Boston Legal Season 2, Episodes 13-27

[zebra363]

I'm enjoying these really hot summer afternoons. What else can one do but stay inside and watch Boston Legal?

I didn't care for the Bev arc, nor for a lot of the minor characters - the Michael J. Fox character and Ivan in particular. Episodes 15-20 seemed to drag, though reviewing the transcripts now I see there was still good stuff in them!

Alan is a terrific friend to Denny throughout the Bev arc.

13. Too Much Information

• Alan offers the convenience store clerk a BMW to drop the charges against Catherine Piper. 
  
• Alan to Emily: The good was we just made a strong opening impression with the jury. The bad was you just had to listen to testimony about how your father killed your mother. That’s something nobody should ever have to experience. Here’s what you should know about lawyers. I could have sat you down and prepared you for this testimony so as to brace you. I chose not to. No tears for the plaintiff, no tears for the jury, less money. But, Emily, we don’t have to keep going here.
  
• Brad offers Bev money to leave Denny.
  
• Alan gives Denise some friendly advice about Daniel: Denise, I don’t know you very well. However, you don’t strike me as the type of woman who just waits. For anything.
  
• Irma Levine to Alan: You don’t fool me. You’re a compassionate man.
  
• Alan mentions his older sister in his closing.
  
• Alan to the ADA: But for Catherine this was not about malice, nor financial gain or thrill seeking. It was about getting my attention. And she got it.
  
• Balcony scene:
  Alan: Lack of privacy on the internet is complicated and overwhelming.
  Denny: Doesn't scare me. My life's an open book.
  Alan: So you wouldn't mind if someone tapped a few keys and discovered you have Mad Cow?
  Denny: [laughs] I don't care. I tell everybody I meet anyway.
  Alan: Ever looked yourself up on the internet?
  Denny: I have! Denny Crane, legal genius. What about you?
  Alan: No. I don't want to know me.
  Denny: I know you. You're not so bad.

14. Breast in Show

• Opens with Alan alone at night on Denny's balcony. (Heartwrenchingly sad!)
  
• Alan calls Irma and they meet. She co-opts him to help with a vote distribution protest. 
  
• Brad is doing a quad-strengthening exercise against a wall. Alan kicks one of his legs out from under him. Brad stays up and crosses that leg over his other one.
  
• Paul to Garrett: Am I to understand that you, a lawyer working at one of the most prestigious firms in the Boston area, cannot negotiate with the sandwich lady to get her out of your office?
  
• Alan: I didn’t see you on the balcony the other night. Denny: Bev and I had something to do. And we did it again.
  
• Alan to the DA, about Brad: He’s decided he’s going to run against you for District Attorney. ... I mean, I think he’s a natural for politics. Don’t you? Look at him. Gorgeous. And tough on crime. The man single-handedly rescued a kidnapped child. ... I wonder who your party’d rather have carrying its standard? You? Or Captain Handsome? Brad, stand up and take your jacket off. Yes. Ooh. Good. Put it over the shoulder. Wow! ... [This case has] inspired him to pluck his hat from those beautiful blond locks and toss it into the ring. I can just see the two of you in a televised debate. No, really, I can only see him because you see to fade into the background.
  
• Balcony scene, where they're drinking Diet Scotch because Bev wants Denny to lose weight for the wedding. Alan asks if they're drifting apart, Denny says no.
  Alan: I’m going to miss you, Denny, once you’re married.
  Denny: I’m not going anywhere.
  Alan: I’ve been married. Of course you are.

15. Smile

• Private school, cat and Catholic hospital storylines - thumbs down to them all!
  
• Alan tells 9-year-old Marissa the story of the Greek philosopher who wanted to be like the purple threads of a white toga.
  
• Balcony scene:
  Denny: I want you to kill me.
  Alan: The scotch and cigars and nightly consumption of red meat have that well in hand.
  Denny: No, no, no. Seriously. I don’t fear death. I never have. But I am afraid of being hooked up to a machine. All those tubes. Brain, mush. Would you like to live like that?
  Alan: No. If it came to that, my friend, I would pull your plug.
  Denny: Pull a plug? What kind of death is that? I want you to shoot me.
  Alan: Shoot you?
  Denny: Denny Crane is not going to be turned off like a hair dryer. Live by the gun, die by the gun.
  Alan: I’m not going to shoot you.
  Denny: Why not? I’d shoot you!
  Alan: Denny, you’ve been a lawyer in this town for forty years. I’m sure there are plenty of people who’d willingly shoot you.
  Denny: Well, I don’t want to be shot by a stranger. I want to be shot by someone who, who cares for me.
  Alan: The answer is no.

