History Series / BostonLegal

%%* CourtroomAntic

%%* MotorMouth: Alan Shore.

%%* NotLoveInterest: Denny and Alan, for each other.

%%* SympatheticMurderer

%%* SarcasmFailure: Usually during the CodeSilver.

-->'''Judge Weldon:''' Counsel, what are you doing?
-->'''Alan:''' ''[standing on crate]'' Getting on my soapbox, Your Honor, I do it once a week.

-->'''Lawyer:''' The law is on our side, Mister Shore. Tragedies happen every day.
-->'''Alan:''' Yes, and you're about to experience one firsthand. See you in court.

-->'''Chairman:''' Mister Shore, our school has been sued several times. Never successfully.
-->'''Alan:''' You know what they say, Lester. ''You never forget your first time.''

--> '''Marlena:''' Look at her! She's ''gorgeous''!

-->'''Denny:''' ''[to Alan, as he fixes Denny's tie]'' I wish you and I were getting married. That's you and I. Both of us. To others... I'm not gay.
-->'''Alan:''' I heard you the first Freudian slip.

* HeroicBSOD: Alan in Season 5, after [[spoiler: he finds out that an ex-girlfriend totally played him in order to keep her husband out of jail for first-degree murder]].

--> '''Denny:''' Alan, the thing you have to realize, and someday you will, is a person only has one true love in his life. Like it or not, your true love is me. We may not have sex, but ours is an affair of the heart. And we do spoon well.
* HomoeroticSubtext : Alan and Denny. At the end of the show, [[spoiler: they make it legal]].

* JustFriends: Katie and Jerry deal with this, complete with [[spoiler: LastMinuteHookup]].

* LastMinuteHookup: Played with (to say the least) with Alan/Denny, and played straight with [[spoiler: Jerry/Katie + a SealedWithAKiss in the last 5 minutes of the final episode]].

* MoodWhiplash: One moment they'll joke about Alzheimer's, then the next it will suddenly be a serious issue. For a supposed comedy show, it's disturbingly dark to have the first series finale end with [[spoiler:the sounds of a man gasping and struggling for his life as he's about to be executed while the credits roll]].
** Denise is enjoying the Mariarachi band that's wandered into her corridor (hey, it's Crane, Poole and Schmidt!) until suddenly she realizes why it's there. [[spoiler: Her fiancee Daniel Post has died]]

--->'''Carl:''' You know, the only show unafraid to have its stars over 50 is ''Bo''... Gee, I can't say it. (gesturing toward the cameras and the audience) It would, um, [[NoFourthWall break the wall]].

--->'''Alan:''' It'll be great!
--->'''Denny:''' Like [[JumpingTheShark jumping a shark!]] [[invoked]]

---> '''Alan:''' You're an extra. You don't get to talk.

--->'''Denny:''' Welcome to ''[[TitleDrop Boston Legal]]''... [[ThemeMusicPowerUp Cue the music]]! ''(The opening credits begin to roll inter-cut with shots of Jeffery Coho looking absolutely stupefied)''.

* NotLoveInterest: Denny and Alan, for each other.

--> "Donny Crane."
--> "Denny Crane."
--> "Donny Crane."
--> "Denny Crane."
--> "Donny Crane."
--> "[[RuleOfThree Denny Crane]]."

* SarcasmFailure: Usually during the CodeSilver.

* ShaggyDogStory / [[spoiler:ShootTheShaggyDog]]: The case of [[spoiler: Joseph Washington]]. Katie and Jerry get him off the hook for a murder he didn't commit and the DA is lawful enough to then immediately proceed a lead that surfaced during the trial. Then, it turns out that the community he tried to join shuns him due to a prior (false) rape conviction. They get the victim to recant the statement and he's off the hook again, but the community still won't accept him and ask him to leave. [[spoiler: And then, he's murdered.]]

** The show is more than self-aware enough to strawman consciously, and the real beauty of it is its use of the basic fact that a lawyer is supposed to advocate for his client: Alan is a liberal, but he's not always on the liberal side of the case, and Brad, a conservative, passionately defends a number of liberal causes. (Denny, for his part, is very good at avoiding cases he doesn't want, up to and including [[spoiler: ''shooting his client'']].
* StraightMan: A trifecta -- Paul Lewiston, Brad Chase, and Shirley Schmidt.

