The Fat Bastard is at it Again

The Fat Bastard is at it Again by Roxanne McDonald

Denny Crane offends yet another offends yet another person, this time an associate who is racking up the dollars every time he speaks.

What is it about a fat ass who calls another person fat when he is fat (if not fatter) himself?

Not much, usually. But Denny Crane is so indefinably endearing that it somehow works for him to be bigoted, misogynistic, self-involved and self-aggrandizing.

Well, it works for him as a character (on Boston Legal), though I doubt he would last long as a socially appropriate, socially accepted human in this pc world of ours.Crane typically offends by hitting on women with sexual entendres…, no, straight-up sexual suggestions and comments. If the recipient of his brash and crass come-on is in any way afflicted, Crane has no problem tossing some pointed slurs in the same direction and at the same time. (read more…)

Boston Legal Buddy Banter

Boston Legal Buddy Banter by Roxanne McDonald

The verbal exchanges between Denny and Alan on each episode of “Boston Legal” offer buddy banter at its best.

The witty, sensitive, and special dialogue between Alan Shore and Denny brings us into the friends’ sphere whether we know law or not, offers us a take on something pertinent to socio-political culture whether we are news-savvy or not, and makes each episode of Boston Legal come to a satisfying end, giving us closure whether we appreciate it or not.

But more than dialogue between two mental maniacs discussing relevant details and daily doings, the conversation functions as a fourfold kind of buddy banter that galvanizes character development and cements one of the most important of relationships. Yes, that between two men.

Anthony Easthope, in his article, “What a Man’s Gotta Do,” explores how banter “makes use of every kind of irony, sarcasm, pun, clichéd reply,” and so is, he says, a “kind of joke.” This is at the surface of Allan and Denny’s dialogue, to be sure.

But more profoundly, the banter of “Boston Legal” has a double function, working on outward and inner levels.

Says Easthope, “Outwardly, banter is aggressive, a form in which the masculine ego asserts itself. Inwardly, however, banter depends on close, intimate, and personal understanding of the person who is the butt of the attack.” Banter thus works, he asserts, “as a way of affirming the bond of love between men while appearing to deny it.”
There is clearly no shortage of ego for Denny or Alan, and masculinity impels it forward. At the same time, the men’s dialogue works so well as humor and as bonding agent that the implications of their closeness are clearly understood, as well.

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Boston Legal Fatties—Why Do We Not Dare be Like Them?

Boston Legal Fatties—Why Do We Not Dare be Like Them? by Roxanne McDonald

Why don’t we dare brave the seldom-visited territory where we are proud of our corpulence?

Do women dare take a chance and own with overt pride their sizeable girths, their Rubenesque thighs, their rotund derrieres? No, save the occasional Carrie Otis or Anna Nicole Smith (both of whom were not popular fatties, really, but “plus-sized,” rather).

Well, men dare—they honor their size; they boast and joke about it; they use it to take up space; and they make more of it.

On Boston Legal, for example, in the “Fat Burner” episode dealing with Denny Crane running a human fat as

alternative fuel business, Crane gets sued, Shore defends him, Crane makes up some smug stories, and they win. That evening, as they always do, the two best friends have their nightly cigars and drinks. Alan asks Denny why we don’t use alternative sources of energy. Denny shoots down the possibility that that the oil companies killed the electric car and other-fueled vehicles. Alan asks Denny what he thinks the best answer is, then. Denny points to his own fat gut, then points out how Alan is getting a few “ripples” of his own….
In response, Alan doesn’t get insulted or try to hide one fleshy pillow behind another of foam and cloth (the way you see actresses doing on set–for example, the way Julia Louis Dreyfus does on “Seinfeld” or as Leah Remini does on “King of Queens”). Instead, he suggests the two go for a big steak, baked potatoes, etc..

This scene is of course a play on Denny’s having been taken to court for owning/operating a human waste company which sells the fat to alternative fuel sources; and therefore, they reason, their adding to their own obesity is only “doing good” for the planet.

This is also poking fun at how the rare fat TV characters who are not on a sit-com are depicted as successful attorneys despite their corpulence.

And implicitly, this speaks to how very few fat actresses/characters are as successful. Let’s see, besides comediennes, there are only a countable few: Kamryn Manheim, Kathy Nijimy (before she lost weight), and Two and a Half Men’s Conchata Ferrell—who has won several prestigious awards and has a lead part on 2 ½ Men but who is on a comedy and is in the role of a housekeeper, not a big successful business person or lawyer or whathaveyou.

Go back in time and place to when and where absurdly long nails were a sign of status (signifying a man well off enough not to have to work, for instance), to when fat was revered for kings and princes, or to when fat was understood to be acceptable on men but never on women…. Now come back to today: what has changed, really?

And besides Fat is Beautiful coalitions and clubs, fat is still a man’s bragging right, while it is not for a woman. Look, specifically, if you wish, to the same Boston Legal show for an example: Delta Burke is on Boston Legal now (playing the part of Denny’s on-again off-again ex). On her first long-running series, Designing Women, she had to battle weight, weight issues, and weighty restrictions. On Boston Legal, not only has nothing come up about her weight as an issue for her as an actress, but you don’t see any scripting showcasing her size or aggrandizing her body image, etc..