16. Live Big

• Shirley and Paul have drinks together in a bar and talk about his daughter after he's visibly affected by a song. I really like their friendship and their working relationship.
  
• Alan defends a man charged with killing his wife, who was suffering from Alzheimer's.
  
• Alan: Imagine killing somebody you deeply love. Even to spare suffering.
  Denny: You said you’d do it for me. You promised.
  Alan: I don’t know that I could.
  
• Denny to Alan: That’s what we did with my father. Morphine drip.
  
• Paul and his daughter Rachel reconcile.
  
• Balcony scene:
  Alan: Denny, when you launched yourself in court like a pop tart…
  Denny: He was badgering our client. I had to break the flow.
  Alan: Mr Koupfer had just said, “Families often act to end their own suffering.” Is that what happened with your father?
  Denny: He wasn’t exactly in pain. His appetite was good. In fact he was actually smiling more in the end then he… On the day, the day we told the doctor to up the drip, he was blissful. We put him out of our misery. And I often wonder, did that life belong to the man with the brain of a two-year-old? Or to the man who preceded it? It certainly didn’t belong to me.
  Alan: I think the life belonged to the man who preceded the disease. The man you knew as your father.
  
• Denny: My day is coming, Alan. We both know that.
  Alan: It’s a long ways off. And in the meantime: live big, my friend. Live big.

17. ...There's Fire!

• Denny's wedding day. Alan helps him with his bow tie, after turning Denny around so they're both facing the mirror. 
  
• Denny: I wish you and I were getting married. That’s you and I. Both of us. To others. I’m not gay.
  Alan: I heard you the first Freudian slip.
  Denny: Well, Alan, I, I don’t want to leave you.
  Alan: No doubt there’ll be some adjusting. But you’re not losing an Alan, you’re gaining a Bev. The girl of your recent dreams.
  Denny: Alan, you’re my best friend. If you want you can dream about her too.
  
• Alan to Shirley: You’re asking me to manipulate my friend, and I won’t do it.
  
• Denny: At a certain age, Alan, you'll find it extraordinary the compromises one’s willing to make for even the possibility of love.
  
• I love that Denny was smart enough not to be fleeced by Bev. 
  
• Denny to Brad: While everyone was whining about Bev, you were actually trying to take her out. I admire that.
  
• Balcony scene:
  Denny: You know, the best part of my marriages has always been the first day.
  Alan: ‘Just Married.’ Grand thing. But for me there was nothing more devastatingly lonely than being married for a while.
  Denny: You never talk about your wife. What was she like?
  Alan: She had all the most delectable qualities one could hope for. Creativity, desire, zealotry, a gorgeous clavicle, healthy lack of inhibition.
  Denny: Sounds spectacular. What happened?
  Alan: She began… to know me too well and I began to hate her for it. Even when I was unpredictable, she’d predict it. For those of us who aspire to be original, it’s the worst sort of banality. She died. I’ve missed that banality ever since.
  
• Alan: Denny, they’re doing some sort of renovations at my hotel. They start at dawn and make a tremendous racket. Wakes me up, I can’t get back to sleep.
  Denny: It’s always something with you. Night terrors, clowns, renovations.
  Alan: I was wondering if I could spend the night at your place.
  Denny: How long are these renovations going to take?
  Alan: They won’t say.
  Denny: Well. Stay as long as you need.

18. Shock and Oww!

• Denny is in bed at home, Alan comes into his room dressed and ready to leave for the office.
  
• Paul asks Brad to find out if his daughter is using drugs again.
  
• Alan settles Shirley's case by buying old nude photographs of her. Alan: Shirley, I have no intention of sharing those with anyone. I'm keeping you all to myself. I give you my word.
  Shirley: You're one of the few people for whom I know that to be true. Thank you.
  
• Balcony scene: Denny says he misses Bev and shows Alan some old Polaroid photos of Shirley, naked and asleep.

19. Stick It

• Melissa to Alan: You get to go and fight battles for things you believe in, every day.
  
• D.A. Shapiro: But I guess if you’re ashamed enough to be an American, it’s okay…
  Alan: She never said she was ashamed to be, she said she was embarrassed as. A distinction often missed by those who confuse dissent for disloyalty.
  
