Boston Legal - General Discussion

[friendperidot]

I'm watching. I loved that the episode showed all of the attorneys voting. That is something that needs to normalized, that people all over go to their polling place and vote. 

I also never bought that Denise was in love with Brad. He was good looking, but a prig. After Michael J Fox she went to Brad? Even the other one, Coelho or whatever his name was, I'm lazy and not looking it up, he had personality, I didn't care for it, but he had one.

And I loved the Shirley cheerleading outfit at the end of a recent episode. Denny dancing with the top and Alan with the skirt. I laughed and laughed. 

I also laughed at the paintball fight and marveled at how fast they cleaned up to go to court. And I like at many moments when something unexpectedly is played. I have come to a new appreciation of James Spader. 

There's so much I am enjoying about this show. I'll probably watch it another go round, the afternoon shows are being repeated a couple weeks later at 7 PM.

[GHScorpiosRule]

Man, what a let down of a series finale. 

The Good: Carl and Shirley got married!

The eh: Jerry and Katie.

The BEST: Alan and Denny got MARRIED!

I hate that Alan has the anvil of the Chinese planning to get rid of him; that they managed to change and get rid of Denny's name on the firm.  For a show that was ridiculous, outrageous and crazy most of the time, David E. Kelly should have found a way for Crane Pool & Schmidt to WIN!

And sorry, David, but Scalia was AN ENORMOUS ASSHOLE. I'm not drinkin' that Kool-Aid that they got "him" to marry them.

[friendperidot]

But Alan was talking with Denny at the beginning of all the Chinese buy-out stuff that he wanted to start his own legal aide firm, but while he money, it wouldn't be enough and grants for legal aide are being cut and public legal aide is an early cut in the current financial environment. One of Denny's arguments for Alan marrying him was for financial security and since Denny has Alzheimer's he will not be able to spend, he probably won't be doing much legally, even with the new medication trial. But the entire litigation department did stand together and if Alan starts his own legal aide firm, he'll have attorneys go with him. Jerry and Katie have taken on cases that others wouldn't touch, they're all kind of windmill tilters. And Shirley was ready to leave it all behind, and she probably will in the future, she may even join in legal aide. 

I wasn't happy with the buyout and the removal of the Crane name from the firm. I did enjoy the scene with the Chinese lawyers on Denny's balcony, I was amused and then even more amused that Denny knew someone had used the balcony and didn't clean up after themselves.

I'm satisfied that Shirley and Carl and Alan and Denny were married. I like Jerry and Katie, I think she's very sweet with him and letting him move mostly at his own pace, but giving a push now and then. I know she didn't really want a relationship with him at first, but people can change their minds and how they feel, feelings can grown.

[GHScorpiosRule]

I must have missed the part about Alan wanting to open a legal aid firm. All I remember seeing was Alan’s great speech about firing them, and so they decided to let them stay. And then they tell Paul (why’d David have to ruin him??!!) that Denny has to go and so will Alan, eventually. That’s NOT what they agreed to after Alan spoke. And Denny wasn’t so far gone yet.

I know why he and Alan married. That wasn’t one of the things I criticized. I stated I loved it.

It was stupid to end it with the way they did-Denny supposedly going to get fired and Alan on borrowed time.

And give me a break that no AMERICAN huge ass firm wouldn’t have had Crane Pool and Schmidt merge with them.🙄🙄🙄😒😒😒😒

[friendperidot]

I wasn't criticizing or disagreeing, I was agreeing with most of what you said, just going into deeper explanations, which I do entirely too much. I don't like the Chinese buy-out story at all, they probably would have merged with another firm, this firm was so large, they had offices in Boston, NY and maybe New Orleans, LA and in the DC area. Surely some of the divisions were money makers even if litigation took on too many pro bono and off the wall cases.

[shapeshifter]

On 2/21/2019 at 3:42 PM, GHScorpiosRule said:

Am I the only one still watching?

Watching intermittently here. 

Yesterday I saw the episode in which Candice Bergen's character's father is dying, and Alan passionately argues in court for the right to a frickin' morphine drip, effectively illustrating his case with Denny's future not-Mad-Cow scenario—with Denny hearing the whole thing.
For reasons I'm sure I don't need to explain: 

Edited March 2, 2019 by shapeshifter

[GHScorpiosRule]

You are sooooo behind! We're back to Season One again. Of course Escape wasn't working again--it's not a Cable provider issue==it's the channel itself. But they're re-airing the episodes that were affected over the weekend. After I do my taxes, I'll be getting this series on dvd. Then can just watch it on those, UNEDITED.

[shapeshifter]

A-a-and, just like that, with no fanfare--I mean, just like when the local grocery store rearranges everything just to annoy me--Escape has moved Boston Legal from being on afternoons and evening to mornings.

