BOSTON LEGAL

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One of my least favourite phrases in the English language is “guilty pleasure”.  Urghhhh.  The whole notion of “guilty pleasure” makes my cajones shrivel and sends my too-easily-boggled mind all over the place, including some very, very uncomfortable spots.  I think the phrase is meant to be reserved for innocuous behaviours (e.g. you sometimes scroll through the gossip column on the website of a never-to-be-named tabloid paper; or you still listen to Bros’s debut album, Push… and these are totes random examples, ‘kay?) but if I ever hear someone talking about their “guilty pleasure” I make myself scarce pretty quickly for fear they’re about to off-load some truly perverse and incarceration-worthy peccadilloes.  What if you asked someone about their guilty pleasure expecting something like, “Well, I dance like nobody’s watching to Taylor Swift every Saturday morning,” but they actually say, “I’ve been sleeping with my mother-in-law and her Pomeranian for the last 18 months and it has been delightful, but… complicated.” It’s a conversation I’d prefer to avoid, tbh.

The only way to rid yourself of the guilt of any particular pleasure is to ‘fess up and come clean about it, thereby rendering it simply “pleasure”. And so today I will reveal that over the last few weeks I have been almost constantly guiltily-pleasuring-myself by watching two full seasons (44 episodes!!) of David E. Kelley’s BOSTON LEGAL (on Channel 4 in the UK).  Yes, it’s set in a law office in Boston, correct, and it stars some brilliant actors you’ll know from their esteemed, highly respected, illustrious careers (James Spader, Candice Bergen, William Shatner), but it is mostly remarkable for its function as a mind-blowing time capsule of how we used to be in the good ol’ days that were pre-#MeToo and pre-political correctness and pre-seemingly having any person’s rights or feelings at the fores of our minds.  And I love it. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Before continuing, I should acknowledge BOSTON LEGAL can be triggering if you happen to be LGBTQIA… or Black… or Asian… or Latino/a… or a woman… or old… or a little overweight… or, indeed, a little underweight… or disabled… or neurodiverse… or particularly tall… or, errrmmmm, ‘vertically challenged’… or any combination thereof.  In many ways, the list of people likely to be entirely and justifiably offended by the storylines and dialogue in this show is exhaustive - literally EVERYBODY is on it - and that makes it inclusive, kinda…. Right?  Suffice it to say, consider yourselves warned. It’s of another era.

I imagine David E. Kelley’s pitch to the network (i.e. old white guy pitches TV show idea to… old white guys) went something like: what if old white guys in a law firm had no inhibitions whatsoever, no impulse control and said and did exactly what they wanted to do and say, all the time?  Hmmm.  The unsurprising result is that BOSTON LEGAL is completely dripping in sex and sexual appetites and bodily fluids.  Every character is shagging several others in the show and they talk about sex ALL THE TIME.  Well, almost all the time: under the hyper-sexual skin of the show, quite a long way under, its heart is actually rather warm and right-thinking and admirable; you’ve just got to be prepared to wade through an orgy to get to it.  And it somehow works… most of the time.

It wasn’t entirely working and in danger of landing the wrong side of the proverbial line until several episodes into season 1 when Mr Michelle Pfeiffer made two ingenious changes.  First, he added a line here and there to break the fourth wall, a Brechtian device that reminds us we are watching TV.  For example, someone will acknowledge their new case is particularly spectacular and controversial because it’s sweeps week, or ask where a character has been all episode as they must contractually appear in the season finale. We are reminded that Crane, Poole and Schmidt is not a real law office and nobody is condoning the unbelievably lascivious behaviour we are witnessing and derogatory language we are hearing: it’s just entertainment.

The second ingenious change was to bring Candice Bergen into the mix.  The cast of sex-obsessed older men (Shatner’s Denny Crane and Spade’s Alan Shore, a gloriously offensive double act) and scantily clad younger women would have become tired and tedious very quickly without the introduction of Bergen’s Shirley Schmidt, my new favourite TV #shero. She’s not far off Shatner’s age and significantly older than Spader, but she is of an entirely different league: stunningly beautiful with a razor sharp wit and unbelievable sartorial style (mostly suits with gorgeous statement necklaces… and not statement necklaces like the ones Prue Leith wears on the Great British Bake Off which are a travesty and look like they were made by unruly kindergarteners, but proper clusters of pearls and fine jewels that’ll make you weep with envy).  Also, importantly, she’s the grown-up in the law firm and the most skilled advocate among the lot.  While the men may be harassing literally everybody who comes through the door of Crane, Poole and Schmidt, they all really want Schmidt.  They want her in every which way you can imagine.  And they love her.  Yes, they also commission a hyper-real life-size sex doll in her likeness and keep it in a cupboard at work… but they love her.

Does BOSTON LEGAL cross the line offence-wise? Yes. Absolutely.  Intentionally (again, most of the time… there are a few storylines for which there is no real excuse and which simply aren’t funny enough to justify the offensiveness, including bullying a trans woman out of being trans).  Could it be made today?  No.  Why not?  Well, I think we’d be tempted to point the finger at ‘woke’ younger people who will not tolerate the type of insult and derogatory language in which the show revels, but I fear it is something much more worrying than being ‘woke’ (which I am happy to be, btw).  I think we are all losing our senses of humour and our ability to hold two juxtaposed positions in our minds when it comes to handling some of the complexities of interpersonal relationships and boundaries.  We are becoming “either/or” and we used to be capable of being “both/and”.

For example, yesterday Jenni Hermoso testified at the sexual assault trial of Luis Rabiales, Spain’s former football chief and he who planted a non-consensual kiss on her lips as she lifted the Women’s World Cup last summer, saying the incident “stained one of the happiest days of my life.” This kiss has become an “either/or” issue, when it really should have been a “both/and” issue, imo: it is BOTH a sexual assault according to law, de facto, AND it does not warrant anything like the amount of press and attention it has received when considered in its full context and could have been handled by all parties with more grace and, potentially, could have helped us all better understand bodily integrity and autonomy. (And had the Rabiales case been handled by the fine legal minds at Crane, Poole and Schmidt, I reckon Alan Shore would have delivered a phenomenally inspiring and life-affirming closing argument which would likely cause everyone in the court room to start planting sloppy kisses on one another, including the judge.)

But neither Jenni Hermoso nor Luis Rabiales could confuse their current court case for “entertainment”.  They, like us, are living in a reality where Donald “grab them by the pussies” Trump, arguably the most powerful man in the world, is limiting reproductive rights and closing federal DEI programmes overnight and doing everything he can to silence the trans community and banning the celebration of Martin Luther King Jr Day and Juneteenth, so can we afford to take inclusion and individual rights anything other than deadly seriously?  Can we really BOTH laugh hysterically at a joke told at the expense of a woman or a little person AND rail against the injustices of the current governments and leadership?  Can we hear Blackadder enquiring after Jane “bury me in a Y shaped coffin” Herrington without accusing him of slut-shaming?  I really, really hope so.  I do.  But I don’t know, tbh.  Perhaps these shows that walk a very, very fine and dangerous line offence-wise are a thing of our past and, perhaps, that is for the best.

These are the big and gravely serious questions of our time, I guess.  And I will sacrifice myself and endeavour to find the answers in the next 47 episodes of BOSTON LEGAL so that you snowflakes don’t have to. 😇

More on this anon (during which time please, please, please don’t cancel me!).