• Melissa to Alan: You’re going to make one of those really long speeches that are so hot?
  Alan: I can stand up and argue just about any case. But the long shots, of which this is one, are different. Those, I need to somehow believe in. And unfortunately what I believe here is that you broke the law.
  
• Alan to Denny: I have a completely inexplicable, unwarranted, small but embarrassing crush on the girl. ... I have no intention of acting on it, nor do I regard it as anything more than a moment's passing fancy. But as moments go… Ugh! My head hurts.
  
• Alan gives one of his really long speeches that are so hot.
  
• Balcony scene: Conversation about Melissa, Alan's case, the loss of the nation's compassion. Denny says he wishes that just once Alan would quote a Republican and Alan immediately comes back with "I want a kinder and gentler nation". (George H.W. Bush, 1988)
  Denny: It’s strange isn’t it, how love supercedes everything that goes wrong.
  Alan: Love trumps all.
  Denny: Love...trumps all.

20. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

• Alan arranges for a home invasion to threaten the unscrupulous court-appointed power of attorney.
  
• Shirley to Denny: The reason you, me, Alan and the rest of us get to go to court and yell, “Objection!” and sue people and make witnesses cry is Paul! Paul makes the elevators run! He  supervises the associates! He double-checks the billables!
  
• An important client tells Denny that Paul is the person he wants to deal with. 
  
• Denny offers to add Paul's name to the firm.
  
• Balcony scene: Alan says he's alarmed at how quickly he acted on his urge to use violence.

21. Word Salad Days (here is where I started really enjoying the episodes again)

• Alan to Denny: I rather value my melancholy. Used to be a personality trait one was allowed to have. Like Abraham Lincoln or Lord Byron. Denny: You don’t need pills. You need to stop helping people. ... The human mind is like a bucket. It can only hold so much. You see all that suffering going on around you and you get involved, it fills up your bucket, and soon it’s overflowing.
  
• Interesting polygamy and video game cases
  
• Alan to Denny, in a large bath at the spa: I’m not the most connected individual, Denny. Sometimes words are all that allow me to feel like I’m a part of the world, a part of life. If I don’t have words, then I’m alone.
  
• Alan to Denny, in their room: Could you please put your narcissism aside for one second and to imagine what’s it like for person to be losing his mind? ... I’m sorry. Denny: All this time I thought you were empathising with me. But you were sympathising.
  
• Alan lies down on the floor so he can look at Denny, who's face down on a massage table. Alan: I have always empathised with your mad cow. In a seismic shift of character I was momentarily thinking only of myself.
  
• Alan says he's nervous about being fired from work, since he'd miss Denny.
  Denny: You’re a liar. You can’t walk because you think you have to be there to protect me. To save me from myself. ... For the first time in your life you feel trapped. And I’m the reason.
  Alan: Why can’t we just leave it that I’m miss you, Denny?
  Denny: Denny Crane has never needed anybody!
  Alan: And that’s a tragedy. One for which I empathise as well as sympathise.
  Denny: I will never be anybody’s charity project. If that has something to do with our friendship, I no longer want it.
  
• Excellent balcony scene, in which they wear robes like they wore at the spa:
  Alan: Okay. So I worry about you a little. Is that so bad? With my night terror, the clown phobia and now word salad, you don’t worry about me? You know, strangers aren’t always gonna be there for us, Denny. I’m gonna say this once, I don’t want it repeated. I need friendship. I especially need this one. ... Is it really so horrible for people to need each other? Doesn’t it give you comfort that I’m here to cover for you when you slip? That in the end I’ll be there to shoot you?
  Denny: It comforts me that you need the friendship.
  Alan: I’ve thought about it, I agree, you’ve survived here a hundred years or so without me. I could leave and you’d go on just fine. But for me to go on, Denny, I need my balcony time whether I work here or not.
  Denny: You got it.
  Alan: Typically when I get fired I’m banned from the premises.
  Denny: Service elevator. I got the keys.

22. Ivan the Incorrigible

• I love, love Alan in this episode. He shines with Jerry: he's helpful, supportive, calm, and when everything goes wrong he does what he can to remedy the situation.
  
• Jerry: I would never ask you directly if you had anything to do with his going away. Alan: That’s because you’re an excellent attorney, Jerry. There’s no doubt in my mind that you could develop into a first-rate criminal defender, Jerry, but my hope is that you don’t. Even at your relatively mature age, you’re... still innocent. ... There’s a reason Shakespeare-and many after him-said, “First, kill all the lawyers.” They’re talking about people like me, Jerry. Not you. Jerry: I am excellent at banking and finance. Alan: You are, indeed. 
  
