They have finally released the first (and only) network season of The Paper Chase, a CBS adaptation of a novel and subsequent movie about first year, or One L, law students at an unidentified Harvard. The show was a typical cult series, loved by a fervent few. CBS, however, scheduled it against Happy Days, back when that show was at its very peak and the Fonz was an unstoppable cultural artifact.
Ratings were predictably woeful, and the program was preempted as often as CBS could find something to take its place. Eventually they tried moving it to the 10:00 programming hour (9:00 here in the Midwest), and it did rather better.
Sure enough, CBS again took it off the air for two or three weeks, and plopped it down against Happy Days again. Clearly by that point they were actually looking to kill it, but also wanted to avoid to the greatest extent possible being pilloried by the critics who loved the show. The only reason there’s a full season of 22 episodes is because they tended to order full seasons back in those days. Nowadays it would have been gone after three weeks.
PBS kept the show alive in reruns, a very rare occurrence for a network show and a mark of how respected the program was. Then, four years after CBS cancelled the show, Showtime brought it back for several seaons, albeit with some cast and set changes. It was still pretty good, and lasted long enough that we got to see the remaining original cast of students actually graduate. However, the Showtime years never quite recaptured the magic of that first season for me. (It’s also funny looking at the CBS episodes from 1978, when much of the cast had long ’70s hair. The actor playing the main character, James Stephens, would clearly be prematurely balding by the time four years later when Showtime got the show back up and running.)
The partially autobiographical novel had been written by lawyer John J. Osborn and revolved around first year student James Hart, a fellow from a farming family in Minnesota. Hart arrives at Harvard and although quickly proving himself a rather sharp fellow, has some predictable fish out of water trouble adapting to his new life. Eventually he gains a support systems in a study group of his fellow students.
More central to things is Hart’s idol and sometime nemesis, the brilliant and imperious Charles W. Kingsfield Jr., a renowned contracts professor who mercilessly badgers students with severe applications of the Socratic Method. “You teach yourselves the Law, but I train your minds,” Kingsfield introduces himself. ” You come in here with a skull full of mush and leave thinking like a lawyer.” Kingsfield not only doesn’t suffer fools gladly, he makes them the ones to suffer. Legend has it, we learn, that over the decades he was caused more student breakdowns and suicides than the rest of the faculty put together.
Kingsfield was played by the then 71 year-old John Houseman, a film and Broadway producer who had worked with Orson Welles back in his stage, radio and Citizen Kane days. Houseman had never acted to any real extent before—he had had a few bit parts over the years—but few actors have ever owned a role the way Houseman did Kingsfield. Indeed, he won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the film. Even so, Houseman got the role only after a number of veteran movie stars turned it down.
Hart was played by Timothy Bottoms, and remains his most famous role outside of his lead in The Last Picture Show. Like many young actors, however, his career faltered quickly. He continues to work, but by 1977 he was already appearing in junk like Rollercoaster, and by 1984 had to travel to Europe to star in crap like The Sea Serpent.
Other familiar faces dot the cast. A pre-bionic woman Lindsay Wagner plays Hart’s romantic interest, and Edward Herrman, later the beloved granddad on TV’s The Gilmore Girls, plays Anderson, a member of Hart’s study group. James Naughton of American Werewolf in London and Dr. Pepper fame also plays another such student. None of the cast save the literally indispensible Houseman made the transition to the TV program.
Much like MASH, the TV show sanded off some of the characters’ rough edges and reduced the model films’ rowdiness quotient. Even Kingsfield, a remote, oft terrifying god-like presence in the film, is softened a bit, although this was perhaps inevitable considering how much more time we spend with him over the course of a TV season.
The first episode is the pilot, which revolves around one of the more famous incidents featured in the book and the movie. (Osborn himself worked on the series, and wrote several of the first season’s better episodes, including this one.) Particularly hilarious are Hart’s Kingsfield-centric nightmares, in which Kingfield sports hairy hands, a sly allusion to a legal case Kingsfield had tormented Hart about.
By the time the show was picked up, as is often the case, a few changes had been made. For instance, Hart works as a short order cook in a pizza place in the pilot (a young Marilu Henner is a co-worker), but in the regular show he’s a waiter in a tavern. Presumably the change was made because if he’s stuck back in the kitchen he can’t interact with anyone, while as a waiter he can stop and chat with any fellow student that pops in for a beer.
Then there’s the study group. The original woman student in Hart’s group has been replaced with a new female, radical (supposed) do-gooder Logan, while the rest remain the characters from the movie: Ford is the scion of a family of illustrious lawyers and Harvard grads; Bell is the lovably comical slob obsessed with his outsized Property Law outline (one of the group’s functions is to have each member pick a class and write a study guide to divide up with the others; Hart naturally takes Contracts).
