David E. Kelley
 Personal Statement
David
E. Kelley is the genius behind many great shows, including Ally McBeal, The
Practice, Chicago Hope, and Picket
Fences (my personal favorite).
Kelley wrote every episode of the dramedy Ally McBeal in its first season. At
the same time, Kelley also wrote almost every episode of the intense drama The
Practice. The quality of Kelley's writing is unparalleled.
In the summer of 1998, I was privileged enough to watch every episode of Kelley's first
show Picket
Fences. The first three seasons of Picket
Fences were written by Kelley. These episodes set the standards by which all of
his work should be judge by. The most creative, interesting, and intelligent writing came
from those classic episodes of Picket
Fences. No show has ever affected me more.
The only negative thing I can say about Kelley is that once he leaves his shows, they
all fall apart. Picket
Fences' fourth season was a disaster and Chicago Hope lost the substance
that made it different from all of those action shows. No other writer(s) can match the
quality and meticulously of his work. David
E. Kelley stands in a class of his own.
More information about David
E. Kelley can be found at the Internet
Movie Database
David E. Kelley: From Arnie to 'Ally,' Capturing the Insecure Human Condition
By ANITA GATES
December 20, 1998
Jerry Seinfeld put it as well as anybody. "I mean," he said of David E.
Kelley, "this guy has done actual things."
Kelley may be this decade's dean of the quality series, but when the Museum of
Television and Radio in Los Angeles honored him and Seinfeld on the same night two months
ago, the speakers seemed to have trouble describing the essence of the Kelley genius as
writer and producer.
Dylan McDermott, of Kelley's ABC law series, "The Practice," used the words
"quirky, idiosyncratic," because somebody had to. Calista Flockhart, of Kelley's
Fox law series, "Ally McBeal," went for the sentimental, describing Kelley as
one who "tells us what it's like to be people." Tom Skerritt, who starred in
Kelley's CBS drama "Picket Fences," referred to "outrageous subplots."
Then a deluge of Kelley television clips began: Roxanne and Arnie, a bit underdressed,
crashing through the ceiling in "L.A. Law." The hated Rosalind, on the same
series, stepping blithely into an empty elevator shaft. Sheriff Jimmy Brock, on
"Picket Fences," catching his teen-age daughter in bed with a boyfriend. Lawyers
screaming like schoolgirls at the sight of a mouse on "The Practice."
Dignity is one of the first things to go when a character enters Kelley's fictional
world, but his take on life is a little more complicated than that. A viewing of two dozen
or so episodes of his shows establishes that the characters he creates deal with
embarrassment, vulnerability, emotional neediness, public misbehavior, the ludicrous and
sometimes the grotesque more often than the average American.
But they also struggle with painful ethical questions and loyalties and sometimes
surprise themselves by doing the right thing. Kelley, 42, is known as the most prolific
writer in television, but what his scripts convey to a nation of network viewers about the
human condition is probably more important than the fact that he writes them in longhand
on yellow legal pads in record time.
Kelley's words are intelligent, of course. He deals in real moral issues and the kinds
of conflicting loyalties that are part of every adult's life. As one episode of
"Picket Fences" (the first series Kelley created, as writer and producer, on his
own) asked, is it wrong to do a fetal-tissue transplant, even though you don't approve of
the practice, if it will save the life of a good friend with Parkinson's disease?
In the show a judge rules against the procedure and carries a warrant to the hospital
when the doctors defy his orders, but he stops on his way out to tell the patient's wife
that his prayers are with her.
Ultimately the grabber in Kelley's teleplays may be the extreme vulnerability of his
characters -- and the fact that the wounds aren't theoretical. Viewers get to see them
make fools of themselves. Bad things happen to beautiful people. If they make love in a
not completely private place, they get caught.
If a speech or conversation is really important, they say exactly the wrong thing. When
they make confessions, the last people in the world they'd want to overhear it do.
On "Ally McBeal," Kelley's highly publicized Fox series, the beautiful blond
lawyer Georgia (Courtney Thorne-Smith) shyly admits to her husband, in the privacy of the
show's infamous co-ed office bathroom, that she has always considered herself "the
fairest one of them all." Then her colleague Ally emerges from one of the bathroom
stalls, and everyone is horrified.
The universal human fear of looking foolish or different may also account for the
appeal of Kelley's occasionally grotesque imagery: a waiting room full of victims of a
serial mutilator who turn up at the sheriff's office and hold up identical hooks where
their hands used to be, or an entire family known as the Flying Gianninis arriving at
their lawyers' office in a convoy of wheelchairs.
You the viewer sometimes fear that people are staring at you? Not compared with this.
Or, more accurately, the message may be that we're all fodder for others' derision, that
it's part of the deal of being human.
The earliest example of Kelley's work in the library of the Museum of Television and
Radio in New York is a 1986 episode of "L.A. Law" that he wrote with Jacob
Epstein and Marshall Goldberg. The episode has its serious elements -- a capital
punishment case, the trial of a man with AIDS who helped his lover die -- but it also
includes a file-eating, unhousebroken dog in the office and the battle of Arnie Becker's
parents over which of them he'll represent during the divorce.
It's Arnie (Corbin Bernsen), the scummy but confident bachelor lawyer, who gets a taste
of real embarrassment. The day after a bout of impotence, which has him feeling depressed
enough, his beautiful bed partner forgives him by saying, at Arnie's office, within
earshot of co-workers, "I'm sure you're very adequate when you're not so
distracted."
"Full Marital Jacket," a 1988 episode of "L.A. Law" written by
Kelley and Terry Louise Fisher, contains both serious and silly embarrassments. Benny
(Larry Drake), the mentally retarded office employee, has been wrongfully charged with
sexual misconduct. Abby (Michele Greene) is being wooed by a human cannonball.
