Alan Shore

Alan Shore is a fictional character on the television series Boston Legal, played by James Spader. The character first appeared in the final season of The Practice. Shore is one of the main characters in Boston Legal.

Character background

Alan Shore was born in 1962 in Dedham, Massachusetts. He is of Scottish descent; his great-grandfather emigrated to the United States from Scotland in 1903. Alan's childhood friends include Paul Stewart, whom he first met in kindergarten, and Tom Dougan, who later became a priest. Alan slept with Paul's mother when he was 16. He lost his virginity at age 14 to a friend of his mother. One of his neighbors was Catherine Piper, his future secretary. According to one of his courtroom speeches, Alan has a sister, although he might have made her up for the purposes of that speech. At one point in his life, he had to seek the help of a sexual surrogate to help him deal with perhaps his most shocking paraphilia: an attraction of sorts to his mother, and the way she touched him (non-sexually) as a child.

Alan was once married, but his wife died. In Boston Legal, he talks about his deceased wife and how she was able to guess accurately what he would think and do. Alan speaks of his wife in a loving way, however, and expresses the otherwise unseen emotion of regret for her passing. It is noted that he was irritated at her uncommon ability to guess his every thought, even when he was trying to be unpredictable. Often, many of Alan's behaviors support this claim.

Alan states on numerous occasions that he is sure that his final fate will be murder. He voices concern, although only to Denny Crane, that he fears waking up alone as he is sure that, in a previous life, he was murdered in his sleep.

The Practice

During the final season of The Practice, Alan was hired by Young, Frutt & Berlutti. He brought in vast amounts of money to the firm (over $9 million by his count), but his highly unethical behavior eventually forced the firm to fire him with $15,000 in severance pay. Alan sued for more money, winning his case with a judgment of $2.3 million that resulted in financial hardships on Young, Frutt & Berlutti. He went on to work with Denny Crane at Crane, Poole & Schmidt.

Boston Legal

In Boston Legal, Alan displayed most of the same traits. He is considered an unethical attorney due to the sometimes questionable methods he uses to help his clients; however, Alan seems to be able to help his clients and fellow lawyers when no one else can, due to his quick wit and apparent lack of fear for the consequences of his illegal actions. He once had an unlicensed doctor remove a bullet from one of Lori Colson's clients after the client refused to have it extracted in a hospital due to the fact it might convict him; Alan helped him out because the bullet might have had a life-threatening impact on the man. Later, Alan advised a client to flee the country after Jerry Espenson unintentionally ruined his trial.

Alan is extremely intelligent and very well-informed, which aids him immeasurably in his job as a lawyer. His usual courtroom strategy involves identifying what he sees as the underlying problems in society that put his clients at odds with the law or another person in the first place, and articulating them to sympathetic juries or judges that frequently grant him and his clients favorable verdicts. In contrast, Alan is pompous, arrogant, and conceited. Like Denny Crane, he is a womanizer, with an insatiable sexual appetite. Alan has had relationships with Sally Heep and Tara Wilson, the latter having had a major effect on his psyche. His sexual harassment of Nora Jacobs, his former secretary (which mainly included him giving her a score on a scale of 1 to 5 with regard to what kind of sweater she was wearing), drew a rebuke from Shirley Schmidt. Alan's ex-girlfriend once tried to run him over, and he later served as her lawyer to get her out of the mental hospital she was in as a result.

Alan also has some strange quirks. For reasons that have nothing to do with money, he does not have a home; he lives alone in a hotel room. He suffers regularly from dangerous sleepwalking associated with night terrors, has an almost paralyzing fear of clowns, and twice spoke in word salad, which was caused by anxiety. Alan is attracted to mature, older women, although he routinely sleeps with younger women as well. He also gains arousal from being measured for pants, and has claimed to have a foot fetish. He has admitted only to Denny of his encounter with a neighbor woman who committed statutory rape against him at the age of fourteen, which robbed him of his virginity. Alan points to this as why he has trouble with women, claiming he is "missing a love gene."

