Season 2, Episode 7
Original Air Date: October 25, 1997
And now for a little more from the twisted mind of David E. Kelley. Kelley created The Practice as a rebuttal to his Doogie Howser buddy Steven Bochco’s L.A. Law, which Kelley felt overly romanticized the American legal system. If Halloween special “Search and Seizure” is anything to go by, Kelley massively succeeded in making an unglamorous legal drama. In this episode alone the lawyers are sexually assaulted, witness an illegal arrest, bribed by drug dealers, fail at subverting Roe v, Wade, and forced a moral dilemma where they have to choose between faith, ethics, and the law. It’s quite a lot and hard to imagine how this evolves into the borderline comedy of Boston Legal by the end.
So the Halloween aspect of “Search and Seizure” is actually the smallest story in the episode. Senior partner Bobby Donnell (Dylan McDermott) is invited to a Halloween party by ADA Helen Gamble (Lara Flynn Boyle) despite them being on opposite sides of the legal system. Helen is the best friend of another lawyer at the firm, Lindsay Dole (Kelli Williams), so Bobby hesitates but ultimately agrees to go. Bobby goes to the party dressed as Dracula (read: in a tuxedo with a cape and plastic fangs) and Helen is dressed as a flapper, but everyone else is amusingly dressed as founding fathers. While Bobby and Helen are chatting up a George Washington, Helen reaches back and gropes Bobby. The next day, Bobby is freaked out but no one in the office seems to care and Lindsay is even like “that’s so Helen!” Bobby meets with Helen and she reassures him that she doesn’t normally grope people and they kiss and decide to go on a date, problem solved. That’s healthy and not problematic at all!
The other lawyers have actual legal problems going on. Early on in this episode, known drug dealer Benny Small (Paul Ben-Victor, from The Wire) barges into the practice pursued by police. They arrest him and find a bag of cocaine strapped to his chest and Bobby puts Lindsay on the case since everyone else is now a witness. She successfully argues that the police did not establish probable cause to to arrest Benny and also hustles him to pay back long-overdue legal fees he owes the practice. This leads Lindsay to have a bit of an existential crisis, as she realizes she’s become a very good drug lawyer and didn’t want to. Before she can really make her peace with it, a mysterious man shows up and says he’s impressed with her work and wants to retain her, offering a large sum of money and a pager. I’m guessing this develops further in the rest of the season.
But the most interesting plot involves the rest of the practice trying to settle a dispute between a husband and wife. The wife is more than nine months into her pregnancy and her doctor (John Carroll Lynch) is insisting on a C-section as the baby is in danger of brain damage or even death if he’s not delivered soon. The father agrees but the mother wants to wait for god to induce labor, so the husband hires the practice to force her to get a C-section. Extremely controversial stuff, so much so that the judge they take the case to ultimately is like “I shouldn’t be deciding this” and sends them to some sort of appellate tribunal. Ultimately the mother wins the case but at her next checkup the doctor gives her a C-section without her knowing. This troubles everyone, especially Rebecca Washington (LisaGay Hamilton), who fought hard for the husband but knows you gotta accept losses. The mother decides not to press charges and focus on her family but Rebecca is seen going to the police station, but she stops outside and ultimately decides to drop the issue.
That’s a lot and that’s still not everything that happened in the 42 minutes that make up just this one episode of The Practice. It’s extremely late-Nineties in its style and editing and even the edgy subject material it deals with, which I kind of dig but also kind of feel skeptical of. I’m sure there are enough inaccuracies to drive an actual lawyer insane. It also doesn’t help that ABC has not made it easy to find this show, you can buy a couple seasons on Apple or Amazon but it’s not streaming anywhere and most of the show doesn’t even appear to be on DVD. I guess ultimately it’s legacy is Boston Legal, the show I’m more interested in just because I want to hear the bizarre cadence of a conversation between James Spader and William Shatner. Can you even imagine?