I've spiraled down into the part of the Netflix queue where it's all "that one thing someone told me to watch that one time," which I added to the list to make them stop bugging me about it. Why didn't anybody tell me that Boston Legal was this completely bonkers? It caught my attention because I've been watching through Star Trek trying to work out how the costumes are put together (with haste and a kind of mad genius, out of the cheapest fabrics available), and I vaguely remembered that Shatner was (is?) still a jobbing actor. I didn't watch it when it was on actual TV; the promos made it look like a straight-up legal drama, and one can only mainline so many Law & Order clones.
This thing is brilliant. It has a reality-defying lunacy one rarely finds outside of manga. It contains the trope-naming character for Bunny Ears Lawyer, in fact, an archetype that I had assumed came from something Japanese, because that's the sort of thing they do. Although I probably ought to have known better, because bunny ears make no appearance in the courtrooms of Ace Attorney. Everyone on this show has lost their goddamned minds, and has inexplicably been allowed to keep running a high-stakes law firm anyway.
At least 50% of the fun is laughing until I cry at the casting. They got Reverend Al Sharpton to guest start in the first episode. And then come back to reprise the exact same bit for a later case. Candice Bergen made her name playing a sarcastic, ambitious career woman on Murphy Brown. Rene Auberjonois spent six years being a long-suffering only-sane-man on Deep Space Nine. (In one case, he goes up against a character played by Armin Shimerman. It sounds exactly like you think.) James Spader is James Spader. William Shatner is...
Well. Actually, that one's kind of interesting.
Normally, you'd figure Shatner was there because he used to be a starship captain, emphasis on used to be, and is pretty well-known these days for being willing to mock his own hubris. But all of this stunt casting is played completely straight. Nobody is there to make fun of their most famous roles; they're all there to celebrate them. This show is "Hilarious Fanservice: Now With Lawyers!". Spader at one point tells someone they look "pretty in pink", ffs. They all reprise their Greatest Acting Hits, now in pretendy-court. Shatner's a little old for Kirk's trademark unnecessary dodge rolls, although Denny does do his best to sleep around (with drop-dead gorgeous age-appropriate women. Admittedly, when you're in your 70s, that category covers anyone past menopause. I am still very proud of the production crew).
So what exactly is he there for?
Say what you will about Shatner chewing scenery -- and he does seem to leave a trail of toothmarks across every set he visits -- but there are some things he has a talent for. One of those things is conveying a bone-deep, unshakable affection for whoever his character's favorite person happens to be. There were many very, very silly aspects to his portrayal of Captain James T Kirk, and about Star Trek in general. Sci-fi TV in the Sixties was mostly poorly-lit melodrama, re-enacted by underpaid actors in rubber lizard suits on the surfaces of planets that looked suspiciously like a California backlot. But no one really riffs on Kirk's friendship with Spock. They are forever linked in modern myth, and it's largely down to the actors playing what the script didn't say, because it was officially the post-war era, and the only feelings men were allowed to have were anger and pride.
They had him do it again opposite James Spader as Alan Shore. It's glorious. Their relationship is specifically and intentionally in that wonderfully fascinating gray area where male friendships are almost never allowed to go. One of them tells the other point blank 'look, we may not have sex, but I am the love of your life', and he's right. They are eccentric opportunists, self-absorbed to a truly remarkable degree even for TV lawyers, but either one of them would scupper his case, his career, and possibly his life to save the other. Alan is the one person they never, never, never ask to babysit Denny (the character is suffering from what might be the onset of Alzheimer's and they're worried he'll lose it in court -- although, notably, the things they are concerned about are all issues with his memory, not his impulse control, which suggests that Denny was always this crazy) because they are well aware that if it came down to Denny Crane versus the firm, the firm would be shafted every. single. time.
This is pretty common in media featuring and aimed at women -- The Ya-Ya Sisterhood of the Traveling Eat Pray Love or whatever. Women are encouraged to form close, intimate friendships with other women, and there is an entire genre of film and literature dedicated to celebrating this kind of interdependent bond. It's rare to see it depicted between men outside of contexts like military or law enforcement, which do encourage a 'band of brothers' mindset, but in exchange are repressed and emotionally destructive in different ways. Media tends to function as a collection of stereotypes even at the best of times, and while male characters are certainly allowed to have friends -- for plot purposes -- the stereotype in play here is that none of them permit themselves to admit the depth of their feelings unless it has been dragged out of them by some terrifying personal crisis. Also for plot purposes.
This is a difficult relationship to play well. Personal experience suggests this is because most people don't actually have that setting on their mode switch, which I find endlessly aggravating but never mind. Shatner does seem to, from his own account, although he is an interesting case. Shatner has written quite a number of memoirs, which are all very illuminating, possibly in ways he didn't intend. He's better with anecdotes than feelings, and his reputation for being a bit extraterrestrial seems well-deserved -- even the nice stories people tell about him are almost always centered around him being completely oblivious. (To his credit, as he's aged, he's learned to take feedback. He still doesn't really know how he comes off in the moment, but when people tell him later, he apologizes profusely.) When he does cough up an actual emotion, it seems pretty important.
He misses Leonard Nimoy. A lot. And apparently got on like a house afire with James Spader on the Boston Legal set, although in the manner of actor BFFs everywhere they haven't really run into each other since.
Lawyer-based network dramedies get a lot more respect than cheesy science-fiction, and this time Shatner has landed a couple of Emmys for his performance. Actual Supporting Actor awards, not just group trophies for existing on a popular show. Good.
I have to say, though, it is interesting to watch Alan and Denny's intersecting character arcs, knowing how they end up in the finale. I'm given to understand that there was no particular overarching plan for the show, so much as they just wrote fun things and kept track of continuity, yet the groundwork for the ending they get starts going down as early as season two. The two characters start leaning heavily on the fourth wall near the end of the season, including making a lot of public cracks about how their relationship looks. But they say a lot of those same things in private, and in private they're not jokes. Wryly-phrased, but serious. Spader's delivery of the phrase, "Just the same," is surprisingly kindly and poignant. I rather wonder if it started as a running joke in the writers' room, and just kept snowballing until it made a terrifying amount of sense.
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