Alan was once charged with inciting a riot after he and Tara pretended to try and pick each other up at a college fraternity bar. During this chain of events, a rather large man tried to pick up Tara and eventually punched Alan; in response, Alan offered several bar patrons $300 to beat up his assailant. At trial, Alan was acquitted after giving a speech to the jury which (may have) convinced them that his seemingly cold, calculated incitement was simply a coward's way of avoiding the fight.

Alan also aided Shirley in keeping nude photographs taken of her in her youth from circulating by the simple expedient of buying them and keeping them for himself, and discouraged a predatory court conservator who had gotten himself appointed custodian of an old woman who was a friend of Catherine Piper's by having two large men break into the man's home, bind and gag him, and steal records.

Alan is a complex character. In The Practice, Ellenor Frutt, a close friend of Alan's, described him as a "self-loathing person, who breeds contempt from other people through his actions." During Season 1 of Boston Legal, Alan was again analyzed by Sally Heep. He had seemingly used Sally for purposes of blackmailing a witness, but Sally thought it was the reverse at the end of the episode. Instead of Alan using her, Sally felt that he was using the witness like a tool of sorts to show how despicable and utterly unethical he was. Alan used the word "run", and was perhaps trying to manipulate Sally to stay away from him. Sally countered that it was "the incredibly decent man" lying buried underneath the bad stuff who was trying to warn her.

Tara Wilson also stated that Alan has three sides: the good side, the bad side, and the naughty side. The good side is Alan's honorable intentions during court defending innocent people, but the bad side of him could not bear that burden of being the good. So, in an attempt to get to Alan, Tara tried appealing to his naughty side by presenting to him her underwear in a folder. The aforementioned bar fight has also seemingly reflected Alan's personality; Tara has stated before that "It's always about Alan Shore", 'always' being the key point. She also claimed that he thought he was the center of the universe.

Alan has a grandiose sense of himself, and believes that the world is just about him. There is a section of dialogue between Alan and Denny where the former states that the best part about Denny is that he doesn't seem to be in the room at all. Alan has an interesting narrative that he remains absolutely alone during a relationship, and serves to more of his self-hating, narcissistic attitude. Shirley later described Alan the exact way he is, albeit in an insulting manner; Shirley also mentioned she wanted to unconsciously bed him.

Throughout the series, Alan has clashed with almost all of the men he works with. He occasionally butts heads with Paul Lewiston, generally over things that pose a potential threat to the firm. His dissent of the American military drew the ire of Brad Chase, a former Marine. He came to resent Jeffrey Coho after his secretary, Melissa, left Alan to work for him. Even Denny, his best friend, grew angry with him due to their differing ideologies and his concern for Denny's deteriorating mental health.

An old flame of Alan's, Lorraine, joined the firm and Alan immediately was attracted to her. He noticed that she gave him word salad every single time she was around. Alan was intimidated by her and the two began a relationship but he was unhappy to learn that she already had a man in her life.

In the fourth season, Alan Shore reached the high point of his legal career by arguing a death penalty case before the Supreme Court. During this, he criticized many of the sitting justices for politicizing the Supreme Court. One interesting point to note is that he only attacked Republican-appointed justices, consistent with Alan's liberal stance on many issues. Denny, though he did not actually argue, insisted on attending the proceedings, as he has never argued before the Supreme Court. He considered this occasion as a must for his legacy to be complete.

Quotes

• "I am such a slut for authority!" (sarcastically, to Brad Chase)
• "We plead not guilty by reason of the district attorney's insanity."
• "All that's needed for evil to win is for good people to sit back and say, 'It's a business'."
• "Oh! You look so bored. I’m about to change that."
• "Is this something sexual?"
• "Hate to extort and run."
• "You have a job to do, and so do I. Yours is to sell socks and suspenders. Mine is to cross-examine people like you and crush them."
• "Michael was a gay Jew from Mexico. Of course you knew this?" (After white supremacists who he helped win a trial burst into Michael Row the Boat Ashore.)
• "You know I'm not about to go to Texas and not ride the mechanical bull, Chelina. That would be like going to Los Angeles and not sleeping with Paris Hilton."
• "This Is My Kidding Face."

References