L.A. Law


L.A. Law is an American legal drama television series that ran for eight seasons on NBC, from September 15, 1986 to May 19, 1994.
Created by Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher, it contained many of Bochco's trademark features, including an ensemble cast, large number of parallel storylines, social drama, and off-the-wall humor. It reflected the social and cultural ideologies of the 1980s and early 1990s, and many of the cases featured on the show dealt with hot-topic issues such as capital punishment, abortion, racism, gay rights, homophobia, sexual harassment, AIDS, and domestic violence. The series often also reflected social tensions between the wealthy senior lawyer protagonists and their less well-paid junior staff.
In addition to its main cast, L.A. Law was also well known for featuring then relatively unknown actors and actresses in guest starring roles, who later went on to greater success in film and television including Don Cheadle, Jeffrey Tambor, Kathy Bates, David Schwimmer, Jay O. Sanders, James Avery, Gates McFadden, Bryan Cranston, CCH Pounder, Kevin Spacey, Richard Schiff, Carrie-Anne Moss, William H. Macy, Stephen Root, Christian Slater, Steve Buscemi, and Lucy Liu. Several episodes of the show also included celebrities such as Vanna White, Buddy Hackett, and Mamie Van Doren appearing as themselves in cameo roles.
The show was popular with audiences and critics, and won 15 Emmy Awards throughout its run, four of which were for Outstanding Drama Series.

Synopsis

The series was set in and around the fictitious Los Angeles-based law firm McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney and Kuzak, and featured attorneys at the firm and various members of the support staff. The exteriors for the law firm were shot at the FourFortyFour South Flower building in downtown Los Angeles, which was known as the 444 Flower Building at the time. The opening credits sequence of every episode began with a close-up of a car trunk being slammed shut revealing a personalized California license plate "LA LAW". For the first seven seasons, the model car used was a Jaguar XJ6 Series III; for the 8th and final season, the Jaguar was replaced with a 1993 Bentley Continental R. Both cars carried registration stickers indicating the year in which each season began. Two different musical openings for the show's theme were used: a saxophone riff, for episodes that were lighter in tone; and an ominous synthesizer chord, for more serious storylines.

Cast and characters

The show's original ensemble cast:
L.A. Laws two-hour pilot movie aired on Monday, September 15, 1986. An encore aired in place of Saturday Night Live on September 27, 1986, being a rare scripted rerun in that late-night slot.
The original time period was Friday 10PM following Miami Vice, but after struggling there, it assumed NBC's prized Thursday 10PM time slot in the Must See TV primetime block from another Bochco-produced show, Hill Street Blues. The show was itself eventually replaced by another hit ensemble drama, ER.
Co-creator Terry Louise Fisher was fired from the series in season 2 and filed a well-publicized lawsuit with Bochco and the studio. Bochco and Fisher had also co-created the 1987 John Ritter series Hooperman for ABC.
The scene in season 5 where Leland McKenzie was shown in bed with his enemy Rosalind Shays was ranked as the 38th greatest moment in television. The episode "Good To The Last Drop" in which Rosalind met her demise—falling into an open elevator shaft—was ranked #91 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time. It was referenced in The Star Trek Encyclopedia in which Pulaski's biography says: "There is no truth to the rumor that an ancestor of Dr. Pulaski was killed falling down the elevator shaft at a prestigious Los Angeles law firm."
After co-writing the feature film, From the Hip, Boston attorney David E. Kelley was hired by Bochco during the first season of L.A. Law. Kelley went on to critical and commercial success as show-runner of the series before leaving to create Picket Fences. While on L.A. Law, Kelley and Bochco co-created Doogie Howser, M.D. as the first Steven Bochco Productions series for a major, ten-series deal with ABC. Shortly thereafter, Bochco was offered the job as President of ABC Entertainment, but he turned it down.
At the height of the show's popularity in the late-1980s, attention was focused upon a fictitious sexual technique named the "Venus Butterfly" in season 1. The only clue describing the technique was a vague reference to "ordering room service". Fans and interested persons flooded the show's producers with letters asking for more details about this mysterious technique.
The show won GLAAD’s first Media Award for Outstanding Drama Series in 1990, which it shared with Heartbeat. The first lesbian kiss on television occurred on the show in 1991, between the characters of C.J. Lamb and Abby.
The show tied itself into the events of the Los Angeles riots of 1992, which were prompted by the acquittal of four white police officers who were put on trial for the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King. In a scene reminiscent of the Reginald Denny incident, tax attorney Stuart Markowitz is struck on the head by a rioter, and ends up having serious head injuries, causing a number of problems for him and his wife for several episodes as a result. Douglas Brackman, their boss, is also arrested in the mayhem of the riots as he is on his way to get remarried.
After the fifth season, Kelley left the show. Patricia Green and Rick Wallace were his replacements as executive producer. Green was the main creative force. Her character additions amid cast turnover were met with mixed reaction. She left the show in January 1992. Kelley and Bochco returned to write episodes and Bochco moved back to executive producer from consultant while Kelley stayed consultant. Bochco left the executive producer position after the sixth season and John Tinker and John Masius were brought in to run the seventh season. Kelley exited as consultant. Amid plummeting ratings during the seventh season, co-executive producers John Tinker & John Masius were fired midseason, and while the show went on hiatus, William M. Finkelstein was brought in to fix it. Tinker and Masius had brought a whimsical, soap-operatic tone to the series for which they had been known on St. Elsewhere. Dan Castellaneta appeared in a Homer costume and hired the attorneys in the seventh-season premiere. That episode also reflected on the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Finkelstein reined in the series, returning to the serious legal cases that made the series famous.
In the eighth and final season, the characters of Eli Levinson and Denise Iannello were transplanted from the canceled Bochco legal series Civil Wars. Eli Levinson was revealed to be Stuart Markowitz's cousin. During the final season, the series went on hiatus in January 1994 to launch the second season of '. When that series succeeded wildly with a guest appearance by Robin Williams, it was expected that L.A. Law would conclude that May and Homicide: Life on the Street would succeed it on Thursdays in the fall. However, ER tested so well that Warner Bros. executives campaigned network president Warren Littlefield to give that series the prized Thursday slot.
The series ended in 1994 with NBC not renewing the show for a ninth season at the last minute; giving the show without a proper finale or wrapping up storylines. Bochco envisioned the show being repackaged into an occasional television film; a reunion show titled '' would air in 2002 and featured most of the main cast from the series. Reruns were shown on Lifetime and later A&E during the 1990s and 2000s.

