L.A. Law is an American
television legal drama
that ran from 1986 to 1994. L.A. Law
reflected the social and cultural ideologies of the 1980s and early
1990s and many of the cases on the show dealt with hot topic issues
such as
abortion,
racism,
gay rights,
homophobia,
sexual harassment,
AIDS, and
domestic
violence.
Location
The series
was set in and around the fictitious Los
Angeles
law firm McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney and Kuzak,
located in the 444 Flower
Building, and featured attorneys at the firm and various
members of the support staff.
Story
The show often combined humor and drama, sometimes in the same
episode. The show's quirky sort of humor can be seen in the opening
of the first episode of the series, where we see only the back and
hand of partner Chaney, seated at a desk, suddenly gripping the
pages of a tax manual, drop dead of a heart attack. Later in that
episode, in front of his partners, friends and his wife, a man
appears to speak at Chaney's eulogy, to announce how "I first met
him at a
gay bar," and thus Chaney had been
in the closet as either
bisexual or a
gay man with a
wife.
A
running gag throughout the series was
the overtly
promiscuous lifestyle of
divorce lawyer Arnie Becker, and his chronic and constant liaisons
with women, up to and including bedding some of his own clients.
This would end up causing problems when a client would use him to
set up her (estranged) husband to be murdered. Series producer
Steven Bochco used a similar incident in
Hill Street Blues when a woman bedded
one of the police officers in the squad and tricked him into
shooting her ex-husband when he (apparently) broke into her
house.
To some extent, the sexual peccadilloes of almost the entire cast
would become fodder for episodes of the series.
After Grace Van Owen makes a comment that he'd have to be a monkey
before she'd be interested in Michael Kuzak, he woos her on the
courthouse steps in a monkey suit. Douglas Brackman becomes
involved with a sex therapist. Benny Stulwitz, a developmentally
disabled clerk at the office, has sex with the developmentally
disabled daughter of a client of the firm. Leland McKenzie and
Rosalynd Shays, supposedly enemies, secretly become lovers.
The show tied itself into the events of the
Los Angeles riots of 1992, which
were prompted by the acquittal of four white police officers who
were put on trial for the videotaped beating of African American
motorist
Rodney King. In a scene
reminiscent of the
Reginald
Denny incident, tax attorney Stuart Markowitz is struck on the
head by a rioter, and ends up having serious head injuries, causing
a number of problems for him and his wife for several episodes as a
result.
In one scene later in the series, Rosalynd Shays and Leland
McKenzie are standing together, talking and waiting for an
elevator in the corridor outside the firm's
offices. When the elevator bell rings to signal its arrival,
Rosalynd turns and steps into the elevator, only to have us hear
her screams as we discover she had stepped into the elevator
shaft, when the elevator doors had opened without the
elevator car present (a malfunction that is not possible with
modern elevator systems).
The show did not shy away from controversy, with a scene in one
episode where one of the female lawyers, Abby Perkins, has an
on-screen kiss with C.J. Lamb,
another female lawyer who is openly
bisexual.
Series history
L.A. Law took over NBC's prized Thursday 10PM
(9PM Central) time slot from another Bochco-produced show,
Hill Street Blues, and
was itself eventually replaced by another hit ensemble drama,
ER. Bochco had been fired
from
Hill Street Blues in
1985.
L.A. Law's original time period was Friday
10PM following
Miami Vice but
after struggling there, NBC decided to move it to Thursdays as
Hill Street Blues was winding down. The original two-hour
movie aired on Monday, September 15, 1986. The series was a
critical favorite before it had premiered. An encore of the movie
aired in place of
Saturday Night
Live on September 27 being a rare scripted rerun in that
late-night slot.
The car
with the California
"L A LAW" rear registration plate was originally a
Jaguar XJ, but was replaced with a
Bentley in the final seasons. One
episode's cold-open scene depicts an angry circus performer
withdrawing knives from a trunk and throwing them at divorce
attorney Arnold Becker who shouts to his secretary, "Roxanne, close
the trunk! Close the trunk!" The credits immediately begin with
their signature closing of the car's "trunk."
Co-creator Fisher was fired from the series in season 2 and filed a
well-publicized lawsuit with Bochco and the studio. Bochco and
Fisher had also co-created the 1987
John
Ritter series
Hooperman for
ABC.
The scene where Leland McKenzie, played by
Richard Dysart, was shown in bed with his
enemy Rosalind Shays, played by
Diana
Muldaur, was ranked as the 38th greatest moment in television
(the list originally appeared in an issue of
EGG
Magazine). Rosalind Shays' demise, falling into an open
elevator shaft, has also been a famous scene from the series. In
fact, it was referenced in
The Star Trek Encyclopedia.
