Up Till Now: The Autobiography

to which I responded, somewhat startled, “Did you say ‘Klingons’?”
    I think what surprised everyone was the intensity of the relationship that developed between Denny Crane and Alan Shore. Their friendship has been called the best love affair on television. Certainly there has never been a stronger bond between two men portrayed on a series. David E. Kelley had planned for them to be law partners, close friends, and confidants, but what developed organicallyfrom these two characters has far transcended those original intentions. What has become a hallmark of Boston Legal is the final scene, in which Denny Crane and Alan Shore relax on the balcony outside Denny Crane’s office, overlooking Boston, smoking their cigars, often sipping an aged scotch, and talking honestly and intimately in a way very few television characters have ever related to each other. At the conclusion of an episode in which the two of them had engaged in a charity wrestling match, for example, Alan Shore says, “You cheated.”
    “I did not.” And after a thoughtful pause Denny Crane remembered, “Y’know...the first time I had sex with Shirley...it went exactly like that. I flipped her on her back and sat on her head.”
    Alan took a long drag on his cigar. “I hope it was better for her than it was for me.”
    “Better for me. It also lasted about four seconds.”
    On the balcony at the end of another episode, in which Alan had defended a man who had been charged with allowing his terminally ill wife to die so he might be with his lover, Alan quotes a witness who testified, “Families often act to end their own suffering.” Then he wonders, “Is that what happened with your father?”
    I rolled Denny Crane’s cigar in his fingers and remembered his father, and possibly my own, although Denny Crane’s had suffered from dementia and had lost his awareness. “He wasn’t exactly in pain. His appetite was good. In fact he was actually smiling more in the end than he...On the day, the day we told the doctor to up the drip, he was blissful. We put him out of our misery. And I often wondered, did that life belong to the man with the brain of a two-year-old? Or to the life of the man who preceded it? It certain...it didn’t belong to me...”
    “How’d you get the doctor to do it?” “Denny Crane. I was still the real thing then.” “Denny, I’m gonna say this right now and then I’m going to memorialize it in my living will. If I ever end up with the mind of a two-year-old...”
    “I’ll have Bev sit on you...My day is coming, Alan. We both know that.”
    “It’s a long ways off. And in the meantime, live big, my friend. Live big.”
    The always-humorous, usually poignant, amazingly popular, reflective balcony scenes were created by accident. David E. Kelley’s first script ended with Alan Shore on the balcony with his then-girlfriend, Sally Heath. On our balcony with a woman! That cad! But after several rewrites a romantic ending just didn’t work anymore, so instead Alan Shore ended up there with Denny Crane. It was not intended to be the kicker for each episode; in fact several of the initial shows didn’t end that way. But the feedback was enormous; people, men mostly, responded to their friendship. I’ve had to play some very difficult scenes on Boston Legal —believe me, it’s not easy to look good dressed as a pink flamingo, but one of the most intense balcony scenes ended a show in which Denny Crane had caught Alan being friendly with another man. Denny Crane was piqued, he was terribly jealous. It was a very fragile moment, I had to express the emotions of a woman who had caught the man she loved cheating on her—but in a very nonsexual way. If I went too far it became broad comedy; if I was too intense it became anger rather than hurt. When people talk to me about Boston Legal, this is the show they often cite. More than any other moment, this is the balcony scene that most accurately describes their relationship. “I don’t know whether you know this,” Denny Crane admits to Alan Shore, “but not many men take the time, every day, to have a cigar, a glass of scotch, to talk to their best friend. That’s not something most men have.”
    “No, it isn’t.” “What I give to you, what I share, I do with no one else. I like to think that what you give to me you do with nobody else. Now that may sound silly to you. But here’s what I think is silly, the idea that jealousy or fidelity is reserved