Lesbian, lesbian, lesbian (uh-oh).

The first of an (at least) two-part Boston Legal that aired last night is interesting and potentially worrisome. Taken at surface value it looks like-and on that level is-such an obvious example of The Cliche you could almost laugh, hollow though it might be.

In one of the episode's multiple storylines, a young woman is suspected of killing her-recently-ex-girlfriend. She claims innocence-but suffered a blackout after discovering (or killing) the body and before phoning a lawyer.

At the end of the episode, this along with an incidence of screaming in the office and some background information obtained from her therapist has caused Alan Shore to sadly conclude she's insane.

Meanwhile, the woman the deceased woman left her for seems weirdly unresponsive to the loss-she mouths pieties about love but does so in a detached, almost formal way. Later we learn that the dead woman hand-wrote a new will just a week before, leaving this new girlfriend everything.

That's one dead lesbian for sure, and two possible insane and/or evil ones. So why do I say this is only potentially worrisome? Well, part of it admittedly is because I like Boston Legal and don't want to see it fall into the old trap.

The episode was written by series creator David E. Kelley, so for better or for worse, it is what Boston Legal is meant to be. And he seems to be setting The Cliche up so blatantly that I have to/want to believe it's misdirection. Comic blowhard Denny Crane and a TV commentator both verbalized the gay=insane/evil belief system. Experience tells me we're in for one of Kelley's patented Alan Shore jury summations.

One of the reasons I like Boston Legal is that it is, for lack of a better term, "liberal Hollywood" at its best. Some of the speeches are practically Communistic by popular network TV standards-a fact which has caused ABC/Disney to lean on the producers once or twice.

Also, in its first season BL already did an episode that featured a lesbian couple in one of the cases and at the end of the episode, neither were dead, insane, or evil. The episode had some fun with them-but for once the fun was rarely if ever at the lesbians' expense.

Rather, it was had by contrasting the delight Alan Shore took in the case with the extreme discomfort felt by his square colleague Brad. As it happens, there's a short clip from that episode on YouTube that shows what I'm talking about:



So maybe I've got blinders on, in which case you may expect to see me hanging my head in shame on Tuesday night, when this story will be continued.

But for the moment I just want to call it potentially worrisome...but definitely interesting.

ETA a few quick words about the "non-lesbian" aspects of last night's episode: I'm oficially sick of Lincoln Meyer, a character I'll be glad to see the back of. But I'm sorrier to say the same is becoming true of Jerry "Hands" Espenson.

At least Lincoln is supposed to give me the willies. Jerry is intended to be-and in past episodes has been-a sympathetic recurring character. But he's recurred too often, and I've gone from delightfully crying "Hands!" when I see him in an episode to thinking oh no...not again, with an inward sigh.

Should David E. Kelley be asking me (unlikely), I'd say the time is nearing for another Alan & Denny "road" episode. I like most of the other characters--though I'd still be perfectly happy if Brad fell out of his window--but Denny is the bread and Alan the butter.

Or, given his proclivities in a recent episode, the maple syrup.