Diana Muldaur, the actress who played
Rosalind in the series, also played the role of Dr. Katherine
Pulaski during season 2 of
Star Trek: The Next
Generation. At the end of the biography of the Pulaski
character, it says "There is no truth to the rumor that an ancestor
of Dr. Pulaski was killed falling down the elevator shaft at a
prestigious Los Angeles law firm. None at all."
Boston attorney
David E. Kelley was hired by Bochco in the series'
first season after having written the feature film,
From the Hip. Kelley went on to
critical and commercial success as show-runner of the series before
leaving to create
Picket
Fences. While on
L.A. Law, Kelley and
Bochco co-created
Doogie Howser,
M.D. as the first Steven Bochco Productions series for a
major, ten-series deal with ABC. Shortly after, Bochco was offered
the job as President of ABC Entertainment but turned it down.
At the height of the show's popularity in the late-1980s, attention
was focused upon a fictitious
sexual technique named the "
Venus Butterfly". The only clue describing
the technique was a vague reference to "ordering room service".
Fans and interested persons flooded the show's producers with
letters asking for more details about this mysterious
technique.
During the seventh season, the executive producers
John Tinker and
John
Masius were fired midseason, and while the show went on hiatus,
William Finkelstein was brought in to fix it. Bochco and Kelley
each returned to pen episodes until Finkelstein took over. Tinker
and Masius had brought a whimsical, soapy tone to the series which
they were known for on
St.
Elsewhere.
Dan
Castellaneta (who does the voice of
Homer Simpson) appeared in a Homer costume and
hired the attorneys in the seventh-season premiere.
That episode also
reflected on the 1992 Los
Angeles
riots. Finkelstein reined in the series,
returning to the serious legal cases that made the series
famous.
In the eighth and final season, the characters of Denise Ianello
(
Debi Mazar) and Eli Levinson (
Alan Rosenberg) were transplanted from the
canceled Bochco legal series
Civil Wars, which had run on ABC
from 1991-93. Eli Levinson was revealed to be Stuart Markowitz's
cousin. During the final season, the series was rested in January
1994 to launch the second season of
Homicide: Life on the
Street. When that series succeeded wildly with a guest
appearance by
Robin Williams, it was
expected that
L.A. Law would conclude that May
and
Homicide: Life on the Street would succeed it on
Thursdays in the fall. However,
ER tested so well that
Warner Bros. executives campaigned network
president
Warren Littlefield to
give that series the prized Thursday slot.
The series ended in 1994, though a one-off reunion show,
L.A. Law: The Movie, aired in 2002, and
featured most of the main cast from the series (except Smits,
Underwood, Donohoe and Spencer).
On
May 24,
2007, the
AmericanLife TV Network
announced that it would begin rebroadcasting
L.A.
Law starting June 3, 2007, Sundays at 10 pm.
[61570] From 2000 until 2004,
A&E had been rebroadcasting the show.
[61571]Lifetime
Television also reran the show until the late 1990s. The series
is currently being shown Monday through Thursday nights at 7PM and
10PM on the
AmericanLife TV
Network.
Nielsen Ratings
Top 30 or better
- Season 1 (1986-87): #21 (15.2 million viewers)
- Season 2 (1987-88): #13 (16.2 million viewers)
- Season 3 (1988-89): #13 (15.9 million viewers)
- Season 4 (1989-90): #16 (16.0 million viewers)
- Season 5 (1990-91): #23 (13.7 million viewers)
- Season 6 (1991-92): #28 (12.2 million viewers)
- Season 7 (1992-93): Not in top 30
- Season 8 (1993-94): Not in top 30
Cast and characters
The show's original ensemble cast:
Over the run of the show, additional cast members included:
Awards
The show won numerous awards, including the
Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series in 1987, 1989,
1990, and 1991. Some of the actors, such as Larry Drake, also
received Emmys for their performances. The series shares the Emmy
Award record for most acting nominations by regular cast members
(excluding the guest performer category) for a single series in one
year with
Hill Street
Blues and
The
West Wing.
For the 1988-1989 season, nine cast members were nominated for
Emmys. Larry Drake was the only one to win (for Supporting Actor).
The others nominated were Michael Tucker (Lead Actor), Jill
Eikenberry and Susan Dey (for Lead Actress), Richard Dysart and
Jimmy Smits (Supporting Actor), Amanda Plummer, Susan Ruttan and
Michele Greene (for Supporting Actress).
It was listed as #42 on
Entertainment Weekly's list of The New
Classics in the July 4, 2008 issue.
References
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator#General_controls
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