Truth-Telling

If the truth is uncomfortable, the American audience would much rather not hear it.

Truth that’s uncomfortable? Truth that’s unseemly? Truth that’s ugly? I’d prefer a story with a happy ending, thank you.

The two top TV writers over the last couple of decades, David E. Kelly and Aaron Sorkin, have had unique relationships with truth-telling. Let’s take a look.

Sorkin and truth-telling

Sorkin had Toby. In The West Wing, Toby was the truth-teller. And quite early in the series, he justly calls himself “the kid in the class with his hand raised that nobody wants the teacher to call.”

Toby was the guy who said the bad things out loud, because he couldn’t stomach lies or self-delusion. Toby stared the truth in the face even when it hurt him.

The first time we saw Toby’s inability to keep his mouth shut was in the middle of a basketball game with the president of the United States, “Oh, this is perfect, you know that? This is a perfect metaphor. After you're gone, and the poets write, 'The Legend of Josiah Bartlet,' let them write you as a tragic figure, sir. Let the poets write that he had the tools of greatness, but the voices of his better angels was shouted down by his obsessive need to win.”

How many people in life do you know who will tell you your faults to your face? Are they loved? Are they shunned?

When Toby’s twins are born, Toby shares his feelings with Leo.

“I don't know,” he says. “For nine months, you're hearing how this is gonna change your life, and ‘You've never loved anything like this’, and ‘My God, the love’ and ‘Nothing's gonna be important any more.’ It just never really felt to me like I was someone who had the capacity for those feelings. Plus, you know, I like what's important to me. I want it to stay important. I want to be able to do it well.”

Leo says, “What do you mean, you don't have the capacity? Of course you're gonna be a great father. Of course you're gonna love your kids the way you're supposed to, the way other fathers—”

Toby interrupts him, “My God, Leo, we look around, we see that's not true. It's not automatic.”

Some parents don’t love their kids, and Toby knows that. Some parents treat their kids horribly, and Toby knows that. Some mothers feel bad that they don’t love their kids right away, not knowing it’s a process, and that it takes time. Toby doesn’t fall for that and even dares to admit that he is very different from what a father is supposed to be.

Another time, the president and Josh were shot. The president was all right, but Josh’s condition was critical. It was iffy if he would make it out of surgery.

Donna, Josh’s assistant who cares deeply for him, rushes in to the hospital, only knowing the president’s been shot. In a room full of friends, only Toby speaks, and says, “Donna. Josh was hit.”

“Hit with what?” Donna says.

Toby: “He was shot--in the chest.”

C.J. adds, “He's in surgery right now.”

Donna is in shock. “I don't understand. I don't understand, is -- is it serious?”

And the truth-teller gives it to her straight, without sugarcoating it, “Yes, it's critical. The bullet collapsed his lung and damaged a major artery.”

How many people do you know who don’t – and won’t – sugarcoat the awful truth for us?

Sorkin, of course, also knows how to make fun of it when he wants to. Because Toby isn’t only a truth-teller, he is a pessimist. Andy, Toby’s ex-wife, now pregnant with his child, says that she’s worried about how Toby will raise the kids.

“I do worry about the kids,” she tells him. “Because instead of showing them that the world is for them, you're going to be telling them that they have to work hard in school so they can bone up for a life of hopelessness and despair.”

Toby, not backing down, responds, “Wouldn't it be ironic if our kids were the only ones who were properly prepared?”

When Sorkin left the series after four seasons, Toby stopped being the truth-teller.

Kelley and truth-telling

Kelley’s palette of truth-telling is greater than Sorkin’s. Whereas Sorkin, in writing The West Wing, Sports Night, and Studio 60 only had Toby as a truth-teller, almost all of Kelley’s characters are truth-tellers at quite a few points of their lives.

