Are They Supposed to Be Unlikable? Thoughts on The Practice

When it comes to popular culture, I often get caught up on shows and books and movies a few years (decades) later than everyone else. Such is the case with Boston Legal.

After the first two seasons of Boston Legal, I backed up and watched the last season of The Practice. I wasn't particularly interested in the show, but I was interested in Alan Shore's backstory. 

Other than enjoying Alan Shore (James Spader) what struck me most about The Practice was how thoroughly unpleasant I found the main characters. I can't speak for all seasons of the show, but the final season presents characters--with the exception of Alan--that I found difficult to watch. (The issue is not the actors themselves since I quite like Michael Badalucco and admire Camryn Manheim.) 

It was an odd experience because the show is well-written. Not my cup of tea since I prefer more antics and humor to angst (even the soap-boxing on Boston Legal grates). But obviously well-written. The characters are consistent. The plots pay off. And--perhaps unexpectedly--the outsider status of Alan Shore is impressively well-established. 

But the characters are so utterly unlikable, it is hard to know what the point is in watching the show unless one is getting backstory. 

The issue isn't that the characters are lawyers. Boston Legal is all about lawyers, and I find the show amusing and enchanting, especially when it focuses on personalities and not on politics. 

The issue isn't that the lawyers defend bad guys. So do the Boston Legal lawyers.

It isn't (necessarily) the leftist nature of the lawyers' arguments. Alan Shore makes leftist arguments all the time on Boston Legal. I prefer him when he is defending Catherine Piper and Jerry Espenson but his leftist arguments, these days, sound downright classical and conservative. 

And the issue isn't the soap opera elements. I don't like them much--I prefer the actual cases to the lawyers' private lives--but there are soap opera elements on Boston Legal as well.

The issue comes down to Rent versus Rocky Horror Picture Show. 

In the linked post, I discuss why I find the latter so much more satisfying than the former. While Boston Legal is Rocky Horror Picture Show--full of nutty people with oddities and idiosyncrasies and senses of humor, who live their lives for themselves--The Practice is Rent, full of people who expect other people to take them seriously because they say so. 

They are a high school clique, not the jocks or the headed-for-Harvard-AP-courses students. They are the pseudo-intellectuals who figured out slightly ahead of everyone else how to throw around critical theory rhetoric. They are ever so astonished when someone breaks in from the outside and doesn't obey their rules. They are the "good guys," not necessarily because of their behavior or even their beliefs but because of their stated positions. They are incredibly insular yet insist they are nonconformist thinkers. 

Alan appears to belong to this group since he initially appears to have the "correct" opinions. But Alan is ultimately a maverick who truly likes (and attracts) weirdos and is incredibly loyal to them. This aspect of his personality is well-captured by Spader.

The ousting of Alan is, I should state, very well-written, namely the intense "us versus you" attitude of the in-group, which leads me to suspect that the writers knew the original main characters were not enough. In a story arc that precedes that ousting, Alan defends a childhood friend in a murder case. It is a huge case, and he is bringing a tremendous amount of money into the firm. 

What does the in-group do?

They complain. They treat Alan like the enemy. They gossip about him. They act like he is lower than they are. They are sooo shocked that he expects the paralegals and support staff to actually help him on the case. 

This continues right up to the point where Alan, who rarely loses his temper, cries out that he is trying to defend his childhood friend from a murder charge and he will do so with all the resources at hand. His intense loneliness and outsider status is established without anyone noting the fact (it is noted later but still blamed on Alan). 

The in-group's attitude and behaviors continue right through the season finale; they never sit down with Alan who, despite his flip attitude, is eminently rational. He will listen. They take the money he brings into the firm, yet claim to be upholders of ethical behavior. Note the use of rhetoric--"Look how ethical we are!"--rather than actual ethics. But hey, money is crass, so I guess they don't have to be ethical about money.

In comparison to The Practice, on Boston Legal

even the people who don't get along are able

to function side-by-side. It is Mark Valley's

character who helps Alan face the dreaded clown.

And I wonder: Did the producers decide to write unlikable people into the last season of The Practice? Does that kind of thing work? Do viewers watch unlikable people? Or did the unlikableness creep up on them? Did the entrance of a new character, Alan, change how all the other characters were written? 

Without having seen the other seasons of The Practice, I suspect that with the departure of Bobby Donnell (Dylan McDermott), the original lead, the unlikableness of his remaining foils became more apparent. James Spader has an inherent loner aura, much like Simon Baker. Spader as Alan couldn't be incorporated into the in-group, so the writers followed the natural result to its inevitable conclusion. 

It is hard to believe that they planned to have the remaining main characters be so entirely unlikable--though maybe long-term viewers were invested in those characters' lives for the sake of closure.

In any case, it made me very, very happy that Alan found Denny.