Stuart and Ann (Michael Tucker and Jill Eikenberry) are getting married, but Ann is
standing around in her wedding gown with hot rollers in her hair, refusing to start the
ceremony until she gets more height. The bride and groom are so annoyed with each other by
the time they reach the altar that they both snap "Fine!" instead of "I
do." But then Ann says: "I love you so much, Stuart. Let's not screw it up,
O.K.?" "Deal," he answers. Viewers have heard worse updates of the marriage
vows.
It's easy to forget that Kelley's next accomplishment was a sitcom, "Doogie
Howser, M.D.," about a 16-year-old doctor who looked 12. Kelley and Steven Bochco,
his "L.A. Law" mentor, created the series in 1989, and its title character got
started on potentially humiliating misunderstandings right away.
In the premiere episode, an attractive fortyish woman asks Doogie (Neil Patrick
Harris), a boy genius who graduated from Princeton at age 10, to father her child. Doogie,
a virgin, can't believe his luck and talks to his best friend at length about the prospect
of repeated lovemaking to achieve the goal. But, as it turns out, the woman has artificial
insemination in mind. Viewers learn this, but Doogie never does.
(Maybe the writers didn't think a teen-ager could handle the kind of mortification that
Kelley's adult characters regularly endure.) Instead Doogie ponders the matter and wisely
declines the offer.
Preternaturally mature teen-agers are a Kelley phenomenon, all the better to make the
grown-ups feel foolish. In "Picket Fences," a teen-ager questioned about her
sexual experience, if any, tells her father: "I'm your daughter. I'm a product of
your influence. Now whether that's a source of fear or comfort to you, you'll have to
decide."
"Picket Fences," which had its premiere in 1992, revolved around a small-town
husband and wife team -- a sheriff (Tom Skerritt) and a doctor (Kathy Baker) -- who had
their share of embarrassing moments. They seemed basically sane but were surrounded by a
certain amount of peculiarity: A little girl brings a severed human hand in a jar to
show-and-tell.
A little boy goes to bed in his hockey mask and uniform with his parents' permission. A
young man attempts an armed robbery, with an Uzi, in the confessional. A judge announces,
"I hate the federal government" and nobody in the courtroom bats an eye.
The only Kelley series with a married couple as protagonists, "Picket Fences"
also celebrated family and commitment. In the Parkinson's disease episode, Jimmy
(Skerritt) catches Jill (Ms. Baker) kissing an old boyfriend (Jamey Sheridan). They work
things out, but the incident scares them both. "No matter how strong we get, it stays
fragile," says Jimmy. "It always stays so fragile."
In the final scene, Sheridan's character, alone and lonely, listens to the happy sounds
of Jill, Jimmy and their children having a picnic. This was in 1993, the year Kelley
married Michelle Pfeiffer.
The following year, Kelley created "Chicago Hope," complete with a singing
surgeon (Mandy Patinkin) and a story about Siamese twins in the first episode. He cut back
his work on the show after two seasons, but his influence seems to live on, at least in
terms of overt quirkiness.
Consider Dr. Lisa Catera, a character named for a play on words in a Cadillac
commercial, and episodes involving a little-boy lama, freeze-dried cats, a 52-year-old
woman going into labor during a Mediterranean Thanksgiving and a live bird loose in the
operating room. Oh, and Christine Lahti's character, Dr. Kate Austin, has decided to
become an astronaut.
Kelley is still dealing in questions of insecurity, failure and embarrassment in his
two current series, both set in Boston law firms. On "The Practice," which won
the Emmy Award for best drama series this year, Ellenor (Camryn Manheim) questions Helen
(Lara Flynn Boyle), a district attorney, on the stand about a private conversation.
Ellenor's boss, Bobby (Dylan McDermott), is furious -- because the firm's relationship
with the D.A.'s office is more important than any one case. The testimony wins the case
for Ellenor, but it leads to a lawsuit against the firm.
Meanwhile, Jimmy (Michael Badalucco) is worried that Bobby really wants Lindsay (Kelli
Williams) to do the closing argument, because he likes her better. But Lindsay is
devastated and guilty because she defended a beloved former law professor on trial for
murder and lost. Even though she let the professor's wife lie on the witness stand.
"Ally McBeal" may continue to garner more attention for the title character's
short skirts and the actress's eating habits than for its subject matter or messages, but
at heart, "Ally" is the quintessential Kelley hero.
She is the most vulnerable, insecure lawyer in the world. She's clumsy (last Christmas
she knocked over the tree while attached to it). She often says the wrong thing (speaking
at a funeral: "The thing about funerals, the guest of honor is always dead").
She still isn't over a love affair that ended when she was in college, and everyone she
works with (including the old boyfriend, now married) knows it. First, let's humiliate all
the lawyers.
But Kelley hasn't lost his taste for the deliberately bizarre. Ally has dancing-baby
hallucinations to remind her of her biological clock; she once did the makeup of a
transvestite prostitute's corpse; she attended a funeral where Randy Newman's "Short
People" was sung. And on "The Practice," one of Ellenor's recent clients
was a mild-mannered guy who woke up one morning after a one-night stand at a motel to find
his sex partner's head in his medical bag.
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
David E. Kelley's Shows
Boston Public - Monday, 8pm on FOX
L.A. Law - Monday through Friday on A&E
at 12pm EST / 9am PST and 6pm EST / 3pm PST.
The
Practice - Sunday on ABC at
10PM (Check local listings for time and channel)
All efforts have been made to confirm the accuracy of event listings. Listings
are subject to change without notice. Please check your local listings for dates,
times, and channels. All times listed are for the Pacific Standard/Daylight Time zone
unless otherwise noted. |
