By Scott Patrick Wagner
Fancast.com
Tonight's episode of Boston Legal, "The Gods Must Be Crazy," opens with Dana, the lovely hooker who loves Jerry, announcing that she has been charged with prostitution and will be facing trial. Dana announces that she will not be ratting on her madam, Lorraine, and asks Jerry to represent her in the case. Meanwhile, Shirley and Carl are faced with a strangely repressed tall woman who asks them to sue the Archdiocese for preventing her from being ordained a priest. And Denny is faced with a guest-star rival who looks uncannily like George Segal, who tells Denny that the Republican National Committee isn't happy with John McCain and is looking at a short list of other possible Repubs to run for President — and one of the possibles is Denny Crane. Alan is in a state of jaw-drop.
Hooker Dana, still rebuffed by that great big hunk of twitching pathology Jerry, asks that his lawyers go beyond defending her in the prostitution charge, and actually build a case to overturn the illegality of prostitution. Carl goes before the Prissy Judge (Henry Gibson), who is shocked that he is trying to sue the Catholic Church; Carl is eloquent, so he stops being as shocked. Denny goes before some Republican committee and seems to pass the next part of the interview process. I won't go into details because this storyline ends so stupidly it's not worth your time or mine.
Hooker Dana's case is thrown out, but she explains to Twitchin' Jerry that the real reason she asked for the trial was to hopefully have Jerry realize while arguing it that he understood prostitution wasn't immoral. Au contraire, ma petite trollop: Jerry turns her down flat and she tearily says goodbye . . . and she really means it, because she disappears for good, not showing up for the arraignment. Bad hooker! Prissy Judge grants the repressed, tall, priestess-wannabe her trial, so that's gonna happen sometime, oh, next episode in the season finale. And Denny is brought into a roomful of people while wearing a hospital gown, and they all yell, "Surprise!"
Evidently, George Segal created a whole charade to trick Denny, and somehow all his friends are there to help mock him. Denny looks disoriented, not seeming to understand that he's not really being consdered for President. Then some fake Feds come in and act like they're arresting all the revelers, who get all scared. Then Alan looks smug. Then Denny looks smug. Then the phony pheds say, "Surprise!" and Denny has the apparent last laugh. But this whole storyline didn't make any sense, so nobody really had a laugh, particularly not us. Seldom does anything on Boston Legal fall supremely flat, but this was souffle-under-a-steamroller. We can always hope for better next week.