The Practice was one of the worst shows in all of television history, right behind Joey and One Tree Hill. Of the 15,023 episodes that aired, 9 were somewhat enjoyable. These were the last 9 because James Spader was on them. He was so good, in fact, they rolled his character over into a new a series, Boston Legal. Unfortunately, it seems the only reason he was so good on The Practice was because he finished filming the episodes before the network could even think about firing him, so his performance had a wonderful “fuck this” je ne sais quoi de chi.
On the outlandish Boston Legal, however, he has the look of a dog paid to be beaten too much by ABC. Combine that with the similar glazed look of William Shatner, and you’ve got a disaster waiting to happened. Or more precisely, a disaster that’s already happened. If nothing else, you know the show is horrible because of the way it uses funky music to signify something quirky just happened the same way a sitcom uses a canned laughter to indicate a joke that was supposed to be funny just occurred.
As you may have already guessed, the reason I called this review “Boston Eagles” is because it rhymed with the shows title, and if the Philadelphia Eagles magically turned into a basketball team and the entire franchise was traded to Boston and Terrell Owens became the best power forward in Boston since Raef LaFrenz, that whole scenario would be more believable than anything that will ever happen on Boston Legal.
On scale if insults to Boston, where the Big Dig is a 1 and Bill Buckner is a 10, Boston Legal rates a city native Barbara Walters, the numerical equivalent of a 3.4.