Boston Legal Screenplay
But because these achievements took place outside the sexier, bloodier realm of premium cable, and then just began to dominate the quality TV discourse, these network innovators aren`t canonized as auteur filmmakers like HBO`s DAVID. Kelley has a few brands in nearly two dozen projects to date: law that dates back to his time as a partner at the 50-person Boston firm of Fine & Ambrogne before his career; a sense of humor and personality, commonly summed up as an “oddity,” also applies to McBeal`s post-feminist clutter and the charm of the small town of Picket Fences or the lesser-known Brotherhood of Poland, New Hampshire. He also has a Cinderella story that helped him stand out at a time when television writers were increasingly treated as public figures: as a litigator writing a script (From the Hip 1987) in his spare time, Kelley was recruited by Steven Bochco of Hill Street Blues for a promising Los Angeles right. However, there is no Kelley sensibility as different as a Shonda Rhimes or a Ryan Murphy, to name just two producers who have followed in his prolific footsteps. Having multiple shows on air isn`t new to Kelley, the first and so far the only showrunner to win Emmys for Outstanding Drama and Outstanding Comedy Series that same year. That was in 1999 for the combination of couples from The Practice and Ally McBeal. The two may have been hour-long legal stories set in Boston, a premise stemming from Kelley`s previous career experience, but the similarities ended there. “In The Practice, you have a character who is informed by history; In Ally, you have a story shaped by characters,” Jamie Tarses, then president of ABC, told The New York Times. In other words, Ally McBeal had fantastic sequences that paired Calista Flockhart with a dancing baby; Practice, well, hasn`t. Soon, Kelley added the entire Boston Public School to the rotation, and then the spin-off of the Boston Legal practice. Although there have been lulls, Kelley`s constant activity rate has never really stopped; the only real period without some sort of Kelley show on television has been short, in recent years. In the years following Kelley`s Emmy triumph, he followed the industry`s trend toward cable and streaming. In doing so, he further optimized the legal drama in order to adapt it to his new home.
Amazon`s Goliath, starring Billy Bob Thornton, has traces of the antihero archetype; The back half of The Undoing and the second season of Big Little Lies turn into high-stakes events, as if Kelley instinctively returned to firmer ground. Mr. Mercedes, on AT&T`s defunct Audience Network (which sent critics an honest smartphone to promote the series, with threatening pre-installed lyrics), went into Stephen King`s madness with the help of Brendan Gleeson. Big Sky is Kelley`s first full-fledged network show since 2014`s The Crazy Ones, best remembered as Robin Williams` last television role. The double wins for Ally and The Practice came the same year The Sopranos took to the stage, a pivotal in television history that put Kelley in a somewhat uncomfortable position. Like Joss Whedon with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Amy Sherman-Palladino with Gilmore Girls or Jason Katims with Friday Night Lights, Kelley`s Ally McBeal helped develop networked television in terms of genre and sound. (In a world before Jenji Kohan or Crazy Ex-Girlfriend were a chaotic female protagonist who mixed drama and comedy, and expanded fantasy sequences were still new concepts.) Still, Kelley`s closest colleague in the late `90s and early years was perhaps Aaron Sorkin, another member of a very select club: showrunners who, personally — in Kelley`s case on a legal block — wrote almost every script for a full season of broadcast. (Kelley insists he does all of this on a strict, normal schedule from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays.) Transcriptions for Boston Legal and The Practice, season 8 thanks to our efficient and selfless transcribers Imamess, Sheri, Sue and Olucy. Thanks also to SimplyScripts.com, a phenomenal site with television and film scripts. They bond with me and I recommend them to everyone.
The Undoing is also far from Kelley`s best work. After a promising debut that skewed tense mothers in Manhattan, the miniseries has evolved into a psychological thriller plagued by specificity or suspense. But even if the execution is over, the existence of such diverse projects in the fourth decade of his second career is a testament to how Kelley managed to move from a master of procedure – the old-fashioned television format that exists – to something much more flexible and permanent. It is unlikely that The Undoing or Big Sky will remain in our collective memory for long, but if there is a precedent, Kelley`s ability to adapt and experiment will endure. However, Kelley has entered a new phase in the era of star-focused intellectual property. He may be married to Michelle Pfeiffer, but Kelley`s most important collaboration with a prominent actress remains Big Little Lies, the 2017 event series that turned half of television into an arms race to fool his success. With celebrities like Reese Witherspoon and an eye-catching and assertive director like Jean-Marc Vallée, Kelley has become one of the least important names associated with the project. But The Undoing and, to a lesser extent, Big Sky follow Lies` playbook: they adapt a shy page turner – Jean Hanff Korelitz`s first You Should Have Known, C.J.`s latest The Highway. Box – in a simple gender exercise. Big Sky even plays Witherspoon`s ex-husband and is prominently advertised as “by the creator of Big Little Lies”. Big Sky and The Undoing are about as different as two shows could be.
One is a network drama on ABC; the other is a prestige mini-series on HBO. One is located in the sprawling heart of western Montana; the other is located in the diluted climates of the Upper East Side. One is animated by a patchwork set whose biggest name is a neglected Ryan Phillippe dressed in a jacket; the other is a shameless star car for Nicole Kidman and, to a lesser extent, Hugh Grant. All they have in common is their common creator, experienced screenwriter David E. Kelley. Big Sky is a strange series, and not just because of the iron references to a pandemic made by characters who never wear masks. Besides Box`s novel, his main inspiration seems to be Yellowstone, Taylor Sheridan`s paramount success over crimes in the treasure state. But where Yellowstone is a legacy wealth tracking saga, Big Sky pits a crew of principal investigators against a human trafficking network. There is no attempt to tell stories about the gradual takeover of the state by large expatriates or any actual mention of its indigenous population.
There`s only Phillippe as the not-so-convincing tough guy trapped in a love triangle, and a Batesian mother-son duo as the cliché Big Bad. Since the 90s, the screenwriter has had one show (or four) on the air almost all the time. Now he has Big Sky and The Undoing, projects in the two dominant forms of this television era: the network drama and the prestige miniseries.