[friendperidot]

yes, I found that out this morning also, I sleep in the mornings, don't know how I'll watch.

[shapeshifter]

Yesterday morning I saw for my first time episodes 2.9-10, "Gone" and "Legal Deficits," in which Brad goes all Mannix. I have a fear of dismemberment that is not on a level of Alan's fear of clowns, but still. . . 

Anyway I enjoyed the outcome of Brad's trial because he really was a very bad priest.

[Lawyerkid09]

Hi all! Huge Boston Legal fan here! I was watching it when it first aired while I was in college and then law school. Such a great show centered around a beautiful friendship. 

Anyhow, I joined because I had a set of four 'Boston Legal glasses' gifted to me in college. These are Luigi Bormoioli Vivaldi double old fashioned glasses. Three were broken Iver the last few years and now I have but one precious one left and I'm scared to use it for fear of breaking it.

If anyone on here by chance has these glasses, I'd be willing to pay a reasonable premium price for them. If you have some or know someone who does and are interested in selling, please reply to my post. Thanks!

[Unclejosh]

So I started a rewatch on Hulu this past weekend and I forgot how much I loved this show. James Spader is so good as is almost all the cast but he just is memorizing in pretty much everything he does.  I met him a few times back in the late 80's (his parents lived in town of the video store I worked at and he came in a few times to rent movies when he was visiting them) and he was very nice but very tiny in person.

Anyway I finished episode 17 of Season one and at the end it showed scenes from the next episode mostly dealing with stuff regarding Kerry Washington's character but the next available episode in Hulu was Season 2 Episode 1 and it had a new cast and nothing from the "next on" scenes were in the episode.  It seems like Season 1 only aired 17 episodes so what happened to the episode they previewed at the end of ep 17?

[shapeshifter]

Just "watched" (had on in the background) "The Gods Must Be Crazy" (5/14/2008,  Season 4 / Episode 19) in which "Some high-ranking friends seek Denny out for a potential presidential bid." At one point Denny and his supporters' rightist bloviating  caused me to turn it off and turn on NPR, but then NPR was having a fund raiser (oh, the irony) so I turned it back on. It was amazingly prescient of the 2016 election cycle, but it turned out to be a hoax, which Denny (and his loyal, worthy, friend Alan) realized, and so turned the tables on the hoaxsters, which I enjoyed immensely -- probably more than I would have enjoyed it if I had watched it in the spring of 2008. In the final cigar-and-Scotch porch scene, Denny admitted that being President for just one day would be best [for someone like him]. *sigh* If only. . . 

Edited April 10, 2019 by shapeshifter

[shapeshifter]

5.7 "Mad Cows" is airing. 
I just saw (for my first time) the scene in Alan's office in which Alan and Denny begin talking about going to vote that day for president, progress to arguing Obama vs. McCain and Palin, getting louder and interrupting one another, and culminating in a paintball fight, which in no way quiets things down and escalates until the other lawyers come running into the office to see both Denny and Alan (as well as their office) covered in circular paint ball splats (of 2 colors not red and blue).

But what really made the scene (and made me LOL) was Denny looking around at the partners, shrugging, and matter of factly (in Shatner's resonant voice) simply stating: "Politics," and then walking out.

[friendperidot]

I've been binge watching 21 Jump Street on the Roku Channel for the past couple of weekends. There have been several episodes I don't think H&I aired. One of them about young marijuana entrepreneurs had a face that took me a few minutes to process. He was quite an attractive young man, but his voice is how I recognized him. It's Christian Clemenson who played Jerry Epenson. It was kind of fun to see him at a much earlier point in his career. I'm going to have to go back and rewatch the last half of the episode, Raising Marijuana, when I'm a little more away, I have no clue how it ended, I had dozed off and when I woke there was an entirely different episode on. The actor is still a nice looking man, but I don't think of his a handsome on Boston Legal, there are too many other pretty boys on that show that take fill the role of handsome stud or old stud. He gets kind of lost with all the handsome men.

And I don't know if I've said it before, but the costumer did such a great job at dressing William Shatner, he always wears such elegant suits and I love how his tie and pocket square either match or coordinate. It's something I look for when he's on screen.

[shapeshifter]

This one just re-aired:

Quote

"On the Ledge"

11/28/2006,  Season 3 / Episode 9 , Drama, Comedy, Crime, Courtroom

Shirley tries to reason with a kidnapper who is more depraved than she initially thought, and Denny grows insanely jealous over the close bond that formed between Alan and Jerry while they jointly defended a woman accused of murdering her girlfriend.

This may be unique among female kidnapping plots in that Shirley never, ever loses her cool, which I really appreciate.