* WholesomeCrossdresser: Clarence/Clarice

* {{Flanderization}}: In the last season of ''The Practice'' and the first season of ''Boston Legal'', Alan was far more amoral and willing to bend laws for moral reasons. Denny was an eccentric but otherwise brilliant attorney who had occasional problems with Alzheimer's (bad enough to forget the facts of a case, good enough to engineer a mistrial as a result). By the second season Alan was becoming a lot less amoral, more like wise-cracking, and Denny was becoming so incompetent that the other partners would never let him work on a case for anything other than appearances.

'''Shirley:''' [[CrowningMomentOfFunny That's not a defense]]!

** Shirley Schmidt is ''comparatively'' strait-laced compared to most of the loons on this show, even though her entrance into the series in an innuendo-laden discussion with Alan Shore is something of a CrowningMomentOfFunny for both of them. She's hilarious in the office, but in public she's the serious partner.

** ''Boston Legal'''s Lori Colson (played by Monica Potter) to ''The Practice'''s Hannah Rose (played by Rebecca De Mornay). Both were blonde, attractive attorneys who held positions of responsibility within Crane, Poole & Schmidt. Both were attracted to Alan but repelled by him ethically. The only real difference is that Hannah Rose was more aggressive than Lori Colson.

* IWantYouToMeetAnOldFriendOfMine:
** Heather Locklear, one of William Shatner's old friends from the days they costarred in ''Series/TJHooker'', played Denny Crane's client. Unfortunately the show was cancelled before [[Franchise/StarTrek Spock]] could agree to do an appearance.
** Christian Clemenson, one of James Spader's old friends, played Jerry Espenson.
** Armin Shimerman plays a judge in the first few episodes of season 3. In one scene, he and former ''Deep Space Nine'' castmate Rene Auberjonois face off with all the chemistry of the Quark/Odo exchanges.

* RevolvingDoorCasting: Over the course of only five seasons they experimented with 19 main characters, of which only 7 made it to the series finale. (Alan, Denny, Shirley, Katie, Jerry, Carl, Paul[[note]] who was only a guest star at this point[[/note]])

** Denise is enjoying the Mariarachi band that's wandered into her corridor (hey, it's Crane, Poole and Schmidt!) until suddenly she realizes why it's there. []spoiler: Her fiancee Daniel Post has died]]

->''"Enny Day, Ane Cray."''

->--'''Denny Crane'''

''Boston Legal'' is a legal {{dramedy}} series than ran on Creator/{{ABC}} from 2004 to 2008. It was to the BunnyEarsLawyer trope what ''Series/{{House}}'' is to DrJerk. The series starts as a senior partner at the firm goes completely insane and has to be hauled off to a sanitarium -- and the rest of the staff aren't models of mental wellness, either. They include a renowned trial lawyer in the early stages of Alzheimer's (affectionately referred to as Mad Cow Disease by him and the rest of the firm), several lawyers suffering from everything from extreme shyness to UsefulNotes/AspergerSyndrome, and the lead, who is merely lecherous and corrupt (although he, too, suffers from occasional [[WordSalad mental issues]]). Together they take on cases that are almost as odd as they are.

Created by DavidEKelley. Technically a SpinOff from ''Series/ThePractice'', with which it shares Alan Shore, Denny Crane, a few female supporting roles who were victims of ChuckCunninghamSyndrome or otherwise PutOnABus, and virtually nothing else. It ran for a total of 101 episodes in five seasons.

* AssholeVictim
* AuthorTract: [[TropesAreNotBad And how]]! Especially in the later years, many cases involved the firm getting involved in political issues and Alan Shore would invariably deliver a closing argument in the author's voice. {{Lampshaded}} in "Selling Sickness":

-->'''Alan:''' ''(standing on crate)'' Getting on my soapbox, Your Honor, I do it once a week.

* BetterThanABareBulb

* ClingyJealousGirl
* CharacterFilibuster: Oh, so many times. Partially justified in that they're lawyers and it's their job to give long speeches, but more often than not their closings had only a tangential relationship to the case at hand. Alan Shore is basically the epitome of this trope.
** It's a trick that legendary civil libertarian lawyer Clarence Darrow used to employ. No one since Darrow has ever come close to doing it right... Except the fictional Alan Shore.

* CourtroomAntics: Ohh yeah.

* [[OscarBait Emmy Bait]]: ''Amazingly'' parodied and lampshaded. Denny talks about how he likes to pretend "that everything I'm doing is on television" and calls an abortion case bad television. Alan tells him to "just think of this as our Emmy episode." Denny Crane even says at one point that he's won an Emmy. Note that this is Denny Crane (a lawyer) saying this!

