I’ve just finished watching the series, which had five seasons that ran from 2004-2008. It’s a one-hour legal show with dramatic and comedic aspects and a touch of surrealism. It’s basically an ensemble series with a shifting cast, and with three members of the ensemble predominating: James Spader as Alan Shore, William Shatner as Denny Crane, and Candice Bergen as Shirley Schmidt. Crane and Schmidt are name partners in the distinguished firm of Crane, Poole, and Schmidt. Poole shows up on screen perhaps a half-dozen or times in the whole series, but is otherwise off-screen in a mental institution.
My favorite little bit about the show is Shatner’s suits. This is, after all, a high-class law film, so all the male lawyers wear suits. But Denny Crane’s are a cut above the rest, richer and more interesting fabric. Lots of the guys wear pin stripes and so did Denny, but he may have been the only one with chalk stripes. Luscious! And the ties. Most of the guys wore ties with narrow diagonal strips or small figures and patterns. Denny had some of those, but he also had wider stripes, mid-size polka & even largish dots, and richer textures. More interesting shirts, the only one wearing those shirts with white collars and cuffs – called a Winchester – against a colored or patterned fabric. If I were a rich man, I’d dress like Denny Crane. I wonder if Shatner got to keep any of those suits for his personal wardrobe?
The series ends – spoiler alert! – with a double wedding: Denny Crane and Alan Shore, Shirley Schmidt and Carl Sack. Crane and Shore have been with us for the whole run, from the first episode and in every consequent episode. Shirley Schmidt arrives halfway through the first season and is in most, if not all (I don’t recall), subsequent episodes, though not quite as prominently as the first two. Sack doesn’t arrive until the beginning of the fourth season and is a featured player from there to the end. For the sake of a not very rigorous argument let’s casually assume that these two weddings more or less define the show.
First, Shirley and Carl. Carl is Jewish and Shirley is Catholic, which didn’t signify much of anything until the very last episode when it occasioned arguments between them that almost scuttled the wedding – don’t ask why, it’s silly and complicated. That’s not all. Shirley and Denny were founders of the firm and had had a hot romance back in the day, but never got married to one another. Both went on to have multiple marriages. But Denny spent the whole series mooning over and hitting on Shirley now and then. He even had a life-size Shirley doll which he kept in a closet in his office, decked out in a wedding dress in the last episode when, in his confusion, he sometimes thought he was the one marrying Shirley. But he wasn’t, he was marrying Alan.
See what I mean, surrealistic?
Denny was in his early 70s when the series began and was having mental slips. His doctor said he had precursors to Alzheimer’s. As a protective gesture Denny referred to it as “mad cow,” which became a running motif in the show. There was even a late show involving mad cow and the beef industry. So, Denny’s got the mad cow and is always lamenting that he’s no longer the macher (not a word he’d use) he’d been in days gone by. He's also erratic, which brings a bit of disarray to the litigation department. So Alan Sacks was brought in from the firm’s New York office to tighten things up. He gets off to a rocky start. Not the least because that turns out to have been a cover to get him to Boston so he and Shirley and spark and spoon, which doesn’t please Denny at all.
As for Denny, Alan Shore is his best buddy and a generation younger (early 40s). They are opposites in important ways. Denny is a staunch conservative Republic. Alan is a passionate liberal Democrat. Alan doesn’t believe in abortion, Denny does. Alan gives long, ornate, convoluted, and successful closing arguments. Denny sometimes has trouble stringing a half-dozen words together, often uttering “Denny Crane” as though it were a magic incantation.
Nor does Alan approve of guns. Denny loves them. Has one or more on his person at all times, but no carry permit. At one point he produced a half-dozen while being booked. Sometimes the gun is only a paint gun, which he shoots off, several times. But sometimes the gun is real. He also shoots people with that, but manages to stay out of jail. Again, the surrealistic intrudes. Both end up joining the Coast Guard Reserve; I forget just why.
Both are compulsive womanizers. I don’t believe Alan has ever been married, or perhaps he was, once, but he’s had series affairs. Has one during the show. But also hits on woman and woman. The mad sex scrum in an elevator or on his desk is a running gag. As is the sight of Denny grabbing a woman’s buttock as he hugs her. Lots of that. At one point he marries a woman. The marriage falls apart almost instantly. Why? Because Denny has sex with a bride’s maid in the coat-check room, which is how he’d met the woman he just married.
See, the surreal touch. Or is it mere farce? Whatever.
Both love scotch and cigars. How often do you see men smoke cigars on TV? Well over half the episodes of Boston Legal end with Alan and Denny seated side-by-side on the balcony outside Denny’s office high above Boston. They’re smoking and drinking and talking about things, musing on the meaning of it all. They are obviously deeply attached to one another.
And so it is only fitting that they get married, as same-sex marriage is legal in Massachusetts. By this time Denny’s mad cow had progressed to early-stage Alzheimer’s and he was worried, deeply worried. Who would take care of him when the disease got really bad? Who would see that he died a decent death? What would happen with his money? And so he proposed to Alan that they get married. Alan turned him down initially, but Denny persisted and Alan agreed.
And so they got into Denny’s Gulfstream along with Shirley, Carl and judge and flew to Denny’s favorite resort, Nimmo Bay, Alaska, to get married. And, wouldn’t you know, there was Justice Antonin Scalia, who’d just arrived on vacation. Alan and Denny had just been arguing before the Supreme Court earlier that day! They got Scalia to perform the double ceremony. The couples danced and then ... back to Boston, back to Alan and Denny with cigars and scotch on the balcony.
Now, as I said, it’s an ensemble show. There are lots of other interesting characters in the show, not to mention the wide variety of legal issues taken up. But this is enough for a simple little blog post.
The End
Postlude, an hour later.
What? This is a legal show! What about the legal issues, the cases argued? Shouldn’t I say something about them.
Well, I suppose I should, but the idea hadn’t even occurred to me until after I’d posted the above material. That’s what interested me.
How could I possibly cover the legal issues, and their entanglement in moral and political issues, in a relatively short blog post? What do I do, there are so many. Each show had at least two, if not three, cases, and some of them were absurd on the face of it. There were 101 episodes, implying 250+ cases. How would I pick three of them. I suppose I could do that, but this is just a blog post, and a bright and breezy one at that.
If I were to write about one more thing it would be about Jerry “Hands” Espenson, a lawyer who showed up a third of the way into season two and was so liked that he became a regular member of the cast. Why him? Because he was on the Asberger’s spectrum and his behavior sometimes seemed dominated by ticks and compulsions. The way the show treated him was interesting and worthy of comment. But I digress.
What I wrote above is what came to mind when I decided to do a blog post. Think of it as the matrix in which all these legal, moral, and political issues are presented to us. THAT’s worth thinking about.
Really The End