But Kelly does us one better than that. He doesn’t let the need for everything to be resolved well get in his way. Whereas Sorkin ended the scene quoted above (in which Toby shared his worries about his being a bad father) on the best side possible (Leo tells Toby, “I’m not talking about everybody. I’m talking about you and I’m telling ya, it’s a mortal lock. It’s guaranteed”), Kelly tends to do the opposite.

One time, in Chicago Hope, Alan Birch, the hospital’s lawyer, appears before a committee that holds the future of Chicago Hope in its hands. It doesn’t go well. He gets blindsided and his ass is handed to him. When he comes back to the hospital to prepare for the next session, Dr. Phillip Waters, his boss, reads him the riot act. Later on, Birch appears before the committee prepared, legally beats the aggressive committee to a pulp, and wins the day.

That evening, Dr. Waters comes to Birch’s room, to mollify matters (as usually happens in most American shows). Birch is busy working. I get it, he says. I’ve proven myself a hundred times before, and yet every day I have to prove myself to you as if I’m starting from zero. I get it. You would never have treated any of the surgeons this way. I get it. I’m not one of the guys. I get it. I’m just your lawyer.

And as Birch says these things, he leads Dr. Waters out of the room. For a second, Waters is standing with his back to the open door. He opens his mouth and turns around, only to find the door gently closing in his face.

He then leaves.

Birch was right, and David E. Kelley wouldn’t write a sappy ending just because it's the expected thing to do. Any other writer on any other show would have let Walters come into the room again and ‘explain’ things and show how everything is actually okay. But it isn't. Kelley leaves the painful truth hanging there, for us to see and feel.

Kelley in his truth-telling, does us even one better than that: He goes out and seeks the truth, showing us what really exists behind our actions.

Here are a couple of secrets that Kelley outed during his run on Picket Fences.

One time, Jimmy Brock, the sheriff, and Jill Brock, his wife and a doctor, are having Jill’s father over along with Max, one of Jimmy’s deputies, for dinner. Jill’s father, a professor, keeps making jokes at Max about the ineptness of policemen. The great career as a surgeon that Jill had given up to live as a doctor in this town is also mentioned in passing.

Spirits are heated and things are said. Jill’s father accuses Jill of having grown distant from him, of never calling, of never talking the way they used to. When things get more heated, Jimmy tells him that it’s all his fault. The second Jill met Jimmy, she started to feel her father’s lack of acceptance. Jimmy’s not the intellectual she deserves; he’s a stupid policeman; she could do better. And that, says Jimmy, is why Jill grew distant from you.

Jill’s father is shocked. He turns to Jill and asks her, Is that true? Did you feel that way?

Jill, feeling like a little girl, nods.

Jill’s father then turns to Jimmy. I can’t argue with what she feels, he says, but she didn’t get it from me. I think you’re the exception to the rule, he continues, you’re one of the bravest and smartest men I’ve ever met. Whatever it is that’s going on here, it doesn’t come from me.

Jimmy’s eyes move from Jill’s father to Jill. He’s right, he says. It does come from you. It’s always come from you.

And he’s right. The disapproval Jill ‘picked up on’ came from her and from her own judgments of Jimmy, the man she eventually married. And she kept feeling like this all these years. And that’s an ugly and terrible truth for a married couple to learn. (And if you want to know what happened next, watch the series.)

Another time, Jimmy’s ex-wife comes to town with a surprise: She wants to have another kid, and she’s been trying to get pregnant for quite a while. Unfortunately, it turns out that she has a special genetic disease that allows her to conceive only with genetically-compatible men - only one out of about 75,000 men is a viable candidate (“And how many have you tried?” asks Jill.) And so it turns out that by a freak coincidence Jimmy is one of those men (since they have already had a daughter, Kimberly, who is now a teenager). And she wants his sperm.

Jimmy’s ex doesn’t even want to have sex with him. A few years ago, they had frozen his sperm. She just wants his okay.

When Jimmy says no, she looks at him, squints her eyes, and says, You know what, I don’t need your approval, I’m going to do it.