• Denny offers Shirley some comfort after Ivan leaves. Shirley: You are a dear, sweet man.
  
• Excellent balcony scene:
  Alan: Sounds like paradise, actually-living on an island, a much simpler life.
  Denny: Especially if it’s an island where the natives run around on the beach with their boobies hanging out.
  Alan: [laughs] Yes. But I was thinking on a much more elemental level. A place where my biggest concern would be carrying water on my shoulders or where the simple act of thatching a roof would dissipate the voices in my head.
  Denny: And the hardest choice you have to make is what you’re going to have for lunch. What did you have for lunch today?
  Alan: [thinks for a moment] Flounder. You?
  Denny: Steak sandwich, onion rings. ... Alan, you know, one thing you sometimes forget is: no matter how hard your day, no matter how tough your choices, how complex your ethical decisions-you always get to choose what you want for lunch.
  Alan: [smiling at him fondly] Daily, I am amazed at your inexhaustible ability to just live.

23. Race Ipsa

• Denny's therapist Dr Fields: I think that you are a silver spoon-fed, rich, empty sack, who has nothing to do now but count his money, or spend it on hookers and therapists who offer up some form of affirmation. And frankly, I’m sick of it! I would no longer even treat you but for the six hundred dollars an hour I charge, which sum, I might assure you, is meant to deter your recurring visits. Do you understand me, Denny? I would sooner leap from the window than see your lips move, the sight of which is the visual cue that feculent blather is about to spew forth.
  Denny: This is no way for a therapist to talk to a patient.
  Dr Fields: My official medical recommendation would be that you take yoga classes, so that you might gain the necessary flexibility to stick your head up your ass.
  
• Paul to Shirley, about Denny shooting Dr Fields: The man is apparently going to survive; he’s in the hospital, Denny’s in custody. Where’s Alan? 
  
• Alan to Chelina, checking the call display of his phone: My lover. [into the phone] Hello Denny? You did what?
  
• Brad asks Alan if he could join him and Denny on the balcony for some male bonding after Denise points out that he has no friends other than her to talk to.
  
• Denise to Brad: Where do you find all these women anyway? Brad: I’m a lawyer, I was marine, just do the math. I’m the complete package. (I like their relationship!)
  
• Denise gives Brad kissing lessons.
  
• Dr Fields, on the witness stand: Denny Crane doesn’t even believe in therapy. He comes out of boredom. He likes to hear himself talk.
  Alan: Which is the cause of great frustration for you.
  Dr Fields: Yes! Because when he’s not endlessly repeating his name, he’s full of this self-serving blather. If have to hear him go on, one more time, about Mad Cow… [Alan looks quite amused]
  
• Dr Fields, with a gun trained on Alan: You stand belittled now, Denny. Why don’t I just shoot your best friend here? Why not? I mean, he’s your real therapist! He’s the one you tell your secrets to! Why don’t I just shoot him?
  
• Balcony scene:
  Alan: So, it was funny to finally meet your therapist.
  Denny: A man never introduces his wife to his mistress.

24. Deep End of the Poole

• Alan is arrested for advising Jerry's client to flee the country.
  
• Alan to Denny:  And if I lose, never mind jail, these are felony charges. My law career could be over. That never used to bother me.
  Denny: What bothers you is that as you get older your priorities change. You begin to realise what really matters. Money! ... Never seen you look so nervous. Well, except for the night terrors, and the clowns, and the girl, and the word salad.
  Alan: I’ve never kidded myself. I’ve always known how it would end for me. I’m just not ready for it yet.
  Denny: But what you keep forgetting is that at the end of the day, you always have me.
  
• A.D.A. Koupfer to Alan, in the courtroom: Perhaps you’d like to take the stand now. Put your character in issue.
  Alan: My client trusted me to tell him the truth, which trust I honoured. That’s my character, Mr. Koupfer.
  
• Balcony scene:
  Denny: Are we setting a bad example? I shoot people.
  Alan: I bribe them.
  Denny: We drink.
  Alan: Smoke.
  Denny: I’m unfaithful.
  Alan: Not to me.
  Denny: Never to you.

25. Squid Pro Quo

• Alan looks at Denny to gauge his reaction to seeing Donny in court.
  