---> '''Marlena''': Look at her! She's ''gorgeous''!
* EvolvingCredits: The producers listened keenly to fans reactions to certain characters and would routinely [[PromotionToOpeningTitles make full-time cast members]] out of [[BreakoutCharacter Breakout Characters]] and [[DemotedToExtra write off]] perceived [[CreatorsPet Creator's Pets]] and [[TheScrappy Scrappys]].
* {{Flanderisation}}: In the last season of The Practice and the first season of Boston Legal, Alan was far more amoral and willing to bend laws for moral reasons. Denny was an eccentric but otherwise brilliant attorney who had occasional problems with Alzheimer's (bad enough to forget the facts of a case, good enough to engineer a mistrial as a result). By the second season Alan was becoming a lot less amoral, more like wise-cracking, and Denny was becoming so incompetent that the other partners would never let him work on a case for anything other than appearances.

* FromTheAshes: Technically it sort of picks up where ''Series/ThePractice'' leaves off.
** To elaborate, The Practice ended with Alan joining Crane, Poole and Schmidt. Boston Legal begins with Alan having settled in for what must be a year (if you go by Alan's claim to have known Denny for six years in the series finale). The first season contains perhaps the most references to things that happened to Alan on The Practice, given that there were more carry-over characters like Tara and Sally and Catherine Piper, than there were in later seasons.
* FunnyAneurysm / ReverseFunnyAneurysm (depending on your politics): One episode airing in early 2005 was about the firm successfully defending a school district that forced science teachers to teach Intelligent Design (creationism with the serial numbers filed off) as an alternative to evolution, firing those that refused. In real life a similar case really happened later that year, with the plaintiffs and school board using arguments essentially identical to those from the show (although at much greater length and with everyone showing their work). The school board lost so badly the movement to get ID taught in schools [[strike: basically died that day.]] had to go into hibernation for a few years.
* HangingJudge: Judge Clark Brown.

* InsufferableGenius: Guess, just guess.

* IWantYouToMeetAnOldFriendOfMine: Heather Locklear, one of William Shatner's old friends, played Denny Crane's client. Christian Clemenson, one of James Spader's old friends, played Jerry Espenson. Unfortunately the show was cancelled before [[Franchise/StarTrek Spock]] could agree to do an appearance.
** Armin Shimerman plays a judge in the first few episodes of season 3. In one scene, he and former Deep Space Nine castmate Rene Auberjonois face off with all the chemistry of the Quark/Odo exchanges.

* KickTheDog: Denny ''shot a homeless guy with a paintball gun and gloated about it on Larry King!!''
** Alan Shore's abuse of Jerry's Asperger's Syndrome in 'The Good Lawyer' (which Alan later regretted).

* LampshadeHanging: Of ''everything''.
* LargeHam: Everyone who isn't TheComicallySerious or the StraightMan. ''Especially Denny Crane.''
** Denny Crane is so much of a LargeHam that he makes the entire WorldOfHam look perfectly normal.

* LighterAndSofter: Than its parent show, ''Series/ThePractice''. ''Much'' lighter.
** This is down to differing genres. The Practice was a straight drama. Boston Legal is a comedy-drama.

* MotorMouth: Alan Shore.
* NiceHat: Not necessarily always a hat, but Alan is particularly fond of wearing strange things on his head. Ornaments (that light up, no less), mistletoe, wigs, coonskin caps. . .
** ... [[BunnyEarsLawyer Bunny ears...]]
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Gracie Jane is a thinly-disguised Nancy Grace.
* NoFourthWall: This show was created with none installed.

--->You know, the only show unafraid to have its stars over 50 is ''Bo''... Gee, I can't say it. (gesturing toward the cameras and the audience) It would, um, [[NoFourthWall break the wall]].

--> '''Alan''': You're an extra. You don't get to talk.

--->'''Denny''': Welcome to ''[[TitleDrop Boston Legal]]''... [[ThemeMusicPowerUp Cue the music]]! ''(The opening credits begin to roll inter-cut with shots of Jeffery Coho looking absolutely stupefied)''.

* NoSenseOfHumor: Brad Chase.

* ObfuscatingStupidity: Denny Crane, so much.

* OnceAnEpisode: At the end of every episode, Alan and Denny sit out on a balcony and talk.
** This only gradually became a thing. The first season is noted for its EarlyInstallmentWeirdness in that the episodes do not often end with a balcony scene.

* OnlySaneMan: Shirley Schmidt, Paul Lewiston, and Carl Sack. To a lesser extent, Denise Bauer, Brad Chase, and Claire Simms.
** So, really, it's more like Denny Crane and Alan Shore are the Only Insane Men.
*** They more than make up for it, however.
* OverCrank: Usually occurs partway into a character walking to the next scene. Everything starts off normal, then as they round the corner, everything slows to increase the drama.

