run by the flamboyant, narcissistic, yet irresistible “Denny Crane” (Shatner). Crane likes to say, portentously, “Denny Crane,” as if his mere name carried weight – which it does. Crane’s looniness and Shore’s criminality (e.g., blackmailing opposing parties) in the pursuit of winning cases for deserving clients, are yet two more variations on Kelley’s theme, “The law is an ass.”

The creator-producer-writer of Picket Fences (1992-1996), The Practice, Ally McBeal (1997-2002) and Boston Public, the creator and/or writer of six other shows, and winner of nine Emmy awards, David E. Kelley is a TV legend. While only 48 years old, Kelley is already in the pantheon of broadcast TV drama writer-producers.

Kelley is a trained lawyer who briefly practiced the profession, until he found that he could make much more money writing about the law than practicing it. In 1986, he began working on L.A. Law (1986-1994) as a story editor. L.A. Law writer and co-creator Steven Bochco (Hill Street Blues) was then the hottest and most powerful producer in TV.

After one year, Bochco made Kelley L.A. Law’s chief writer and executive producer. The show was innovative, in dramatizing lawyers’ office politics and personal crises, in addition to court cases. And as it was a Bochco series, there was lots of sex. Kelley won three Emmys for his work on L.A. Law.

Kelley’s masterpiece was Picket Fences, for which he wrote solo or co-wrote 65 out of 67 episodes during the three years he controlled the show. Unlike most of Kelley’s series, which take place in urban workplaces, whose characters have no family life, and which skew towards young, female viewers, Picket Fences took place in tiny “Rome, Wisconsin,” centered around the "Brock" family, led by "Sheriff Jimmy Brock" (Tom Skeritt) and "Dr. Jill Brock" (Kathy Baker), and had strong characters of all ages.

David Kelley has a history of baiting white Christians, white owners of legal firearms, and white conservatives. To which my socialist readers will likely say, “He sounds brilliant,” while my conservative readers will doubtless respond, “Why would any sensible person want to watch his shows?”

Well, I can’t speak for sensible people, but when Kelley is on his game, he delivers episodes that viewers will fondly remember ten years later. How many people are there in TV about whom you can say that?

In the main legal case of the October 3 premiere, a black, self-proclaimed "stage mother" shows up, her chubby, eight-year-old daughter in tow. The child, who is wearing a big, curly, blonde “Annie” wig, was rejected for the role in a stage production of Annie, in favor of a white girl. The mother, who is presented as a ludicrous character, wants to sue for discrimination.

The firm agrees to take the case, but Shore acknowledges that it is hopeless. The show is a private undertaking, and the producer can cast anyone he wants as “little orphan Annie.” Crane tells Alan, “Pull a rabbit out of a hat.”

Just when the case looks hopeless, Kelley pulls a satan ex machina. Into the courtroom strides Al Sharpton. In the most ridiculous racial harangue I’ve heard since, oh, Bob Herbert’s last New York Times column, Sharpton equates a stage mother’s desire to see her daughter play “Annie” with the right of blacks to attend integrated schools.

“I have standing as an American citizen speaking up on a civil rights violation.… I’m standing as Bobby Kennedy was standing on the steps of a courthouse in Alabama.”

During Sharpton’s rant, Kelley uses a tawdry trick -- the dramatic equivalent of a laugh-track -- that he developed on Boston Public, in which he presents on-screen listeners as overwhelmed by a speech delivered by a black character, in order to induce viewers to submit to Kelley’s weak argument. Here, the white, female judge is chastened by, and the courtroom audience applauds Sharpton’s nonsensical, verbal onslaught.

But this time, Kelley pulls a switch on his usual m.o. As Sharpton is leaving the courtroom, he sidles over to Shore, and says, sotto voce, “That’s what you call a rabbit, son. Denny Crane.” Even I had to laugh. (I didn’t catch “son,” until I played back the speech.)

I expect -- as surely does Kelley -- that in offices all over America, people will start water-cooler conversations with, “Denny Crane.”

With the speech and the switch, Kelley was cleverly having it both ways – engaging in moronically pc speechifying, and making light of the exercise. He’s a resourceful man. But what does he really believe?

I wish David Kelley all the best, with Boston Legal. As irate as Kelley’s many outrages make me, I cannot bring myself to despise a man who has brought so much beauty, joy, and pleasure to my life.