Anderson in the pilot is still the emotionless logician he was in the movie, bit for the series they soften him up considerably. Anderson is played by Robert Ginty, by the way, who failed to make the transition to the Showtime series because he was busy overseas starring in crap movies like The Exterminator I & II, Gold Raiders and Warrior of the Lost World. Finally, there’s Brooks, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks with a rich young wife. These last two characters are prominently featured in the opening credits, but never really come into play that much. The wife particularly is ill-served. Eventually the show simply seems to forget she exists (again, weird, given her prominence in the opening credits), which is particularly glaring in one particularly Brooks-centric episode.
Like most shows, the episodes vary in quality, although the show is still obviously far better than more network fare. I’ve always been interested in the law, so my favorite shows (I’m not alone in this either, I think) are the ones dealing more on legal and class matters than on the ‘human interest’ stuff CBS was no doubt demanding the show focus on.
This is exacerbated, unsurprisingly, by watching the episodes in a batch; which is why watching a show on DVD is such a different experience then spending years watching it on a week by week basis. It reduces the emotional investment one has in a show, obviously, but can also highlight both strong and weak points. As an example of the latter, the number of times Hart (or another student) is allowed to break Kingfield’s supposedly ironclad rule against impromptu meetings becomes rather funny after awhile, especially when watching an entire season in short order.
Probably the most laughable element of the program’s first year, however, and again exaggerated when watching episodes back to back, is Hart’s tendency to get involved with ludicrously dramatic girlfriends: one is the daughter of a mobster, another (following another book and movie incident) is Kingsfield’s daughter, and yet another is a touring Soviet gymnast with all the political baggage that engenders. That last one was the season’s second to last show, and frankly I skipped right over watching it, although mainly because Houseman was apparently unavailable for the shoot and Parnell Roberts filled in playing another law professor.
Each of the other characters also gets ‘personal problems’ episodes. Logan is sexually harassed by none other than Mike Brady; Anderson manifests a gambling problem and is also involved in a career threatening frame-up; Bell falls in love, and also in the show’s most overtly comical episode becomes obsessed with changing his goofy picture on Kingsfield’s seating chart; while Ford nearly cracks under the pressure from his father to outperform all the other students. Brooks also has a whole ongoing plot thread going, but its drama is limited by the fact that they don’t really make it hangs together well.
Which brings up to another issue. About halfway through the year we get a run of “guest student of the week” episodes, as Hart and the study group become involved with a) a student who comically bullies Bell after the two become partners in the class’ Moot Court competition, b) an affirmative action student whose anger threatens to get her kicked out of school, and c) a crippled guy whose might be just a bit too competitive.
Each of these characters in turn mysteriously pops up in Kingsfield’s class, is featured and interacts dramatically with the main characters, and then just as mysteriously disappears from class, never to be seen or mentioned again. As noted, this becomes more apparent when watching the episodes back to back, but it’s still a problem they’d have had to work on if the show had returned for a second year.
The oddest such is a student who clearly is supposed to be Brooks. He has a photographic memory (which I think Brooks has in the movie, if I remember correctly), but is in danger of failing Kingsfield’s class and getting kicked out of law school (as Brooks is hinted to be having trouble in previous episodes), he has a rich young wife (Kim Cattrall!) who he won’t communicate with, again ala Brooks, etc. Again, this episode clearly seems to have been scripted for Brooks and his wife—first of all, there’s the matter of how friendly and familiar all the main characters seem with these two who we’ve never seen before—and it’s really bizarre that they just rewrote the names and cast different actors here. And again, once this episode is over, we never see these two again.
Another aspect I could have done without is a predictable ethic (even more obnoxious when featured on a show about the law) the program pushes here and there, that Justice is the important thing, even if it means skirting or manipulating the law. Hart openly argues for this approach in one episode, and even Kingsfield endorses it, through word and action both, in several episodes. The problem being that the whole reason you have laws in the first place is because justice is in the eye of the beholder, and society needs firm, opaque rules that everyone agrees to abide by if it’s to survive. The show’s portrayal of many lawyers wanting to get around these rules is undoubtled sadly correct, but I could have done without the program actually (if seldom overtly) promoting this idea.
That said, few shows have ever so captured the idea that law is important, and a great thing worthy of devoting one’s life to, or captured the raw excitement of being a student in an atmosphere that constantly demands you be at the best of your game. There is a real sense there that these things are important, and it’s a refreshing contrast to how shallow the concerns of most shows are.
For all my complaints, even the ‘bad’ episodes are superior television, and the good ones are really great. The pilot, the moot court episode, the final scavenger hunt episode, the chapter where Hart acts as a work assistant for Kingsfield (other than minutes on end of some of the worst white guy dancing you’ve ever seen in your life; wow, the ’70s); these are great hours of TV. It’s terrific that these are finally available on DVD. Hopefully the Showtime years will follow.
Oh, and watch for the show were David Ogden Stiers, Charles Winchester from MASH, shows up playing a low-life character. It’s hilarious.
Sadly, the set offers no extra material at all. Surely most of the actors are still around, and an interview or two would have been nice. Still, I’m just glad it’s out there.
