Boston Legal Season Two
January 2007 Reviewed by: Charlotte Meyer Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

I gave up on network comedy a long time ago -- the flat characters, the obvious jokes, the raucous laugh tracks, the intrusive commercials -- so I resisted the assignment to review this series. I confess I hadn’t seen a single episode. Now I’ve seen all 27 of the second season, and I relished every one. Sophisticated, witty, quirky, ribald, irreverent: These are my adjectives of praise. David E. Kelley created this series, as well as Chicago Hope, The Practice, Ally McBeal, and Boston Public. He’s got the hang of it. And in Boston Legal, he claims his right to mess with formula (is it comedy? drama? soap?) and to pursue the hottest social issues.

The concept: A high-priced law firm, Crane, Poole and Schmidt, litigates cases that range from preposterous to momentous. Denny Crane and Shirley Schmidt, original partners in the firm, are brilliantly played by William Shatner (imagine Captain Kirk gone lecherous, right-wing, and senile) and the ever-lovely Candice Bergen (imagine Murphy Brown gone dignified and corporate). James Spader is irresistible as Alan Shore, the central character, a lawyer in the firm who brings in big bucks but whose independence of mind means he’ll never make partner.

In each episode, amidst the outrageous comedy, is a dramatic courtroom scene where Shore gives a knockout closing, inevitably on the topic of our ever-waning civil rights. He takes on Catholic hospitals for withholding emergency birth control from rape victims, the Army for making false promises to naive recruits, the government for its racist neglect of Katrina victims, credit card companies for their bait-and-switch treacheries, Fox News for minimizing the tragedy of the Iraq War, the Patriot Act for eroding our privacy. It's refreshing for a change to hear these issues thoughtfully argued out instead of sloganized by the pundits. Refreshing, too, is Alan's gentle tolerance for someone like Denny Crane. Denny is pro-NRA, anti-migrant, pro-vigilante, sexist, and greedy. Their friendship is especially inspiring at a time when the country has been so rigidly divided between red and blue.

The show can be very funny, and it’s great to see so many older stars like Betty White, Henry Gibson, Robert Wagner, and Tom Selleck pop up in various episodes. Shelly Berman even gets to do some schtick as Judge Robert Sanders. Most of the cast have played lots of TV roles elsewhere. Faces you know from CIS, Six Feet Under, ER, West Wing, and Boston Public appear: Adam Arkin, Joanna Cassidy, Marc Vann, and Jeri Ryan. Michael J. Fox plays a wealthy man dying of cancer.

The video itself is vivid and crisp, better than season one, though still on the reddish side at times. The audio is only 2.0, but enough for me. Besides that funky theme and the odd burst of pop music, dialogue is the only important sound, and that’s clear enough. (Even so, try the English-language subtitles for Shatner’s throwaway lines, which you might not notice otherwise. Or choose the French or Spanish, if that’s your fluency.) Of the two brief featurettes, the first explains how the three stories per episode are assigned to the writers and then merged. The second featurette describes the set design, the cinematography, and the costume decisions.

Well, then, my mind has been opened, and I’m giving network comedy another look. You should too, now that Boston Legal comes commercial-free via DVD.

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