• Denny tells Alan he's jealous of his son, and that he doesn't need Alan or anybody.
  
• Alan clears off his desk so he and Marlene can have sex: "We can take care of things right now."
  
• Denny to Alan: You like Hot Fudge Sundaes? Ah, who knows what you like. You’re a weirdo. But my point is, people like Hot Fudge Sundaes. Well yesterday in court I gave them a Hot Fudge Sundae. I was brilliant. But, after you’ve had a delicious Hot Fudge Sundae, it’s a while before you want another one. ... I want you to do the closing argument. ... Alan, I need to stay undefeated. I don’t want to look a fool in, in front of... I need you to do this. Friend, helping friend?
  
• Alan delivers a brilliant closing in a case he doesn't entirely agree with.
  
• Balcony scene:
  Denny: That’s my boy.
  Alan: I’m your friend, Denny, but I’m not your boy.
  
• Alan: No one looks at an issue and struggles over the right position to take anymore. And yet, our ability to reason is what makes us human. Lately, we seem so willing to forfeit that gift of reason in exchange for the good feeling of belonging to a group. We all just take the position of our team.

26. Spring Fever

• "In heat" conversation in which Denny convinces Alan to come with him to LA. Alan: Denny, in all modesty, my state of heat doesn’t generally require me to prowl. Women have a tendency to find me. Denny: Let them find you in LA.
  
• Alan refuses to sign Denny's new living will, granting Alan power of attorney, on the balcony of the LA office with the LA managing partner present.
  
• Horrible Denise-Marlene storyline, good Brad-and-neice storyline.
  
• Photographers take pictures of Denny as he gets out of a limo. Alan: I sometimes forget that you’re famous.
  
• Denny and Alan discuss the power of attorney issue over dinner:
  Denny: I just told you to sign my document.
  Alan: Exactly. With something as monumental as that, you don’t just push a piece of paper in one’s face. You discuss it first.
  Denny: We discussed it plenty of times. You said you would shoot me.
  Alan: There’s a difference between talking about it and signing a legal document.
  Denny: You’re a frigging lawyer, for God’s sake! That’s what you do!
  Alan: With others, yes. When it comes to my personal life, I don’t actually sign contracts at the drop of a hat. When I say I’ll do something, I do it, regardless of a piece of paper, and I expect people to hold me to my word.
  Denny: What’s the matter with you? People don’t do that anymore. And you certainly can’t expect the hospital to acknowledge your word.
  Alan: In this case, I can see that.
  Denny: Well, are you going to sign the damn thing or not? ... Okay. I apologise. How about I ask you properly? ... Would you do me the honour of killing me?
  Alan: I will.
  Denny: Waiter! Champagne!
  (The transcript for this scene includes this rather hilarious description: Denny Crane quickly looks at Courtney Reese to make sure she is not watching him proposing to Alan Shore.)
  
• Denny then tries to insist on becoming Alan's "plug-puller".
  Denny: It meant a great deal to me when you agreed to give me the-the-the big send-off. It was a great show of affection. Of love.
  Alan refuses, multiple times. 
  Denny: The trouble with you is your brain is so clogged up with big words, you don’t have room for the stuff that’s really important. Trust in a friendship is a two-way street. Or there’s no friendship.
  Alan: A real friendship doesn’t include one person being positively giddy over the prospect of pulling the plug on the other.
  
• No balcony scene: ends with Courtney shooting the photographer.

27. BL: Los Angeles

• Denny warns Alan off Courtney: Well pick up on this, stay away from my sixth wife. (Wouldn't she be his seventh wife?)
  
• Horrible Denise-Marlene storyline continued
  
• Alan says no to Courtney's clear offer of sex following the verdict. Alan: Denny and I have a little arrangement. He picked you first. Courtney: I see. So if he happened to pick the love of your life first, you would just go with it? Alan: You’re not the love of my life.
  
• Alan and Marlene have wild sex in his office (which I'd say he thoroughly deserves for passing up Courtney).
  
• Balcony scene:
  Alan: Denny, I’m gonna need a new glass top for my desk.
  Denny: [noticing scratches on Alan's face] What happened to you??
  Alan: There was a spider in my office.
  
• Alan: At least one thing remains constant. I do enjoy travelling with you.
  Denny: And the best part is we always come home, together.
  Alan: To more travels, Denny.
  
• Ends with a shot of the business cards on the reception desk. Denny's is first, followed by Alan's, then Shirley's.