* PrenupBlowup: [[Creator/TomSelleck Ivan Tiggs]] was trying to rekindle a pairing with Shirley, though he was a newlywed. The new bride was suspicious of her husband despite his assurances that he was faithful. In a [[SugarWiki/AwesomeMoments Crowning Moment of Awesome]], Shirley suggested a "Post-Nuptual" agreement, whereby he loses everything if he cheats. Given his assurances of fidelity from just a moment ago, he should be eager to sign, right?!?

* SarcasmFailure: usually during the CodeSilver.

* SpinOff: Of ''Series/ThePractice'', although you'd be forgiven for not noticing.
** Part of what distinguishes the two is the fact that none of the Practice characters made any guest appearances. While this is arguably justified in that every non-female member of Young, Frutt and Berluti hated Alan by the end of the Practice, David E. Kelley noticeably opened the door for Eugene to appear on Boston Legal as a judge, which he never did.

* StrawmanPolitical: Alan Shore very frequently goes up against broad conservative caricatures, and always wins. Oddly, he himself resembles the conservative straw man of a corrupt liberal trial lawyer.

* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: Boston Legal's Lori Colson (played by Monica Potter) to The Practice's Hannah Rose (played by Rebecca De Mornay). Both were blonde, attractive attorneys who held positions of responsibility within Crane, Poole & Schmidt. Both were attracted to Alan but repelled by him ethically. The only real difference is that Hannah Rose was more aggressive than Lori Colson.

* SympatheticMurderer

* YouLookFamiliar: John Larroquette, who plays Carl Sack, earlier played MagnificentBastard Joey Heric on ''Series/ThePractice'', from which this show spun off.

!!This show provides examples of:

* ObfuscatingStupidity: [[TwoWords Denny. Crane.]]

* BrotherChuck: Many characters. The only characters that aren't this or put on a bus are Alan Shore, Denny Crane, Shirley Schmidt, Carl Sack, Jerry Espensen, and Katie Lloyd.

Created by DavidEKelley. Technically a SpinOff from ''ThePractice'', with which it shares Alan Shore, Denny Crane, a few female supporting roles who were victims of ChuckCunninghamSyndrome or otherwise PutOnABus, and virtually nothing else. It ran for a total of 101 episodes in five seasons.

* BackdoorPilot: The final season of ''ThePractice''.

* FromTheAshes: Technically it sort of picks up where ''ThePractice'' leaves off.

* LighterAndSofter: Than its parent show, ''ThePractice''. ''Much'' lighter.

* SpinOff: Of ''ThePractice'', although you'd be forgiven for not noticing.

* YouLookFamiliar: John Larroquette, who plays Carl Sack, earlier played MagnificentBastard Joey Heric on ''ThePractice'', from which this show spun off.

* ActivistFundamentalistAntics: One episode had two religious groups suing each other for blasphemy-related charges.

* TakeThat: Texas, Utah, Fox News, the New York Yankees, Scientology, the list goes on...

* WholesomeCrossdresser: Clarence/Clarice

* WillTheyOrWontThey: Alan/Shirley, and Jerry/Katie: [[spoiler:it looked, for a while, like Jerry and Katie wouldn't, but according to this page, they do.]]
** Alan and Shirley on the other hand, [[spoiler:don't]].

* BunnyEarsLawyer: The TropeNamer is Alan Share, but almost the entire cast qualify, save one of the interns that showed up for a few months who didn't have any quirks. [[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Odo]] was The OnlySaneMan. And Brad is TheComicallySerious.

''Boston Legal'' is a legal {{dramedy}} series than ran on Creator/{{ABC}} from 2004 to 2008. It was to the BunnyEarsLawyer trope what ''Series/{{House}}'' is to DrJerk. The series starts as a senior partner at the firm goes completely insane and has to be hauled off to a mental hospital, and the rest of the employees aren't much more stable. They include a renowned trial lawyer in the early stages of Alzheimer's (affectionately referred to as Mad Cow Disease by him and the rest of the firm), several lawyers suffering from everything from extreme shyness to UsefulNotes/AspergerSyndrome, and the lead, who is merely lecherous and corrupt (although he, too, suffers from occasional [[WordSalad mental issues]]). Together they take on cases that are almost as odd as they are.

--->'''Denny Crane:''' Denny Crane!
--->'''Shirley:''' [[CrowningMomentOfFunny That's not a defense]]!