As you can guess, a big brouhaha ensues, at the end of which she decides not to go through with her plan. But then, standing by her daughter near her car, she admits her true motive: With Kimberly going to college soon, she won’t have a reason any more to come and be in Jimmy’s life. And she wanted and needed a reason to still be around. She is, after all those years, still in love with him.

Now, who else would tell you such truths?

Why Listening to Denny Crane Makes Us Smarter

People are inherently biased and there’s nothing you can do about that. But if your name is David E. Kelley, writer/producer of L.A. Law, Picket Fences, Chicago Hope, Ally McBeal, Boston Public, The Practice, and Boston Legal (not to mention a few TV movies and shows that didn’t last as long as the rest), you know how biased people are and you use it to get your point across.

We have to look no further than Denny Crane’s character in Boston Legal. At first sight, he seems ridiculous, out of touch, and senile. The trick is to create a stereotype almost on sight, so that the audience immediately has an opinion on the character. Kelley then reinforces the stereotype, getting a few jokes in, only to reach a certain point in which the audience realizes it's looking at a human being with feelings, emotions, pain, and depths you hadn’t seen yet. Denny Crane, during the first season of Boston Legal, was not only a ridiculous parody of a person. He was a tragic has-been that knew his once-grand stature and abilities were collapsing and that there was nothing he could do to stop it. He was being ridiculous to hide his fears. In the first season, Kelley turned Crane into a three-dimensional human being.

Almost every person in a Kelley series begins as a stereotype, and ends up, if he or she is given enough screen time, as a surprisingly three-dimensional person.

Douglas Wambaugh’s first image on the screen, in Picket Fences, was of a very Jewish-looking shyster (played by Fyvush Finkel). He cracked jokes and was the epitome stereotype of the Jewish lawyer. And he fit that bill perfectly. “Reasonable doubt for a reasonable fee” was his motto, and he would represent anyone for a fee. But the truth was that he would also represent people for no fee. When Frank the Potato Man (yet another stereotype of Frank, Rome, Winsconsin’s homeless man) was about to be lynched by the people of Rome, Wambaugh was the only one who fought for him. He did it for free, he stood up against the entire town, and he never gave up. Because Wambaugh, it turned out, had a big heart and a deep-seated sense of justice.

We saw that heart best when Wambaugh was banned from his synagogue. Wambaugh ‘sued’ the synagogue and got a hearing at a ‘Beit Din’, which is a sort of Jewish court that settles religious issues. He made his case, and the other side made its case. But when Wambaugh saw how many people from the synagogue signed a petition to have him banned, we saw Wambaugh’s world collapse. And he was never more human.

The town of Rome, Wisconsin was full of stereotypes and erroneous first impressions. From the ridiculous Frog Man (who dressed like a frog and sang songs), to Carter Pike (the nervous coroner who sounded like a chipmunk in court and about whom there were always rumors he touched the bodies inappropriately), to Ginny Weedon (who was very short and thought she got intuitions from the other side), and a bagful of others. Ally McBeal’s world was chock-full with just as many stereotypes, which were actually more stereotypical, because Ally McBeal was more of a comedy than Picket Fences. Remember the Biscuit with all his quirks? Richard Fish? Lane? Practically every second client and every second character filled some sort of stereotype. But they all had a justification for the way they were, and when they were outcast, they took it badly.

Kelley uses the fact that we are inherently biased to prove to us again and again not that the bias is wrong and not that everyone is the same, but that there is a person in everyone.

But the truth is that Kelley’s humor does even more than that. Kelley’s humor forces the audience to think. I’ll repeat that: Kelley’s humor forces people to think.

It does that in two ways.

First of all, most jokes are put in such a way that forces the audience to immediately develop a contrary opinion. Think back to most of Richard Fish’s speeches. There wasn’t one sentence there that was right, but with every sentence Kelly put in his mouth, he forced you to form an opinion of what is right. That process wasn’t even a conscious effort on your part, because you didn’t take time to think. Fish gave you a line, and you laughed because a contrary thought had immediately appeared in your brain without effort. In fact, think back to most of Denny Crane’s monologues, or even to most of Alan Shore’s personal statements in the office.

