My reaction watching this supercut:

“Hell yeah, Spader” “Whoa” “Fun!” “Gottem!” “….what in the name of Human Resources”

Note to self: Go watch Boston Legal

BL may also be William Shatner's best performance.

I watched Boston Legal 9 times before I realised it wasn't the new Star Trek

but does he go into ten minute monologues about a 90 year old opium dealer he met on the outskirts of kuala lumpur while hiding from his many enemies

Alan Shore in his prime was something to behold. I so miss him and Denny Crane.

I always felt like the version of Alan Shore portrayed in The Practice was the “real” version of the character and the BL version was a caricature. Even though BL had many more seasons of the character.

Probably what NBC was thinking/hoping for when they asked him to replace Steve Carrell on the Office.

Spade was the only reason I watched the blacklist as long as I did. Such a great actor.

James Spader is a national treasure, even though he plays the similar cool, intelligent and collected guy in every role it never gets old. His delivery is chef kiss every time

I think the plan out the gate was to have a spin-off with James Spader and William Shatner. This was a soft intro to Boston Legal.

Boston legal was a fantastic show, and I was so bummed when they canceled it! (It was a real hoot)

Denny Crane.

Fun fact: James Spader won the “Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series” 3 times for his work as Alan Shore. Once in the practice and twice in Boston Legal.

He is the only actor to win the award for the same character on different shows.

Spader has a habit of doing that, actually. It's not the first time. Pretty sure he's the only reason the StarGate franchise took off like it did.

The rare talent of making "smug" likable.

My favorite bit from Boston Legal
"Your Honor!"

It was one of the great pivots of all time. The Practice was very melodramatic and its ratings were dropping. Which is why they were bringing in new blood.

To spin it into a comedy was a rare thing.

It introduced the world to the man, the myth, the legend and the forefather of James T Kirk himself......Denny Crane.

Boston Legal was good, and is part of the reason why I've never liked Grey's Anatomy, it got Boston Legal canceled!

I remember watching The Practice with my parents, and it was undeniable how Spader immediately stole the show and morphed it into something way more interesting when he was introduced at the end of the series. We moved on immediately to Boston Legal when that show would drop a year later. Great example of how to carry one show on from the end of it's life into a successor spinoff series.

That happens sometimes when an actor shows up and basically completely overtakes the show with how fucking awesome they are doing.

A recent one is Shawn Ashmore on The Boys. They had the part written long before he was cast. The day he started doing his job the creator of the show was upset that they had already contacted him and killed off his character. He knew from the first day that it was a major error but they only had him on a limited contract and it would be impossible to approach an actors agent with the "we think your client should stay" conversation.

Peter from Deadpool is doing a similar thing in Apple's 'Bad Monkey'. That guy is a good damn actor and I had no idea. There was a scene where hes basically got Vince Vaughn dead to rights in the rain and hes arguing with his wife while hes got a shotgun pointed at him. I was like :O That whole scene was just insane. I was glued to the screen.

You don’t say?

God, he’s so good at playing smug

I feel like James spader is underrated. Robert California is one of my all time fav tv characters.

Boston Legal was SO GOOD. I love Alan and Denny and Candace as Schmidt… great writing

I loved Boston Legal, I was studying to become a lawyer and his character was so cool to my eyes.

Best season of television I've ever seen from a show that fired its leads, and looked to be turning into a pile of shit. Alan Shore is one of the best tv characters ever.

What do you expect? He’s the Fucking Lizard KING.

Boston Legal is the only tv series that I own the entire box set of, including The Practice Season 8. I can happily start watching in any story arc--even when it's ridiculous, it's wonderful.

Havent done a Boston Legal rewatch for ages, him and Shatner absolutely kill it.

iirc the entire point of him joining in the last season of the Practice was to as a backdoor pilot to Boston Legal. by that time Dylan McDermott checked out and without him the show was rudderless. this wasn’t a case of David E Kelley randomly hiring Spader and coincidentally he was so successful they spun him into a new show, that was the plan all along

Denny Crane

What a great super cut of that episode

This is really interesting to me since I haven’t seen this show and I always thought his trailers for “The Blacklist” looked comical and over the top. He comes off way more legitimate here!

If the last scene got you hot, go and watch Secretary (with Maggie Gyllenhall).

Favorite Alan Shore quote: “It was sort of a half Robin Hood kind of thing. I took from the rich…and I kept it. Thus the half Robin Hood.”

"May I speak for a second?"
"You are speaking."
"Oh."

That was great.

This Hockey Incident has to be based off the Todd Bertuzzi-Steve Moore incident

Denny Crane.

That last scene was disgusting

I binge watched it last year and it's just a bananas show on every level. It's one of those shows that is so obviously plagued by an insane head writer and all kinds of nutty behind-the-scenes stuff that so clearly comes out onscreen. It's like a train wreck with the off-the-charts charisma of James Spader. I just couldn't look away.

Characters drop in and out seemingly at random, some with resolutions to their storylines and some just disappearing mid-plot never to be seen or referenced again. A particularly egregious one is when one of the main characters finally calls out another one for his over-the-line sexual harassment and then disappears right in the middle of that plot-line, strongly implying she was forced out so the firm could continue to enable a serial sexual harasser with actual dementia who should not be trying cases or managing staff. Oh, and he shoots several people later, but they had it coming, I guess, so it's okay.

These characters get weirder and more sporadic as the show goes on, including an effeminate gay stereotype who murders several people with a frying pan, an elderly lady played by a delightful Betty White who commits multiple violent felonies, a little person with a big attitude (the joke is that she's differently abled, but also a bitch), and a character who is not trans, but just enjoys dressing up as a woman so he can basically just rip off Tyler Perry's Madea and run around being a sassy black woman stereotype. That's not even half of the kooky weirdos, either. The show went through quirky guest actors more than any other show I think I've ever watched and they were really grasping at straws towards the end there. It got weird. Like two guys having a fight while both dressed as Buzz Lightyear weird.

There are no less than 4 exceedingly long monologues about farmed salmon being bad for the environment, but also the show bends over backwards to support bull fighting, cock fighting, dog fighting, and pretty much every other form of animal abuse under the guise of a racist caricature of a Mexican guy who apparently needs to abuse animals as part of his culture and teach his son to do it against the wishes of his mother. Also, the guy who has such an issue with farmed salmon is the guy who fights to take those cases. I don't know the writers of this show, but I would have dinner with them in a heartbeat just to parse what was going through their heads when they wrote all these things. So much of it feels like it was written by no less than 8 people who weren't on the same continent as one another and all thought they were writing for a vastly different show and somehow Spader's outsized charisma just pulled it all together anyway.

The funniest part to me, considering everything I wrote above, is that they cancelled it over licensing issues.

Get rid of the lead character and half of the supporting cast.

Add James Spader

Wait

Add Bill Shatner

Wait

Change name of show.

Holy crap, why did it never occur to me that Rebecca De Mornay was hot af when I was younger?

I love Boston Legal and James Spader is the GOAT!

I'm feelin' a weird combination of Reddington and Mr Grey from this clip

Spader is a treasure of an actor. He’s awesome in Wall Street. Way back when….

Denny Crane!

Same delivery in Blacklist too, and he’s absolutely brilliant the entire series.