L.A. Law
The show often combined humor and drama in the same episode. In the pilot episode of the series, only the back and hand of law partner Chaney, gripping the pages of a tax manual while seated at his desk, are seen after he succumbed to a fatal heart attack. One of Chaney's final acts was to hire a new secretary, who began work on the morning Chaney's body is discovered. Later in that episode, in front of his partners, friends and his wife, the secretary at Chaney's eulogy reveals that she is transsexual, and details how she first met the gay Chaney at a gay bar. Chaney had been financially supporting her gender transition, and hired her as part of her real life test. She is then promptly fired from her job by Douglas Brackman, in an act of transphobia.
A running gag throughout the series was the overtly promiscuous lifestyle of divorce lawyer Arnie Becker, and his chronic and constant liaisons with women, up to and including bedding some of his own clients. This once caused problems when a client used him to set up her (estranged) husband to be murdered. Series producer Steven Bochco used a similar incident in Hill Street Blues when a woman bedded one of the police officers in the squad and tricked him into shooting her ex-husband when he (apparently) broke into her house.
A running gag during Harry Hamlin's tenure was to have his character, Michael Kuzak, always shown picking, scrutinizing, and eating pastries or fruit at the morning staff meetings. He was the only one who ate from the mountains of food provided.
To some extent, the sexual peccadilloes of almost the entire cast would become fodder for episodes of the series.
After Grace van Owen makes a comment that Michael Kuzak would have to be a monkey before she'd be interested in him, he woos her on the courthouse steps (where she is about to get married) in a gorilla suit. Douglas Brackman becomes involved with a sex therapist. Benny Stulwicz, an intellectually disabled clerk at the office, has sex with the intellectually disabled daughter of a client of the firm. Leland McKenzie and Rosalind Shays, antagonists, secretly become lovers.
The show tied itself into the events of the Los Angeles riots of 1992, which were prompted by the acquittal of four white police officers who were put on trial for the videotaped beating of African American motorist Rodney King. In a scene reminiscent of the Reginald Denny incident, tax attorney Stuart Markowitz is struck on the head by a rioter, and ends up having serious head injuries, causing a number of problems for him and his wife for several episodes as a result. Douglas Brackman, their boss, is also arrested in the mayhem of the riots as he is on his way to get remarried.
In one scene later in the series, the writers enacted an inside joke: "The easiest way to get rid of a soap opera character is to just have them fall down an elevator shaft." In her final scene, the character of Rosalind Shays steps into the empty shaft (expecting an elevator car when the doors open) and falls to her death.
The show did not shy away from controversy, with a scene in the episode "He's a Crowd" where one of the female lawyers, Abby Perkins, has an on-screen romantic kiss with C.J. Lamb, another female lawyer who is openly bisexual.
The name Chaney remains in the name of the law firm, despite numerous changes in personnel and the death of Chaney in episode 1. When Michael Kuzak leaves, it is announced that new stationery will arrive without Kuzak's name on the letterhead. In a line heard off-screen and in the background, Arnold Becker states: "I think we should drop Chaney's name."
murder