PSA: Boston to be renamed "David E. Kelleytown" when appearing on film.

So I've been watching Boston Legal this week, which long-term readers may have expected considering my long-term celebrity crush on James Spader, and with the American release of Ally McBeal in its entirety back in October, I've been thinking about David E. Kelley's dubious relationship with both the legal system and Boston.

Of course, living near Boston now, I find the references to 617 area-coded phone numbers charming and familiar; but I also find the visual references to the larger city buildings that open most episodes and are interspersed throughout like B-roll of the copier spitting out paper on the BBC Office, strange. I don't see those buildings on most days, partly because of the river problem (Boston is across the river from everywhere I'd actually go), and partly because they're just not that tall. Those buildings aren't Boston to me.

Maybe they are Boston to some people. But I don't think so.

Boston isn't a tall city like NYC, or made up of sprawling highways that necessitate helicoptery aerial shots from above like LA. It's a strange, quirky, kind-of-short, kind-of-cramped New England city. I'm not sure how I feel about the branding of Boston that happens on Boston Legal, or (as I recall) to a lesser extent on Ally McBeal.

To be fair, the show brands everything, which may be part of its genius: shots of lawyer's hands in the court room are focused on and refocused, given close-up time as much as their faces; Candice Bergen and William Shatner came on board as already-established brand names in their own rights; Shatner's "Denny Crane" is an obsessive and shameless self-brander who repeats his name to anyone who can hear anytime he says anything remotely interesting. David E. Kelley has always had a "thing" for this kind of self-promoting satire, which is what makes David E. Kelley, himself, a brand.

So if Kelley's version of what we see when we look at or think of Boston is quirky and branded, that makes sense. I say let's give him his version of Boston, which helps him produce characters that get away with discussing current events -- or ones that were current at the time the shows aired, which is rare -- on national TV. But let's admit that this Boston is not a real place. You can't go there. When David E. Kelley has been involved in the process, it should be considered a product of his inspired hubris rather than a reflection of reality. Even those of David E. Kelley's shows not taking place in Boston are filmed in one place, and that's David E. Kelleytown.

Still, it's an interesting place to visit, even if it's not where I live.