[friendperidot]

I started wondering today if the character Alan Shore is based, even loosely, on Stuart Woods character in many of his books, Stone Barrington. Mr. Barrington is "of counsel" to a big NYC law firm and Alan Shore is not a partner at Crane, Poole and Schmidt, he's talked about being at other law firms. Mr. Barrington does a lot of the dirty work of his NYC firm, he doesn't do litigation as far as I can remember, it's been a while since I read any of the books. Alan Shore does a lot of the dirty work of Crane, Poole and Schmidt, he's the voice of the firm with the Supreme Court (that may be the dirty work, it may be an honor, it all depends), he takes the lead in a lot of the litigation cases that no one else will touch. They both get things done and not always in the cleanest, nicest ways possible. Alan Shore does have a charitable streak that I don't remember Stone Barrington having. Both have become wealthy, Barrington a lot more so than Alan Shore. I refuse to address any person, real or fiction as "Stone".

There are probably a lot of lawyers that fit both the characters backgrounds and methods. I was just thinking about these two today. And Stuart Woods and David E. Kelley have probably drawn from many people they have known to create those characters, but Stuart Woods has been around a little longer than David E. Kelley.

[Thomas Crown]

Not sure if this should go in the BL thread or the Practice thread. 

I never watched the last season of the Practice despite being a huge fan of DEK legal dramas.  Until now, I had never seen the introduction of Alain Shore, Denny Crane and Tara prior to watching Boston Legal. So I recently picked up the last season of the Practice on DVD and I'm currently on the last disk of the DVD set. For me this is just like watching "Boston Legal - the lost episodes" 🙂 Damn James Spader was great from the beginning as Alan Shore! He's so much fun to watch and really is one of the great TV characters.

With all the reboots and reunions on tv these days, I wouldn't mind one day if DEK revisited these characters from Boston Legal. Maybe a short lived mini-season. 

Edited September 22, 2019 by Thomas Crown

[friendperidot]

1 hour ago, Thomas Crown said:

Not sure if this should go in the BL thread or the Practice thread. 

I never watched the last season of the Practice despite being a huge fan of DEK legal dramas.  Until now, I had never seen the introduction of Alain Shore, Denny Crane and Tara prior to watching Boston Legal. So I recently picked up the last season of the Practice on DVD and I'm currently on the last disk of the DVD set. For me this is just like watching "Boston Legal - the lost episodes" 🙂 Damn James Spader was great from the beginning as Alan Shore! He's so much fun to watch and really is one of the great TV characters.

I guess I didn't watch that season either, or I've forgotten. I didn't know those characters were introduced in The Practice.

[Hiyo]

RIP, René Auberjonois.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/dec/09/rene-auberjonois-actor-who-starred-in-mash-star-trek-and-benson-dies-aged-79

[shapeshifter]

36 minutes ago, Hiyo said:

RIP, René Auberjonois.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/dec/09/rene-auberjonois-actor-who-starred-in-mash-star-trek-and-benson-dies-aged-79

Lung cancer (cnn.com/2019/12/08/entertainment/rene-auberjonois-obit/index.html😞

Quote

...He was nominated for an Emmy twice....

Remy Auberjonois called his father a "proud progressive and consummate professional and craftsman." He praised the work his father did for Doctors Without Borders.

"He was married to my mother for 56 years," Remy said. "He was a dedicated father and grandfather and he had a fantastic sense of humor."

...on Twitter, with Takei calling him "a wonderful, caring, and intelligent man."

"He shall be missed," Takei wrote. "When I look out to the stars, I shall think of you, friend."

[Keywestclubkid]

Watching this for the first time on Hulu .. on the loose lips episode the guy had NO problem messing with this man’s life JUST to win a bet? IrL that is some super petty gutter action to fuck over someone who is seeking legal help to win a bet 

[PurpleTentacle]

It's weird watching this with Hindsight. In "Rescue me" Katie has a client with HIV (clearly not AIDS, as the episode summary says) and they both are very attracted to each other. Shirley warns her not to go out with him because if she ever wanted a baby with him, she'd put herself and the baby at risk of infection.

Which first, a bit premature talking babies before the first date. Second even back then a fertility clinic could have done it without risk. Third (this is with hinsight) Truvada was approved as HIV-prophilaxis in 2012. So if they could hold off for 4 years with the baby making, and I don't see why not as they were both young, she could have taken PrEP and as long as his viral load was undetectable, he could have splooged as much in her as he wanted, without risking any infection.

[PurpleTentacle]

5x08 is also a particular time capsule. It talks about the staggering rate of abortions of female fetuses in china, when now we know, most of those girls were born, but just never registered with the authorities.

Also it takes the abortion-crime theory from Freakonomics as plausible, when that has been debunked pretty thoroughly. It's much more likely that the removal of lead from gasoline led to the drastic decrease of violent crime, as that correlated in all industrialised nations, while it did not with the legality of abortion. For example in Germany abortion has always been legal, since it's been the Bundesrepublik and violent crime still went down drastically after lead was removed from gasoline.