David Kelly v. Radley Balko

November 29th, 2006 Uncategorized

Tuesday’s episode of Boston Legal must have made Radley Balko’s heart skip a few beats (if he caught the show?) David Kelly (Boston Legal’s creative tour de force) may per chance be reading The Agitator.com.

Continuing a thread from a previous episode, the pathological psycho (Lincoln Myers) abducted Shirley Schmidt (played by Candice Bergen) and held her in the basement of his home. Having noticed her unexplained absence, her lawyer brethren eventually suspected foul play on the part of their client Lincoln Myers. Surprisingly, a Boston detective - even after hearing the concerns that the senior partners of the firm had about Shirley Schmidt and Lincoln Myers - could not bring himself to get the local Magistrate to sign off on a search warrant for Mr. Myers’ house! Two of the firm’s lawyers even went to Lincoln Myers’ house and were not allowed in. But all of these “circumstantial” concerns were NOT sufficient “probable cause”. Compare to Atlanta.

The remedy, quickly arrived at by the firm’s smartest lawyer – Alan Shore (played by James Spader) - was to simply sign a false affidavit alleging that he spoke to Shirley Schmidt and that she was with Lincoln Meyers! The irony here is so thick it requires a large shovel!

The crowning dénouement was serving the warrant with a fully equipped innumerably membered (sic) SWAT team complete with grenade launchers, etc. – who (there may have been an announcement – but who cares…) broke down the doors and stormed the entire house before arriving at the basement – where the abductor – Lincoln Myers was skewered with his own cross bow arrow booby trap! If standard SOP for a potential hostage situation is to SWAT storm !!!! Anyway, it all turned out just fine in the end. Shirley Schmidt was freed but the police held Shirley Schmidto for questioning! You have to love this show… But I’m not sure David Kelly is doing us any real favors here as much as he loves to parody the legal judicial profession.

Am I being elitist to suggest that the factitious nature of Kelly’s parody may be missed by many viewers? I hope so…

Unfortunately, Boston Legal is one of the few shows ABC doesn’t offer for video downloading! Too bad.