Reception

Because of its popularity, L.A. Law had great influence on how Americans viewed the law and lawyers. The New York Times described it as "television's most serious attempt to date to portray American law and the people who practice it... L.A. Law, perhaps more than any other force, has come to shape public perceptions about lawyers and the legal system". Attorneys reported that the show had affected how they dressed and spoke to juries, and clients came to expect that cases could be tried and decided within a week. The number of applicants to law school rose because of how it glamorized the profession, professors used L.A. Law as a teaching aid to discuss with their students legal issues episodes raised, and law journal articles analyzed the meaning of its plotlines. The show reportedly taught future lawyers things law school did not, such as time management and how to negotiate, and an attorney stated that the show accurately depicted life at a small law firm.
One law professor wrote in the Yale Law Journal that L.A. Law "has conveyed more 'bytes' of information, more images about lawyers, than all the Legal Studies programs, all the op-ed pieces, all the PBS shows put together." The show was "a massive distortion of reality... the lawyers of L.A. Law are caricatures", he stated, but "caricatures are always caricatures of something, and that has to be real". Another wrote in the issue that the show "subtracts eighty to ninety-nine percent of lawyers' real work lives" and overemphasized the glamor of the rest. Unlike other works of legal fiction such as Perry Mason and Presumed Innocent, however, which are essentially mysteries that lawyers solve, L.A. Laws plots taught its tens of millions of viewers torts, ethics, and other basic legal ideas and dilemmas that comprise the first year of a legal education.

Home media

has released all eight seasons of LA Law on DVD in the UK. This is the first time the show has been released on DVD anywhere in the world.
On April 18, 2016, Revelation Films released L.A. Law – The Complete Collection on DVD in the UK. The 46-disc box set features all 171 episodes of the series in special collectors packaging.
In Region 1, Shout! Factory has released the first three seasons on DVD.

Accolades

The show won numerous awards, including 15 Emmy Awards. It won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series in 1987, 1989, 1990 and 1991. It was also nominated for the award in 1988 and 1992. Some of the actors, such as Larry Drake and Jimmy Smits, also received Emmys for their performances. The series shares the Emmy Award record for most acting nominations by regular cast members for a single series in one year with Hill Street Blues and The West Wing.
For the 1988–1989 season, nine cast members were nominated for Emmys. Larry Drake, Jimmy Smits, and Richard Dysart were the only one to win. The others nominated were: Michael Tucker ; Jill Eikenberry and Susan Dey ; and Amanda Donohoe, Susan Ruttan, Michele Greene, and Conchata Ferrell.
L.A. Law won a Latino Image Award.
It was listed as #42 on Entertainment Weekly's list of The New Classics in the July 4, 2008 issue.

Primetime Emmy Awards

Golden Globe Awards