This coming television season marks a
critical stage in the career of David E. Kelley.
The eight-time Emmy-winning writer/producer has been mired in a slump that
dates back two years, during which time he's laid two eggs, “girls club” and
“The Brotherhood of Poland, NH." His best show, “Boston Public," was
laid to waste creatively before it was mercifully canceled by Fox.
Every auteur in the history of television, from Roy Huggins to Dick Wolf,
experiences his share of failures, and the networks will tolerate an occasional miss so
long as they can be forgotten among the hits.
But Kelley hasn’t had a hit since 2000, when “Chicago Hope”
left CBS and Robert Downey Jr.’s drug problems signaled the downward spiral of
“Ally McBeal.” Even “Boston Public,” while critically acclaimed
its first two seasons, was at best a marginal success in ratings.
Now Kelley is trying again with “Boston Legal,” the spin-off of
“The Practice” that starts next month on ABC.
When a batter endures a slump in baseball, he adjusts his stance, chokes up
on the bat, or makes some other change in his approach to hitting. More often than not, he
finds the solution he needs by studying videotape of games in which he hit the ball well.
Similarly, Kelley needs to change if he wants to succeed with “Boston
Legal.” This means returning to the formula of his previous TV successes and adhering
to these three guidelines:
Lay off the tics
Kelley would be wise to play it simple with “Boston Legal” and keep
the tics to a minimum.
Like Stephen J. Cannell and David Chase, Kelley has an uncanny knack for
creating quirky characters who immediately leave their mark on viewers. But Kelley is
often too clever for his own good, allowing the quirks and gimmicks to dominate his
characters.
Watching John Cage (the uptight, socially repressed lawyer played by Peter
MacNicol in “Ally McBeal”) dancing in the bathroom to Barry White was funny the
first time we saw it. But it ceased being funny once we saw Cage literally dancing to the
same song week after week after week.
It's easy for any producer to overdo tics, and Kelley is hardly the only offender.
“Monk” fell into the same trap earlier this year. Tony Shalhoub’s detective
had become so tic-oriented that he was more caricature than character, and the show
suffered as a result.
But as Media Life writer Toni Fitzgerald recently noted, “Monk”
producers recognized the problem and cut back on the tics, returning the emphasis of the
show to where it should be: developing intriguing mysteries with interesting clues that
engage Monk and by extension the TV audience.
Kelley failed with “girls club,” “Brotherhood” and
“Snoops,” his ill-fated Gina Gershon private eye show from 1999, in large part
because he overdid the tics at the expense of the story.
Trust your actors
Kelley’s success on “L.A. Law,” “Picket Fences”
and “Chicago Hope” established him as a kind of actor’s producer. He began
attracting not only the hottest TV actors but also top-notch artists from music and film.
Many were people who ordinarily wouldn't do television and made an exception on the basis
of Kelley’s reputation as a writer.
That’s how he got Jeri Ryan to do “Boston Public”
immediately after “Star Trek: Voyager.” That’s also how he landed Gina
Gershon for “Snoops,” as well as James Spader for “The Practice” last
year and “Boston Legal” this year.
But when you stuff too much into your characters, as Kelley has been prone to
do in recent years, you leave your actors with little room to perform their craft.
You’re forcing the actors to concentrate on all the little trappings.
Actors are at their best interpreting a character and allowing that
interpretation to drive the story. They're in their craft when the mannerisms and such of
the character emerge naturally.
In the case of “Boston Legal,” Kelley needs to trust what he has in
James Spader, an interesting actor with a penchant for subtlety that is custom-made for
television. It’s OK to establish some defining characteristics in the beginning
(Spader plays a man of dubious moral fiber). But at some point Kelley needs to back off
and let Spader do his thing.
Stick to the law
Most of us remember the outlandish moments in “L.A. Law."
Nebbish Stuart Markowitz woos hot-to-trot Ann Kelsey with the help of the so-called Venus
Butterfly sexual bit. The eminently unlikable Rosalind Shays goes to her well-deserved
reward by falling down the elevator shaft.
We're less inclined to remember the important legal issues that Kelley, a
former lawyer, adroitly explored. We should, and so should Kelley. It was key to his
success as a writer.
Every Friday morning, attorneys across the country gathered around the water
cooler to discuss the particular points of law presented on “L.A. Law” the night
before. In the course of its eight seasons on NBC, the series addressed such topical
issues as the outing of gays, reverse discrimination, and insurance companies that refused
to cover medication for the treatment of AIDS.
That’s the kind of buzz Kelley should be shooting for this season on
“Boston Legal.”
There’s no question that ABC wants Kelley to succeed. The network not
only slotted the show in “The Practice’s” old time slot, Sundays at 10, it
also accommodated Kelley by letting him use the entire season of “The Practice”
last year to set the stage for “Boston Legal” this year.
But all of that will go for naught unless Kelley makes it work. The
producer’s best bet for achieving success in the future is by going back to what
worked in the past.
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