How absurd that fat looks fine on men.
How silly that fat adds to the success of half the population—even if it is for men like James Spader/Allan Shore and William Shatner/Denny Crane..who are both exquisite features that Boston Legal could not be as great without but who were also both hotties in their pre-Boston Legal days…until they added fifty-plus pounds a piece.
How pitifully ridiculous that skinny to the bone is a more acceptable goal for the female of the species (and especially the female actor), when in fact fat has made her able to survive, reproduce, and give birth over a zillion years of evolutionary imperative that encouraged the fat for survival of all of humankind.

Time to re-think fat and fabulous fat stars.

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Boston Legal—Do They Really Do That?

Boston Legal—Do They Really Do That? by Roxanne McDonald

Time to ask where reality begins and ends…and fails us.

In his Celebrity Robot article on the Howard K. Stern trials, Mike Liebner discusses his disappointment in our court systems, noting how it “saddened me to think our court systems were actually like this…[with] mealy-mouthed chicken legged critters for judges… [and] lawyers who were so ill prepared jumpbled and fumbled their words to get in questions that did not even belong in a hearing about where Anna Nicole Smith would be buried.”

In contrast, as I watch Boston Legal, I wonder whether American courtrooms and law firms feature such brilliance, such litigious repetition, or such pomposity and righteous indignation on a regular basis. That is, do they really do and say what the lawyers and judges do and say on Boston Legal?

Do lawyers sue each other as much as they do on BL?
Are there some judges who, like the judge played by the brilliantly versatile Howard Hesseman, do not sit behind a bench but hang out in a seat or stand leaning alongside it during a trial?

Do those in the profession get away with as much un-pc attitudes and sexual and other harassment—protocol sacrificed for sarcasm and sharp-tongued witticisms?

In the courtroom, when a witness is on the stand, do they really allow him or her to get away with talking on and on, uninterrupted by “Objection!”?

Can people like Denny Crane get away with lying/exaggerating [i.e., making up a story about a non-existent uncle] without the prosecuting attorney digging into the truth by way of research?

Does prosecution really make an objection, and the defense attorney stare him down (into silent submission, as Spader’s dominating Alan Crane does, for example)…as the presiding judge says nothing? This is the dead-pan we are addicted to.

And really stretching the verisimilitude question, I ask whether a law firm exists in Boston where none of the partners or associates or legal secretaries have a Bwoston accent? Are they all so refined, have they all left their childhood dialects behind, or do they turn the New England tongue off fpr the courtroom and offices then back on behind the scenes or back home at Christmas and Thanksgiving?

I know, I know, the nature of the show is such that things are exaggerated for the sake of comic effect, so the dingbat judge, for instance, may be more clueless than actual, real-time judges are. Then again, if you listen to Liebner, you might agree otherwise.

Tivo Spring Cleaning (but it’s Fall)

OK, I have two Tivo DVR’s and they are stuffed to the gills with excellent tv shows and programming I have yet found time to watch.

There is so much recorded on Tivo I am running out of room to adequately record new shows.

Sure, I just bought a Panasonic DVR Recorder to archive some of the great tv shows on DVD (lots of funny Borat stuff - like on Leno and Daily Show), but I haven’t wired it up properly to archive.

So, as an interim measure I had to make some decisions… I guess you could call it forced CANCELLATIONS.

On the chopping block were a few shows I have been meaning to watch but just never got around to…

The O.C. is one of those shows. Last night I finally wiped out and deleted around 20 or so episodes I have not watched yet. Most of them from last season. It just hasn’t been interesting enough for me to invest time watching those 20 hours of The O.C. Sorry Mischa and Rachel (I still love you both!). (read more…)

Boston Legal: Verility, Verisimilitude, and Vengeance (er, Justice)

Boston Legal: Verility, Verisimilitude, and Vengeance (er, Justice) by Roxanne McDonald

It’s about time sexy went to smarmy and courtroom came to realism in a great TV show with great characters, great dialogue, and greater acting.

What a terribly fun, delightfully dark show is Boston Legal. I typically steer clear of law dramas, but was drawn to investigating how the delicious James Spader works out performing in a antithetical manner as a character that while on the dark side—like many of his characters–is less likeable or intriguing as a “bad boy” but a bloated bad boy. Tsk.

We remember him as the stuff of our wet dreams in the early eighties, as the gorgeous cool one on the fringe of the Brat Pack,

as the elitist snob Steff in Pretty in Pink; the auto-eroticist Graham Dalton in Sex, Lies, and Videotapes; as the worst kind (attractive) of sociopath, Michael Boll, in Bad Influence. Now we get him as the pompous, even foppish caricature of a lawyer, Alan Shore. He is flip, nasty, and smarmy both sexually and in the courtroom; and as one traipsing the razor edge of the dark side, his quips land courtroom opponents on their asses as he wins with irreverence, iconoclasm, or the occasional self-effacing or beneficent gesture.

Boston Legal is made all the better, too, by the seasoned and sharp Candice Bergen playing Shirley Schmidt, the no-nonsense dynamo who brings another layer of absurdity to the auspices of high litigation.

And Captain Kirk all but put to sleep now, pretense is displayed with a self-centered, dismissive pride in William Shatner’s Denny Crane. The legal aptitude and rare burst of sensitivity notwithstanding, Denny is so repugnant that viewers are sure to keep watching, if only to seek out the possibility of at least a modicum of humanity in a character that proves Shatner’s acting reach goes much further than his arms—which after holding down the hokey but innovative Enterprise have since held a 2004 Emmy for his role.

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