Boston Legal: Difference between revisions

{{quote|'''Denny Crane:''' Denny Crane!

'''Shirley:''' That's not a defense! }}

* [[Character Filibuster]]: 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.

** A father once pulled a gun on Alan at work after Alan agreed to represent the guy's ex-wife in a custody battle.

** The son of a woman whose accused murderer was cleared by Denny Crane and his father once took Denny Crane and much of the rest of the supporting cast hostage in order to stage the trial again.

* [[The Comically Serious]]:

** 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 [[Crowning Moment of Funny]] for both of them. She's hilarious in the office, but in public she's the serious partner.

* [[Smug Snake]]: On a show about amoral, high-powered lawyers? [[Sarcasm Mode|I'm shocked.]]

* [[Spin-Off]]: Of ''[[The Practice]]'', although you'd be forgiven for not noticing.

* [[Strawman Political]]: 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.

** Denny Crane is a straw man political caricature of a conservative gun nut, although this did allow him to save the day a few times. Keeping guns in your office seems so much less crazy when you just used them to shoot the man about to kill your friends.

** 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''}}.

* [[Sympathetic Murderer]]

* [[Take That]]: Texas, Fox News, the New York Yankees.