The jury's still out on 'Practice'
TELEVISION
05/05/2003
By ED BARK / The Dallas Morning News
Members of the jury, ABC should be sued for malpractice for moving The Practice from Sundays where it thrived to Mondays where it's nose-dived since January.
Now the two-time Emmy winner as TV's best drama series is squeezed between a stay of execution and death by lethally stupid programming executives.
Anticipating the worst, series creator David E. Kelley has written this season's "Goodbye" episode as though he really means it. The subtitle refers to attorney Bobby Donnell's (Dylan McDermott) decision to leave the law firm he started from scratch seven seasons ago. In Monday's last scene, which caps back-to-back episodes, he literally turns out the lights as his eyes moisten. The end?
"David wrote that episode without having any understanding as to what the future of this show might be," says Robert Breech, co-executive producer of The Practice and senior vice president of Kelley Productions. "If it were to be a situation in which closure were required, he wanted to give his creation a real good creative closure."
Mr. Kelley, who is vacationing out of town, is also the force behind previous successes such as Picket Fences, Chicago Hope, Ally McBeal and the ongoing Boston Public. But he's had a rough ride lately. Fox dropped his girls club legal series after just two episodes this season. Two other recent Kelley series, Snoops and a half-hour collection of Ally McBeal outtakes and comedic moments, also were canceled in short order. Still, he's hardly Joe Dokes from Poughkeepsie, even if that's the way ABC is treating him of late.
"We've had absolutely no communication from the network at all. Nothing," Mr. Breech says of The Practice's future with ABC. "In fact, David has contacted ABC in an effort to find out what the position is. And there's been no formal response."
ABC's publicist for The Practice refers all calls about the show to Mr. Kelley's representatives. The network will say only that its new fall lineup is scheduled to be announced on May 13.
Mr. Breech insists it's "wrong to interpret this as an ominous sign. The network could have told us at any time that it wasn't going to bring us back. ... But we thought we easily had two more years left in this show. Yes, we're surprised that we find ourselves in this situation, but we're all united in the belief that there's a strong chance we'll return."
ABC diminished those chances on Jan. 27, when The Practice was sent to Monday nights to be sandwiched between what proved to be two short-lived new dramas Veritas: The Quest and Miracles . ABC's new version of Dragnet originally had been slotted for Mondays, with The Practice remaining on Sunday nights as the network's only consistent time slot winner.
But ABC entertainment president Susan Lyne said it seemed "reckless" to launch three new dramas on one night. So The Practice took the fall, relinquishing its longstanding 9 p.m. Sunday berth to Joe Friday.
"I remember David asking me, 'Are you standing? You'd better sit down,' " Mr. Breech says. The move to Mondays "came as a total shock to us. We had no advance warning, other than being told it was a fait accompli ."
Ms. Lyne told TV critics in January that ABC "felt Dragnet could do as well as The Practice" on Sundays.
ABC figured wrong, as it often has this season. The latest weekly Nielsen ratings (April 21-27) showed Dragnet finishing 67th in prime time with just 7.5 million viewers. Its ratings have been dwindling all season, particularly among advertiser-craved 18- to 49-year-olds. The Practice managed to slightly outdraw Dragnet with 7.6 million viewers in that same ratings period. Not that anyone at Kelley Productions is thrilled about it. This season's first episode of The Practice finished a robust 22nd in the weekly ratings with 13.9 million viewers, making it ABC's highest-rated scripted series of the week.
"Returning to Sundays clearly is the best scenario for us," Mr. Breech says after The Practice was forced to battle Joe Millionaire , Everybody Loves Raymond and frequent pre-emptions on Mondays. "It's a show that matters and counts. If I had the remotest feeling that it was wheezing or exhausted, that would be one thing. But I don't think the show has ever been more vital."
So what's the overall problem? Well, it doesn't help that the core ensemble cast of The Practice has been around long enough to command upper-range salaries in tough economic times.
"There clearly is a consideration of money in this, yeah," Mr. Breech says. Also, ABC doesn't own a financial piece of The Practice, which is produced in association with Twentieth Century Fox Television. Under current-day practices, networks are co-producers of virtually every new show on their schedules. This allows them to further cash in when a successful series hits the syndicated rerun market.
Still, all of The Practice's principal actors already are under contract for next season and eager to return, Mr. Breech says. That at least removes some of the financial muss and fuss.
Whatever the show's fate, Monday's back-to-back episodes are compelling, emotional, deftly written and spiked with nifty twists in their respective featured cases. The second "Goodbye" episode was rushed to TV critics less than a week after filming was completed.
"Giving you these tapes illustrates our show's frustration this season," Mr. Breech says. "Everybody within our industry agrees that a mistake was made in moving The Practice on such very short notice. We want this show back. We think it deserves to come back."
If that doesn't happen, there's irony in having Billy Campbell as the featured guest star in "Goodbye." His ABC series, Once and Again, was canceled at the end of last season following a bewildering series of network assurances, time slot changes and pre-emptions. Now The Practice is in much the same fix. Objection, your honor.
Overruled?
It's about the only show I watch on ABC.