Kelley uses his humor to force you to think. It doesn’t matter what you think, so much as that you think for yourself and form an opinion that belongs solely to you.

Here’s the other way he does it. About half his jokes force you to have more than one point of view at a single time.

Here are a few examples:

When Mayor Pugen spontaneously combusts (and let’s not get started on that one), Wambaugh, who was also his political opponent, gets up to speak: “I’ve known Bill Pugen for 18 years. I’ve never liked him. When he burst into flame, part of me wanted to bring marshmallows.” You immediately put yourself in Wambaugh’s mind, thinking about why he said it. But you are also thinking about those gathered around, and what they must be thinking. Kelley forces you to be in more than one head at a time.

When Zach, the sheriff’s little kid, states innocently: “It’s politically correct to hate Christians,” you immediately think about what he must have heard and what kids are exposed to these days to make him understand the world and political correctness in this way. You see the kid’s perspective (it’s what he heard and what he knows), while retaining your own.

Once, in court, Wambaugh faces off with the FBI. As the proceedings begin, the FBI lawyer says, “Your honor, this is blatant interference, which is jeopardizing the investigation.”

Which is Wambaugh’s cue to rise, “Your honor! Thirty-two hands have been hacked off during their investigation. A little interference would be in order!” The audience in the court laughs.

“That is not funny, Mr. Wambaugh,” the judge chides him.

“Of course not, your honor,” says Wambaugh, and adds belligerently: “And I ask you to sanction everyone back there who laughed!”

In this way, Wambaugh took a situation that’s completely black-and-white and turned the tables on it, making us look at it with the opposite perspective.

And here is Kelley’s smartest joke, in my opinion. Not the best, simply the smartest. Jimmy Brock, sheriff of small-town Rome, Winsconsin, finds the body of a dead masseur. Jimmy discovers a little black book which contains a list of all the man’s clients. The book contains a few squiggles next to many names, representing a special ‘thing’ he used to perform to his favorite clients, the nature of which was unclear but receives many, many euphemisms during the episode. But, generally, it was called the Squiggly.

Now here’s the thing: Jill, Jimmy’s wife, was on the list, although there was no squiggle next to her name. Jimmy gets intensely jealous and demands to know what happened and why he didn’t know about it. Jill insists that there was nothing sexual about the massage, and that she was there simply for her sciatic nerve.

Over a tense family dinner, the Brocks discover that one of the Brocks written in the book was not Jill, but Kimberly, Jimmy’s teenage daughter, also seated at the table. They stare at her in shock. “What?” She says innocently. “It was just a massage.” “Yeah, right,” says Jill.

And there you go.

In one instant, with two words, Jill reverses everything she had claimed until then (although, of course, the ambiguity remains). The instant it happens, we immediately understand why she did it, why it’s bad, what the implications are if she’s lying, what the implications are if she’s not, Jimmy’s points of view as both father and husband, and Jill’s points of view as both mother and wife. All in one split-second.

The ability to see more than one point of view at the same time is part of what makes people intelligent. We’re usually stupid – or at least we act stupidly – when we can’t see beyond our own nose. Intelligence is the ability to react to changing circumstances. We are usually resistant and bull-headed when we’re zeroed in on our own point of view and the rest of the world can kiss our asses.

Of course, this has farther-reaching consequences than feuds with the neighbor, the spouse, the siblings, etc. Almost every war that is not based entirely on self-defense, especially long-lasting wars, depend on the people not seeing the others’ point of view as legitimate and/or that the other side is just as human and grieves just as badly.

I’m not saying listening to Richard Fish or Denny Crane makes us pacifists. I’m saying listening to them makes us marginally smarter for short periods of time.