(Season 5, Episode 9 – “Kill, Baby, Kill!”)
Boston Legal loves touching on hot political issues, and we’ve gotten some of our best material from them. That didn’t happen tonight. The ensemble reshuffled the pairings for tonight because, as Denny explained, this is their last season. It’s time to mix things up. So he took off with Carl to Virginia to tackle a murder case with a Boston Legal twist. The defendant shot a man who was in the middle of being executed by the state to end his suffering.
The other storyline put Alan and Shirley together, and even had them sharing a cigar on Denny’s balcony. Cheri Oteri guested in that role as a woman who said she got fired because she voted McCain. The counter argument? She was fired because she was dumb. It was great seeing Oteri on television again; if she’s appeared elsewhere lately it’s not been on shows I watch. She’s still just as manic and spunky as many of her Saturday Night Live characters and is a lot of fun to watch.
Unfortunately, I really didn’t care for how either plotline played out. Alan’s case was a no-brainer. In an “at will” state, you have to prove discrimination on race, religion, gender, age, etc. Political leanings are not protected, nor is intelligence. It was a ridiculous case that Alan would honestly have never taken it because even he needs merit in a case.
As for Shirley, I’m not sure why she agreed to sit in with him on this. The more they talked to their client, the more they learned she was an idiot. Granted, the right exists for anyone to vote even if they’re uninformed, which is I guess what David E. Kelley was wanting to discuss. But putting it in a frivolous case that even Alan’s rhetoric can’t save was a little forced.
Then, in the Virginia case, we had Carl defending a police man who shot an inmate in the head to end his needless suffering in the middle of a botched lethal injection. It was a great platform to bring up all the shortcomings of the death penalty at use in our country, which is one of Boston Legal’s trademarks. I can only hope that it wasn’t Carl’s closing that swayed the jury to exonerate his client.
It was just a dumb ploy to say that the only reason the prosecution was even bringing this case was because he secretly wanted to abolish the death penalty, and that a win here would be a step in that direction. It was, of course, a ridiculous claim, but even worse it was an insult to intelligent people everywhere. If the argument is that Virginians are so stupid as to fall for that stunt, then they should be offended to.
“Well, I was gonna send him to fry but I cain’t now.”
“A vote for guilty is a vote against the death penalty!”
That said, those kinds of tactics have been used at the polls before, and to great success, but I just hoped for better from Boston Legal. Both of these cases were pretty weak, and the episode itself suffered from it.
We’ve only got a few more weeks to spend with our friends at Crane, Poole & Schmidt. Don’t waste them on this nonsense. Get us some character moments before we lose these characters altogether. Hell, you didn’t even find room for Jerry and Katie this week and you only have a cast of six cast members. Is the budget that tight this year?
Clacked by Jason Hughes 
on Nov 18, 2008 @ 18:22 EST5EDT
I thought the episodes was great, very funny and just loads of fun making fun of idiots that voted for Palin because she is “hot” or a “woman”.
Next week’s episode looks awesome, the first BL Turkey day!
A group of idiots voted for Sarah Palin on McCain’s ticket because she was hot or a woman. A similar group of idiots voted for Barack Obama because his skin color is black. Idiots all around, if you ask me.
That said, this episode was just more soapbox preaching for Kelley…and dammit, I deserve better after watching his show for years. It was a better show than his final episodes are proving to be.
The death penalty storyline is was oh so sad…blah blah blah…poor bastard killed someone, obviously very humanely, just like the convicted killer no doubt took his victim(s). Blah blah blah.
As for the voting/firing storyline…blah blah blah. Fired her for her vote. She is stupid. Whatever. Colorado just had an amendment on the ballot that would have taken away the “at will” employment contract. It didn’t pass. No one cares. Employers AREN’T required to fire for a purpose in an at will state, and the only thing a fired person will win is the right to unemployment if they were originally denied it. As a person who is currently on unemployment, it’s not worth the investment of an attorney.
Fingers crossed the last trickle of episodes play more like last week’s rather than this one and the one on election night. Gag.
I get a little tired of Kelly’s preaching, but when he is clever about it, I tollerate it.
Tonight I turned the channel about half way through. I’m hoping for a few good episodes to end this series, but it is going to have to be a much better eprisode for me to continue to watch.